Building Leadership Capacity

What Kind of Leader Are You?

Principals build leadership capacity in different ways, most often using one of four approaches. Some styles are preferable to others:

• Directive: engages in command-and-control behavior.
  
  
• Laissez-faire: makes the decision behind the scenes without involving others systematically, creating organizational uncertainty and fragmentation.
  
  
• Collaborative: encourages open participation, but is unsure how to involve those who don’t choose to be involved. May unwittingly prolong dependency behaviors and dispositions inherited from previous years.
  
  
• Capacity-building: creates meaning and shared knowledge through broad-based, skillful participation.

Source: Leadership Capacity for Lasting School Improvement

Read more about these four approaches in Leadership Capacity for Lasting School Improvement by Linda Lambert, published by the Association from Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) available for purchase at www.ascd.org, $18.95 ASCD members, $23.95 non-members.