Role of Effective Leadership in Confronting Educational Challenges - Management Assignment Help

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Introduction - The world has been plunged into a panic, crisis and uncertain times given the outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, which started in China in December 2019. This strange and anxiety-producing era has caused business to shrink their capacity (McKinsey, 2020), propelled stay-at-home orders (WHO, 2020), created global panic (Harris, 2020) and specifically triggered 12 Ngozi Ibeawuchi, Uzoechi Nwagbara, Yahaya Alhassan, Carlton Brown leadership test for businesses and educational institutions to survival and compete in these uncertain times (McKinsey, 2020). To this end, this paper is aimed at understanding and interrogating the role effective leadership can play in uncertain times – the Covid-19 pandemic – in order to effectively tackle organisational challenges in educational settings. It has been argued that effective leadership facilitates managing change successfully in critical moments in organisation particularly in educational setting (Leithwood, 1994), which can lead to successful transformation (Kotter, 1996). Effective (transformational) leaders are vital for any change process including changing educational leadership (Ainscow, Dyson, & Weiner, 2003; Burns, 1978) for change management capacity, motivating followers to go extra mile, organisational effectiveness, stakeholder commitment and leader-follower trust (Rees & Caviglioli, 2018; Ainscow, 2007). Thus, effective/transformational leaders need to have the capacity to drive change within the context of educational system in order to confront the challenges of coronavirus pandemic as stakeholders will be empowered, motivated and encouraged to rise above self-interest than they would (in transactional or traditional context) (Bush & Glover, 2012; Bass & Avolio, 1994; Lewin, Lippitt & White, 1939). As demonstrated in prior literature, leadership can be defined as a process of influencing, motivating, and encouraging people to act in order to achieve collective goals and shared aspirations (Bennis & Nanus, 2004; Kouzes, & Posner, 1993; Kotter, 1990). This entails that transformational leadership process contrasts markedly with transactional leadership, which is managerially oriented (Yammarino & Bass, 1990; Burns, 1978). This brings to the fore the dichotomy between management and leadership. \

Whereas management is premised on achieving targets, control, rigid planning and exclusion of stakeholders and/or subordinate inputs, leadership resonates with engagement, vision, and shared goal attainment (Northouse, 2007; Kotter, 1990). Additionally, whilst transformational leadership resonates with capacity building, inspiration, motivation and shared goal attainment, transactional leadership is based on leader-member exchange and commodification of relations (Bass, 1995; Burns, 1978). This paper thus argues that in order to lead effectively in the dark, precarious and fragile educational climate ushered in by COVID-19 pandemic, effective leadership is a prerequisite. In academia (including mainstream, Maintained, academies, special institutions/schools as well as higher institutions) leaders have responded to the catastrophe of the pandemic by closing schools, cancelling graduation and moving their educational and associated activities online as a sense of immediacy sweeps across the entire globe (Harris, 2020). People all over the world are staying home in self-imposed quarantine, social distancing and infection-reducing rules to “flatten the curve” of transmission (Harris & Jones, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic signals a momentous and immediate (leadership) adaptive challenge, which can best be solved by all those impacted working collaboratively to slow the spread of the disease. This conceptualisation of leadership in recent time has been described by Fernandez & Shaw (2020) as “academic leadership in a time of crisis”. Although school leaders (and elsewhere) have a vital role to play in responding to the crisis beleaguering their institutions, in reality, the role of school leaders in establishing a culture of collaboration, trust, motivation, and shared as well as effective leadership, will more significantly, engender effective change leadership (Kugelmass & Ainscow, 2004; Ainscow et al., 2006). Faced with the uncertainty and rising intensity of the coronavirus pandemic, school leaders globally have made some tough leadership decisions to strategically lead institutions successfully in these uncertain times (Harris, 2020). These decisions have huge impact on leader-follower dynamics as well as effective leadership, which could negatively impinge on effectively confronting educational challenges of the coronavirus pandemic (McKinsey, 2020; Harris & Jones, 2020). The changes brought about by the pandemic also constitute obstacles to managing and leading stakeholders’ interests, radical changes in values, attitude, and beliefs for some stakeholders (Kezar & Holcombe, 2017) as well as entail reinventing a leadership paradigm that could engender new strategies in educational institutions. In sum, a style of Leading Change in Difficult Times: The Role of Effective Leadership in Confronting Educational.

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