Authority, Power & Politics

Dr. Len Elovitz

Chapters 6 &12 in Hoy &
Miskel

POWER
The ability to influence thought and
behavior

The ability for A to get B to do what B

would normally not do

Authority
Often used interchangeably with power.
I believe authority needs to be granted by
a third party

 In this context think of the most powerful

individual you know in an organization.
What was the source of his/her power?
What assumptions did he/she have about
subordinates?
What strategies did/he or she employ?
What were the consequences of his/her
actions?

Sources of Power French &

Raven
Reward Power controlling rewards will
induce others to comply
Coercive Power potential of punishment
Expert Power Having knowledge that others
want for themselves compels them to comply
Legitimate Power Holding a position of
authority in the organization
Referent Power Personal Charisma

Sources of Authority - Sergiovanni

Bureaucratic
Personal
Technical-rational
Professional
Moral

Bureaucratic - Source

Hierarchy
Rules And Regulations
Mandates
Role Expectation

Teachers Are Expected To Comply Or Face The

Consequences

Bureaucratic - Assumptions

Teachers Are Subordinates

Teachers Cant Be Trusted
Supervisors Are Trustworthy
Supervisors And Teachers Goals Differ
Supervisors Must Be Watchful
Supervisors Know More Than Teachers
External Accountability Works Best

Bureaucratic - Strategies
Expect and Inspect
Hold teachers to predetermined standards
Directly supervise and closely monitor
Determine teacher needs and In-service
them
Find out how to motivate teacher and get
them to change

Bureaucratic - Consequences
With proper monitoring, teachers respond
as technicians in executing predetermined
scripts
Teachers performance is narrowed

Personal - Source
Motivation technology
Interpersonal skills
Human relations leadership
Teachers will want to comply because of the
congenial climate provided and to reap
rewards offered in exchange.

Personal - Assumptions
Supervisors And Teachers Goals Differ but
can be bartered so each gets what they want
Meet teachers needs & the work gets done
Congenial climate makes teachers content,
easier to work with & more apt to cooperate
Supervisors must be expert at handling
people to increase compliance & performance

Personal - Strategies
Develop a congenial school
climate
Expect and reward
What gets rewarded gets
done

Personal - Consequences
Teachers respond as required
when rewards are available but
not otherwise.
Performance is narrowed

Technical Rationality - Source

Evidence by logic and scientific
research
Teachers comply in light of what
is considered to be the truth

Technical Rationality - Assumptions

Supervision & teaching are applied
sciences
Knowledge & research is privileged
Scientific knowledge supercedes practice
Teachers are skilled technicians
Values, preferences & beliefs dont count facts & objective evidence do

Technical Rationality - Strategies

Use research to identify the best
practice
Standardize the work of teachers
In-service teachers in the best
practice
Monitor to insure compliance

Technical Rationality - Consequences

With proper monitoring, teachers
respond as technicians in executing
predetermined scripts.
Performance is narrowed

Professional - Source
Informed knowledge of craft
Personal expertise
Teacher responds on the basis of
professional values, accepted tenets of
practice, and internalized expertness

Professional - Assumptions
No one best way exists
Scientific knowledge is to inform not to
prescribe practice
Acceptance of authority comes from
within the teacher
Supervisor is respected for knowledge,
training & experience

Professional - Strategies
Promote a dialogue among teachers to
determine accepted practices
Provide teachers with as much discretion as
they want or need
Require teachers to hold each other accountable
Make available assistance, support &
professional development opportunities

Professional - Consequences
Teachers respond to professional
norms and thus little monitoring is
required.
Performance is expansive.

Moral - Source
Full obligation and duties derived
from widely shared community
values, ideas and ideals
Teachers respond to shared
commitments and felt
interdependence

Moral - Assumptions
Schools are professional learning
communities
Schools are defined by their shared
values, beliefs & commitments
What is right and good is as important
as what works & is effective
Collegiality is a professional virtue

Moral - Strategies
Promote collegiality
Rely on teachers to respond to their
own sense of duties and obligations
Rely on teachers informal norm system
to enforce professional and community
values

Moral - Consequences
Teachers respond to community
values for moral reasons
Performance is expansive and
sustained.

