Forthright leadership & Legitimizing leadership

1. Program: Masters of
Education in Leadership
and Management

2. Corse Name:
Introduction to Educational Leadership and
Management
Topic:
Forthright leadership, Legitimizing Leadership

3. Forthright Leadership
Binney and Williams (1995) describe effective leaders as who both lead and
learn-leading from a confident ‘knowing’ position and being willing at the same
time to be open to challenge and new ideas. These leaders, they assert, have
four characteristics:
 Operational credibility.
 Being ‘connected’ to their organizations.
 Consistency under pressure.
 Leading change
 Communicating a compelling aspiration.
 Building coalitions.

4. John Kotter (1998) having studied more than 100 companies, found that
successfully leading change involved eight critical steps:
 Establish a sense of urgency
 From a powerful guiding coalition
 Create a vision
 Communicate the vision
 Empower other to act on the vision
 Plan for a create short-term wins
 Consolidate improvements and produce still more change
 Institutionalize new approaches

5. Legitimizing Leadership
 Leadership
Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill encompassing the
ability of an individual or organization to "lead" or guide other
individuals, teams, or entire organizations.
 Legitimizing
Legitimation or legitimization is the act of providing legitimacy.
Legitimation in the social sciences refers to the process whereby an act,
process, or ideology becomes legitimate by its attachment
to norms and values within a given society. It is the process of making
something acceptable and normative to a group or audience.

6. Sayles (1993) has tackled the issue of how leaders make their role
legitimate in the eye their followers:
 By demonstrating superior ability-not necessarily technical skill- and
also organizational sophistication.
 By providing clarity in respect of goals, helping people to focus their
energies and make sense of what is going on.
 By providing in solving followers’ problems (ones relating to the job
and personal ones).
 By successfully handing challenges to leadership.