School Leadership Effectiveness

This study focused on staff perceptions of school leadership effectiveness.Data were collected by questionnaires from one school employees from a Tashkent school.The staff evaluated their closest supervisor's leadership style on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire(MLQ 5X-Short;Avolio & Bass,2004).The 36 items measure nine leadership dimensions.Furthermore,the Leader-Member Exchange Scale(LMX-7;Graen & Uhl-Bien,1995)was included to measure the relationship between subordinates and their headmaster or principal.Perceived leadership effectiveness was measured by three sub-scales: “Staff's willingness to make an extra effort”(3 items);“Perceived leadership effectiveness”(4items)and “Satisfaction with leadership”(2 items)from the MLQ.Moreover,“Satisfaction with work and life”(2 items),“Motivation”(2 items);and “Commitment”(3 items)were included from the QPSNordic(Pakkin et al,2008).All but one sum scores showed Alpha coefficients above.70.The highest mean values were found for the leadership dimensions argued by Avolio and Bass(2004)to be the most effective,namely“Inspirational Motivation”(M=3.8;sd=.9);“Idealized impact-behavior”(M=3.6;sd=.9);“Individualized Consideration” ”(M=3.6;sd=.9);“Idealized impact –attributed charisma”(M=3.6;sd=.9);“Intellectual Stimulation”(M=3.4;sd=.8).Lower mean values were found for the leadership dimensions argued to be least effective;namely: “Management-by-Exception-Active”(M=3.2;sd=.8);“Management-by-Exception-Passive”(M=2.4;sd=.8);and “Laissez-Faire”(M=2.0;sd=.9).Consequently,based on the perceptions of the staff,this chain has a substantial proportion of effective leaders.The correlations between the effective leadership dimensions and “Leadership effectiveness”,“Staff's willingness to make an extra effort”,“Satisfaction”,“Satisfaction with work and life”,“Motivation”,and “Commitment” were positive.Likewise,the correlations between the ineffective leadership dimensions and the same variables were negative or insignificant.A factor analysis gave three interpretable factors,named Transformational leadership,Management-by-exception and Laissez-faire.In multiple regression,the Transformational leadership had strong and direct effects on the dependent variables and also on LMX,while the Management-by-exception and Laissez-faire had insignificant or negative effects.To conclude,the majority of managers and supervisors in the chain are perceived by their staff to display effective leadership dimensions,but not all.The relationship between the dependent variables and the leadership styles supported the position of Avolio and Bass(2004)regarding perceived leadership effectiveness.