Sergiovanni
Supervision I
Bureaucratic
Personal
Technical-rational
Supervision II
Professional
Moral

Politics
Individuals form coalitions in order to influence
decision making and procedures
Examples

Gender
Age
Department
Ethnic group
Internal interests
External interests

External Coalitions
Try to bring their own interests and power to bear in the activities and decision
making practices

Related
Union
PTA
Band Parents

Unrelated
Taxpayers groups
Professional Organizations
Political (capital P)

Mitzberg (1983)
Dominated External Coalition
Powerful coalition that dominates not only
internal coalitions but the school and district
leadership as well

Divided External Coalition

One or more groups with conflicting opinions
such as conservative v progressive.
Can politicize the BOE

 Passive External Coalition

The number of outside groups increase to the
point where their power becomes defuse and
limited
Apathy takes over

Power Game
Hirshman (1970) - Participants have 3 options
Leave- find another place exit
Stay and play : try to change the system voice
Stay and contribute as expected- loyalty

Those who leave cease to be influencers, loyals

do not participate as active influencers, those
who speak out become players in the power
game

 Is this an oversimplification?
Are there other roles that you can think of
in the power game?
The destroyer disloyal
The instigator signifier
The nut who knows

Mitzberg again
internal politics is typically clandestine and
illegitimate because it is designed to benefit
the individual or group, usually at the
expense of the organization; therefore, the
most common consequences of politics are
divisiveness and conflict.
Do you agree?

Political Tactics
Ingratiating Gain favors by doing favors
Networking Gain influence by courting
individuals
Information Management Manipulate
information to ones advantage
Impression Management Create a
positive image by appearence

 Coalition Building Band together with

others to achieve mutual goals
Scapegoating Shift the blame to others
for bad outcomes (circle of blame)
Increasing Indispensability Make
oneself indispensable to the organization

LEADERSHIP

Leadership Defined
Leadership is a process of social
influence in which one person is able to
enlist the aid and support of others in the
accomplishment of a common task.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

Martin Chemers

38

Power and Leadership

Leadership is a group function: it occurs only
when 2 or more people interact.
Leaders intentionally seek to influence the
behavior of others.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

39

 Administrators are concerned with efficiency

Are and
leadership
and administration
stability.

synonymous?

Leaders are concerned with change and

gaining consensus on what needs to be done

Leadership and
Management
Are these terms are mutually exclusive?
One manages things, not people, and one leads
people, not things.
We manage finances, inventories and programs, but
we lead people.

Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus have said that

managers are people who do things right and
leaders are people who do the right thing.
ELCC Standard 2 vs. 3
Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

41

Leadership and Management

(continued)

Nevertheless, school leaders must be both managers

and leaders.
Bureaucracies, using the factory model, were and still
are typically managed, not led.
Many schools were and still are managed, not led.
US schools are generally in need of better leadership.
Leaders empower followers and do not play Theory X
soft games.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

42

Adaptive Leadership
Leaders need to deal with two types of
circumstances:
Technical problemsclear cut.
The busses are late
Teacher quits

Adaptive problemscomplex issues.

Curriculum change
Restructuring of grade levels
Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

43

Leadership as a Relationship
With Followers
Leaders (not authority figures) relate to
followers in ways that:
Motivate them to unite in a shared vision.
Arouse their personal commitment to the vision.
Organize the working environment to make the
envisioned goals central in the organization.
Facilitate the work of followers to transform the
vision into reality.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

44

Leadership as a Relationship
With Followers (continued)
How leaders do these things is defined in terms of the
character and quality of the relationship between leaders
and followers.
Leaders who accept Theory X assumptions about
followers are traditional bosses.
e.g. Machiavellis The Prince.
e.g. Max Webers bureaucracy.

Leaders who accept Theory Y assumptions about

followers see leadership as collaborating with others to
reach organizational goals, thus creating a growth
enhancing environment.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

45

Transforming Leadership
James MacGregor Burns published Leadership
in 1978. This work has influenced most scholars
of leadership ever since.
Burns distinguished:
Transactional leadership results in quid pro quo
transactions between leaders and followers.
Transformational leadership seeks to satisfy higher
order needs of followers and engages them fully,
elevating them into leaders.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

46

Moral Leadership
The concept of moral leadership contains three
related ideas:
There is a genuine sharing of mutual needs,
aspirations, and values.
Followers have the latitude in responding to the
initiatives of leaders, and that they have the ability to
make informed choices. They voluntarily grant
power to the leaders.
Leaders take responsibility for delivering on
commitments and representations made to
followers.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

47

A Progression

A progression inherent in transforming leadership:

At the lowest level, is the exercise of power by leaders, which
is not leadership at all.
Transactional leadership is entry-level leadership where leader
bargain with followers.
In transforming (or transformational) leadership followers
engage in a common cause with leaders.
At the highest level, moral leadership involves shared vision, a
sense of mutual purpose, and shared values woven into daily
life to inspire new and higher levels of commitment and
involvement.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

48

A Process of Growth and

Development

Transformational and moral leadership increasingly

draw on higher levels of motivation of followers, which
leads to not only compliance, but also of personal
commitment to the goals of the organization.

