Leadership in adult education and training

APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP

There are various theories and schools of thought around the subject of leadership. The theories help to analyse leadership and understand how the function of leadership is viewed from different perspectives. There are other schools of thought that regard leadership as an inherent ability that a person is born with, others believe leaders are developed and leadership can be learnt. Other behavioural approaches look at the manner and behaviour of leaders towards work and people they lead. There are also contemporary or complex approaches of leadership which focus on the nature of leadership, and how leadership situationally applies. The approaches discussed in the text include Trait, Functional/ group, Contingency, Situational, Behavioral, and Contemporary approaches.

THE TRAITS APPROACH: [DRECKER- 1955]

“Leaders are born and not made”

The traits approach rests on the premise that ‘leaders are born and not made’. This means that attention is given to particular characteristics or traits/ qualities of the leader and not on the job itself. Within this framework of thought, it is believed that leaders have peculiar inherent qualities which makes them different from their followers and that leaders are born with these qualities or characteristics. Theories such as the ‘Big man or Great man theory’ are Trait theories. Therefore, due diligence and effort are required in the selection or recruitment of leaders than in training them.

Limitations of the Traits approach

Mullins & Christy (2015) note that the Traits approach presents challenges in trying to come up with a list of the traits or characteristics on which to benchmark leadership. The list is endless and there is no empirical evidence to link certain traits to leadership effectiveness. The prescription of traits tends to be subjective rather than objective. Use of the traits theories assumes there are no situational variations to which leadership applies. Situational context has a tremendous effect on leadership effectiveness and organisational success. The belief that leaders are born is debatable, and contemporary thought on the subject is oriented towards leadership development.

FUNCTIONAL/ GROUP APPROACH

“Leaders are not born, but made”

Whitehead in Mullins & Christy (2013) indicates that anyone can be a leader regardless of the position or job one has. A leader may not necessarily be the boss or the ‘Big man’. This approach focuses on the functions and the mutual relationship among, the leader, tasks, situations, context and followers. The interrelationship of these variables from an Interactionist or functional perspective is the one that defines leadership. In this regard, Mullins & Christy (2013:373) say that leadership is considered “in terms of how the leader’s behaviour affects and is affected by the group of followers.” Attention is given to leadership development instead of personal qualities or traits. Leaders are hence developed through training and exposure to the experiences that improve their performance. With a focus on the future, preparation and leadership training is necessary to cope with the environmental dynamics. According to Zinyemba (2018) Leadership development is symbolized as ‘sharpening the leaders’ edge. Cutting edge leadership should be responsive to situational demands and contextual realities.

CONTINGENCY APPROACHES

Contingency approach responds to the realization that some different situational factors or forces also play a significant part in the leadership function. Organisational situations vary from time to time owing to changes in the internal or external environment. Every situation may require a different approach of leadership to ensure achievement of goals. Mullins & Christy (2013:379) say that situations are the determinant features for leadership approach. Contingency approaches seek a balance between the Technical and Social needs, between Command & Control, Facilitation & Empowerment, Task-structure & Human relations, to determine effective leadership. Therefore, the critical consideration of the contextual and situational variables is made (Robbins & Judge, 2015).

Limitations to contingency approaches

Situational changes pose challenges to leadership because it becomes difficult and impracticable to change leadership based on situational changes because situations change all the time. Contingency approaches give attention to “How well the leader’s style fits the context”. However, it is sometimes difficult to match the leadership style in behavioural terms to leadership effectiveness because as expressed by Mullins & Christy (2013:379), “There are people who possess the appropriate knowledge and skills and appear to be the most suitable leaders in a given situation, but who do not emerge as effective leaders” in other situations.

BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

Studies around the behavioural approaches draw attention to the behaviours exhibited by managers/ leaders in different situations and how the behaviour contributes to leadership effectiveness. Various studies on behaviours of managers group these behaviours into two categories which can be described either as; Command and control, Facilitate and empower, Initiating structure and consideration or Production centred and employee-centred approach. These categories can be analyzed concerning scientific management versus the human relations approach. These approaches also help to study managers’ behaviour towards their subordinates concerning task-structure or social relations.

