Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership

The purpose of leadership is to assist followers in overcoming obstacles to their goals. Leaders help to inspire, communicate, support and develop followers so that they can eventually work independently at a level of self-actualization. Servant leadership is a method of leadership that can best be applied in educational leadership as it places the needs of stakeholders above one’s own. The servant leader recognizes what individuals need to overcome challenges and assists them through encouragement and guidance. The servant leader is selfless and devoted to others—and that is what true leadership, ultimately, is all about.

Leadership is like the star that shines brightly in the sky, pointing out the way for those traversing in the dark, giving light where it is needed, and giving hope in times of turmoil. Leadership is also like the sun that comes out in the day, that gives warmth and lets things grow simply by providing the heat and rays needed so that nature can take its course. From this point of view, the purpose of leadership is clear. This paper will show that the purpose of leadership is to empower others so that they can accomplish the goals that have been identified and defined for them. Leadership is important because it provides the focus and source of inspiration that most people need in order to overcome obstacles (either internal or external) and strive towards the objectives that are theirs to achieve.

I believe that educational leadership is about engaging with those around you in the school place—students, teachers, administrators, parents—all stakeholders. Educational leadership provides a vision that all stakeholders can rally around and embrace (“Educational Leadership,” 2017). It promotes change from within so that everyone who ascribes to the vision can develop themselves in order to achieve it. The ultimate aim of educational leadership is not to turn stakeholders into robots or unthinking humans who simply regurgitate the party line. On the contrary, the aim is to help stakeholders reach the level of self-actualization, as Maslow (1943) showed in his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Self-actualized human beings are motivated, inspired, confident, capable, determined, focused, and honed in achieving their goals. Leadership is needed along the way to ensure that people’s needs are met so that they can work their way up the ladder (Lazaroiu, 2015).

For me, servant leadership is a style of leadership that I feel best helps to empower followers. The essence of servant leadership is that it puts others’ needs before your own. A servant leader is has the concept of Christ always before his eyes, because He is the one who best exemplifies the concept of servant leadership. He serves His father in Heaven, and serves those around Him. He disciplines himself so that he is never tempted beyond his strength to fall into sin. He inspires with love and teaching those around Him so that they can serve God too. The servant leader can provide emotional and conceptual support for followers (Northouse, 2016), and can use skills like social and emotional intelligence to identify the best way to communicate and guide followers so that they can ultimately have their needs met and work their way up to self-actualization—at which point they may turn around and lead others. By using a servant leadership approach, my goal is to support, inspire, and assist others to self-actualize so that they can achieve their goals on their own.

Relationships are critical in educational leadership because they are the bond that inspires the union between leader and follower. A leader must be able to relate to followers, and in the educational field that means having an understanding of and friendly disposition towards teachers, administrators, staff members, students, parents, community members and all stakeholders in education. Relationships help to support leadership by providing a means of communication flow: leaders can communicate the vision to followers and can inspire by focusing on values, emotional and social support and so on. The two-way flow allows them at the same time to receive feedback from followers so that they are aware of what needs still must be met.

Leaders can promote relationships among faculty by example and can show how teachers should serve the administration and how the administration, in the spirit of servant leadership, should serve the teachers. Students can see how their teachers serve them and they, in turn, can serve one another. Service is the ideal that drives the concept of leadership, as it is all about directing, encouraging, inspiring and assisting followers to serve the vision of the organization so that one and all can achieve their goals. The ultimate goal of these relationships is to develop a support network so that individuals can rely upon one another as they work upward through their hierarchy of needs, eventually arriving at the level of self-actualization, whereat they can then become leaders for the next generation.

In order for a leader to be successful, he must be aware of how cultures and communities differ and how people working in one place will hail from various backgrounds. Understanding diverse groups and appreciating different cultures will help the leader to connect with all types of individuals from all walks of life. A leader should never be intolerant of people just because a certain person has a different background, a different culture, or a different perspective. Leaders work to remove obstacles, not to add them. They work to help people achieve understanding—and to do that they must be full of understanding themselves.

As a teacher, I believe it is my calling to lead by example. There are so many ways in which students and other colleagues learn from one another: they can learn from hearing, from reading—but most of all they learn from seeing. They see how you behave and watch how you act, and how you act serves as a basis for how others act. By being the best that one can be, by putting on the new man (Ephesians 4:24), and helping others so that they, eventually, can do the same, one shows through example how a true leader acts. The style of leadership that I feel best fits with my calling is servant leadership, because I truly want to show by example how I can support and inspire all stakeholders in education through my service and dedication to those same stakeholders.