In Dan Lorties famous Schoolteacher research, he

concludes that teachers are motivated by feeling
successful and effective in their teaching.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

49

Implications for leaders

Foster a culture that facilitates teaching and
enhances the likelihood that one will be
successful at it.
Energize and applaud the efforts of
teachers
Reward and support success in teaching
Celebrate teaching as the central value of
the school

Leadership and Vision

One of the pivotal tasks of leadership is to
engage constantly in a dynamic process of
stating a vision of things to come, revising in
light of new ideas and restating the vision of
where we are and where we are going.
Examples: Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King,
Abraham Lincoln.
Reflective practice in visioning is rethinking
assumptions, beliefs, and values and either
reaffirming or revising them. As opposed to
Reflexive Do it as we always do it
Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

51

Whose Vision Is It,

Anyway?

Leaders have something important to say about the

vision and should have a clearly thought-out vision of
the future.
Yet, leaders should avoid imposing their own prepared
statements for ratification.
Leaders must demonstrate convincingly their interest in
collegiality and shared leadership to shift the norms of
the schools culture from traditional to collaborative.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

52

Manipulation and
Empowerment
Critical theory is a form of social criticism that holds that
institutionalized oppression of groups of people in society is often
supported by those oppressed as they are led to believe that the
system operates in their best interest. (Stockholm syndrome?)
Critical theorists have applied their theories to schools, principals,
and teachers.
Some schools mandate compliance to school goals or that teachers
embrace the organizational culture.
Where empowerment occurs however:
Teachers participate actively in processes of leadership.
They acquire greater personal ownership and commitment to values that
shape the vision.
They are stimulated to increase their awareness of the larger mission of
the school and the connection of their own daily work to the vision and
mission.

Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

53

Sustainable Leadership
Michael Fullan:
Sustainable leadership is the capacity of a system to
engage in the complexities of continuous improvement
consistent with deep values of human purpose.
Hargreaves and Fink:
Sustainable educational leadership and improvement
preserves and develops deep learning for all that
spreads and lasts, in ways that do no harm to and
indeed create positive benefit for others around us,
now and in the future.

Are Leaders Born?

Aristotle thought so What do you think?

What are the traits of successful leaders?

Early Trait Research 1948

Stogdill reviewed 124 trait studies of the
following factors associated with leadership
Capacity- intelligence, alertness, verbal facility
originality, judgment
Achievement- scholarship, knowledge,
Responsibility dependability, initiative, persistence,
aggressiveness, self-confidence, desire to excel
Participation activity, sociability, cooperation,
adaptability, humor
Status socioeconomic position, popularity

Findings
The following traits consistently differentiated
leaders from non-leaders:

Above average intelligence

Dependability
Participation
Status
The rest was confusing and uneven leading him to
conclude that there is not a set combination of
traits that result in an individual becoming a leader

More recent research

Focus switched to what traits were
associated with a successful leader.
Personality traits: self-confidence, stress
tolerance, emotional maturity, integrity,
extroversion
Motivation: interpersonal needs, achievement
orientation, power needs, expectations, selfefficacy
Skills: technical, interpersonal, conceptual

Situational leadership
Strong reaction against the concept of born
leaders lead researchers to study the
characteristics of the leadership setting.
Theory - Leaders are made by the situation
Factors studied subordinates, organization
characteristics, internal environment,
external environment
Peter Principle

Current thinking
To restrict thinking to one of the following:
Leaders are Born
Leaders are Made
Leadership is Determined by the situation

is counterproductive

Servant Leadership Robert Greenleaf

Servant-leaders achieve results for their

organizations by giving priority attention to
the needs of their colleagues and those
they serve. Servant-leaders are often
seen as humble stewards of their
organization's resources (human, financial
and physical).

Wikipedia

Aspects of being a servant leader

In order to be a servant leader, one needs

the following qualities: listening, empathy,
healing, awareness, persuasion,
conceptualization, foresight, stewardship,
growth and building community. Acquiring
these qualities tend to give a person
authority versus power.

From Greenleafs Essay - 1970

The servant-leader is servant first It begins with the natural

feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious

choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different
from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to
assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material
possessionsThe leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme
types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part
of the infinite variety of human nature. The difference manifests
itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other
peoples highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and
difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do
they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more
autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And,
what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they
benefit or at least not be further deprived?