 Leading: A critical management function in adult education and training

Understanding the nature of leadership is crucial in the management function. Leadership is vital for the achievement of goals in an organisation or institution. Mullins (2005:280) says that “The Manager must understand the nature of leadership influence and factors which determine relationships with other people and the effectiveness of the leadership relationship.”

To understand the meaning of leadership some critical elements should be identified first; 

• decision making and getting others to follow without forgetting that the central factor in leadership roles is goal achievement. 
• Leaders must also be able to gain support from top managers and executives as well as from the followers in the lower levels of the organisational structure. 
• Contemporary leadership thought seems to be running away from the idea of ‘Command and Control’. The major themes in contemporary leadership literature focus on human relations. “Today, leadership is increasing with the concept, getting along with other people.” When people get along well, things just fall into place. (Mullins, 2005:281).

Defining leadership

Mullins (2005:281) defines leadership as “…a relationship through which one person influences the behaviour or actions of other people.” The major concern is not only on goals, but on how best to achieve them, with the people available, their competency, teamwork, readiness, and cooperation as well as understanding or the ability to identify with the vision. Leadership is also not about the managers’ positions, what they can offer, do or not do, but it also looks into the environmental context, situations, processes and the people being led. 

Willy Addai (2004) defines leadership as “…a function of, a leader, followers, situations and the context.” or it can be read as a process that includes a leader, followers, situations and the context.

The leadership function:            LP= ∑ (L, F, S, C);

LP= Leadership, L=Leader, F= Followers, S= Situation, C= Context

Approaches to leadership

Differences between managers and leaders

Mullins (2005) points out that, unlike management with prescribing roles such as planning, organizing, directing or controlling, leadership is more attributive and more of quality or virtue ‘that can be brought to’ and yet not being part of that job. Managers also operate within the confines of an organisational structure, being responsible for a particular set of goals that contribute to the overall goals. Leaders just fit in; their role may not be explicitly prescribed. As a quality, leadership is what blends the managers and followers to be able to work together and achieve goals.

“The emphasis of leadership is on interpersonal behaviour in a broader context.” This brings in issues of motivation, teamwork, delegation, empowerment and the quality of communication, as well as managing and adjusting to change. Leadership is a reciprocal two-way process, which influences both individuals and organisational performance. Not all managers are good leaders, but leadership is an important ingredient in the management function.

Leadership styles: Application in the management of training

The leadership styles discussed here are limited to the common styles: Autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. A detailed look at leadership is presented in a different post. However, this would awaken an interest in further studies in leadership.

Autocratic/ authoritarian leadership

Autocratic leaders hold all power to control resources and people in an organisation or institution. Usually, communication is vertical and downward to communicate policies, strategies, tasks, and instructions for the tasks. People relations are governed by hierarchical structures. The leader uses controls such as rewards and punishments to stimulate behaviours of the followers.

This type of leadership can be useful in a learning environment. From a behaviourist perspective, these are the leaders who want to control learners and others in the training and learning environment. Power is centralized on the leader, who makes key decisions and controls resources. The leader is the one who decides on the parameters of learning and set the goals or learning objectives. The leader manipulates the environment and the resources to suit a set of objectives. Autocratic leaders obtain their power from the legitimate authority given to them by their position in the hierarchy of the organisation.
Autocratic leaders are objective people in that they focus on tangible or observable learning outcomes, thus they are obsessed with quantitative evaluations more than qualitative analyses. Autocratic leaders also take an authoritative role to direct others on what needs to be done. They use manipulative strategies, such as rewards incentives, and punishments to condition learners. The leader uses drills and practical exercises to reinforce learning. Autocratic leaders may also exhibit a bias towards programmed instructions and routine exercises as learning strategies or approaches. The whole focus is on what the leader can do to influence others to learn.

