This is an area that I find very interesting, especially leadership styles of women, My educational leadership class honed in on that topic this semester and provided a base for me to pull information from. Our textbook discussed managerial grids, behavior matrices and textbook leadership styles. That information gave me insight and an explanation of the leaders that I have had. It also helped me see, on paper, that leader that I will be.
Out of the 16 years that I have been in education, I have had ten leaders and six were females. What I noticed was that there were two leadership attitudes, mean or nice. That was my perception before I learned there were actually textbook styles of leadership.
The textbook styles focus on two areas, concern for people and concern for results. Looking back, the ones that had a high concern for results and a low concern for people were the ones I considered mean. Stern could be a better term to use, but I feel that they were just mean spirited. A few of the "mean" leaders seemed concerned about their personal outcomes in the situations. The "nice" ones seemed concerned about the students first and then the staff. Some saw staff and students equal, as there was a high concern for people and high concern for results.
Another element that I noticed was that all four male leaders had a high concern (or appeared to) for people. They were all considered "nice", but they all had a female leaders under them that had a lower concern for people than they appear to have. Some would say that if they results are high and the concern for people is low, there should be no problems. This was not always the case. I am thrilled that while making the transition into leadership, I have experienced a leaders that has a high concern for people and results. I will continue to be a sponge and soak in all that I can while I can.
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