From a liberalist perspective, autocratic leaders are people of influence, with rhetoric/ oratory skills useful in motivating others to action even though the other people may not share the same vision or identify with the leader. In the same regard, they may be self-imposing based on their academic qualifications, knowledge or expertise in the field. They can be greatly influential leaders. These are leaders that want to follow the distinct/ set channels of communication to avoid confusion. Decisions are based on standardized or established culture, norms or instruments. In a learning environment, the leaders encourage strict adherence to traditional knowledge systems in the institution, published knowledge or the canon. Such leaders rely much on rhetoric and mind drills, such as quiz and cramming for teaching.

Democratic leaders

For democratic leaders, power is vested in the group and there is an emphasis on group cohesion and teamwork. There are group decision-making and cooperation and concern for sound human relations across all levels. The leader is a coordinator, facilitator, of the group functions but generally, the leader is also a team member. Following is based on admiration and charisma of the leader. The leader leads by example and understands the complex issues in human welfare and issues.

Empathy and interpersonal skills are their sources of power. Democratic leaders invest their time in people to understand the underlying issues, concerns of the people or people’s contextual realities. Building and developing others through effective interpersonal skills, building relationships, teamwork, and cooperation is a useful strategy for getting people to be involved and participate in training programmes as partners and key decision-makers. This strategy is useful to determine the learning parameters, assess needs, building content and solving problems. Their approach to learning is participatory in nature. Democratic leaders or managers are mostly concerned with subjective meanings of learning experiences thus they are more inclined to subjective tests and qualitative analyses to evaluate the quality of learning. Learning in a democratic environment is based on caring, dignity, respect of both teachers and learners. Such leaders are persuaded more by humanism, progressivism and in some cases radical socialism.

Laissez-Faire

Leaders under this style make a conscious decision to pass the focus of power to members, to allow them the freedom of action to do, without interferences, think best in a situation. The leader is readily available to offer assistance when approached for help. This is different from abdication (disowning or withdrawal).  This type of leadership is based on the belief that if people have the required expertise they should be given the room to exercise their power and to decide what approaches touse for a specific task to achieve the desired objectives.

Learning under this leadership style is also based on sound human relations, to promote growth, to empower, and solicit for new innovative approaches to solving problems. Learners explore different initiatives on how to solve a problem as long as the leader is available to offer assistance whenever there are difficulties. Flexibility allows exploration into new areas of knowledge or skills development leading to further researches that define the discipline. This style of leadership can be very helpful to experienced leaners who now know how to search for useful information on their own with the zeal to develop it further and empower themselves through education and training. The style can be seen in use in open learning centres, distance education, online/ e-learning programmes which make use of computer-aided instructions, online facilitation, and computer-based training.

The belief is that learners have already developed useful cognitive skills. Several learning theories like cybernetic learning theory and cognitive learning theories may support this style of leadership in managing training. This style of leadership works well when there are sufficient resources to guarantee all the necessary support which learners may require.

Lessons learnt

Leadership is an important skill in managing training. Leadership is quality or virtue and, not a prescribed role. The leadership qualities distinguish leaders from managers and administrators in that leadership is people-oriented whereas management or administration is resource-oriented. However, scholars point out that the two cannot be easily separated. There are various approaches/theories to leadership, which leads into the categorization of the concept into different types, some of which are beyond the scope of this article. Autocratic, democratic and laisez fare leadership styles have been discussed to paint a broad picture of leadership as a function in the management of training and adult education programmes. All three styles are suitable for adult learning and training. Educators or trainers may adopt any style situationally, but the most determining factor is the philosophy of the leader/ programmer or educator.

The style of leadership adopted may also be influenced by the type of programme to be run, the goals of education/ training objectives, organizational, institutional expectations or culture and above all, the availability of resources or other environmental factors. It is also noteworthy that, followers also influence the leadership style to be adopted because leadership is a function or combination of all factors including the followers. In other words, followers make their leaders. 

By Chijoko E. M.

Leadership in educational management

Approaches to leadership

Give credit where it is due (Mutambara on Mugabe)

Abrahams blessing: Obedience is better than sacrifice