Role of Leadership in Team Building in Educational Institutions

Dr. Dewasis Mukherjee

Principal, Mahant Laxminarayan Das College, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur (CG) Mob. 09926655551

In the last few decades, with the population explosion in country, there is mushroom growth of educational institutions to carter the educational needs of our growing population. We are now living in era of globalization, According to Luthans (1995) globalization simply means that any company can enter any market, at any time. According to Sherman (1993) being number four or five in a given industry, even if still profitable, under the new globalization may be a death warrant. Luthans et.al. (1994) have suggested that companies must become world class. With the globalization movement, industrial organizations are not only facing competition but educational institutions are also equally under pressure to compete and survive in competition. In fact, quality is one of the essential requirements to face the challenges of competition, therefore, for educational institutions everywhere in the world are striving hard to build total quality measurement(TQM) through: quality infrastructure, provide quality teaching and quality environment, to cope with the intensity of competition in this smokeless industry. It will ultimately help them to motivate and attract large number of parents to send their children to their institutions. In order to look after this quality requirements, greater challenges before the educational institutions in our country is to search leaders not managers who can attract, motivate and develop quality faculty and education environment which will ultimately build its image, goodwill and building a team culture among the faculty and the staff. Because a leader conquer the context the volatile, turbulent, ambiguous surroundings that sometimes seems to conspire against us and will surely suffocate us if we let them while managers surrender to it (Warren G. Bennies, 1989). It is seen that normally successful and visionary leaders in education can develop efficiency and effective educational organizations which supports and sustain the performance their own as leaders as well as other stakeholder including students. In the above backdrop, present article is a modest attempt to discuss:

1. Necessity of selecting and retaining competent leaders for educational Institutions;

2. Role of leader in team building in Educational Institutions; and

3. Functions of teams in fulfilling missions of Educational Institutions.

Selection and Retention of Competent Leaders

A charismatic Leader is important and essential part of any organization. According to Conger and Kanungo (1988) a leader traits that foster charismatic attributions include self-confidence, impression management skills, social sensitivity and empathy. It is the critical factor which helps an individual or the groups to identify their goals and then motivate and assist them in achieving the stated goals. In the absence of competent leaders, in an organization, there would be confusion in people. It will be just like an orchestra without a conductor. Especially, when we look at our educational institutions, leadership has emerged as one of the biggest and perhaps the only challenge before majority of institutions in our country. An Interesting phenomena in majority of our educational institutions is that they are running without a full-time principal.

In case one goes deep in to this people at the helm of affairs, even in very big school/ colleges or even in universities, many a time it is found that they do not know what is the vision, mission, purpose and goals of the institutions which they are leading. Some times it is more surprising to know that these heads of educational institutions are unaware of the intention of the existence of their organizations due to lack of their interest and some times because the founders of the organizations have not defined it clearly. In this circumstance, it is difficult to expect any thing great from these institutions, therefore, the need of the hour is to[i]. Search [ii] Identify [iii] Motivate and [iv] Retain .The right people for this vital and pious positions in the temples of learning, so that the demand for quality and threat of competition can be comfortably managed. Therefore the need of the hour is searching transformational leader, who according to Bass(1990) the transformational leadership fosters through policies of recruitment, selection, promotion, training and development which will pay of in the health, wellbeing, and effective performance of today’s organizations.

Role of a leader in educational institutions is relatively more demanding and challenging in comparison to others due to education level of employees, subordinate and expectation of its different stakeholders especially parents. So the leaders to lead educational institutions have to create environment which will make people to provide their willing cooperation to achieve the goals of their institutions. People working on top to bottom are able to understand the purpose for which the institution is created and what is their individual contribution to fulfill that purpose. So the need of our is to search, identify and select those competent leaders.

With the growth of educational facilities many people are available for and prestigious jobs because of their educational qualification. In case organizations appoint those people because of their qualifications and/or experiences ignoring their competency and capability comparing with responsibility to lead and motivate the people working in educational institutions; presence of them will become meaningless. In fact managing people particularly teachers are more challenging than managing staff in educational institution which is the confession of many reputed and experiences people who hold the senior position or have retired from educational institutions. It is difficult because today teacher by choice are less available in or in comparison the teacher by force. Usually a teacher needs to be of Y-type person who will be self motivated, self directed, and self controlled to be a successful teacher. If a teacher by choice is Y-Type person, managing him requires different type of leadership, where a facilitating and supportive environment is required to motivate then to provide quality teaching. In case the teacher is X-Type of person and is a teacher by force, the leader has to act like a watchman to get the work done, which is no doubt a very difficult task.

Under these circumstances the identification of right person to lead the educational institutional requires an Assessment Centre like approach where the person to be selected the position should be invited observed for some hours to a week keeping in mind various requirement then be selected which rarely institutions are doing today.

No doubt identification of right person to lead the show is difficult but it is more difficult to motivate and retain those competent people who are identified and selected for serving long in the institutions. The difficulty is due to the fact that competent people always need proper care concern and attention from the organizations in terms of salary, status, benefits, facilities and other perquisites in addition to complete freedom to operate the activities of the institutions without any interference from the management, which has again emerged to be an invisible phenomenon in organizations. In the absence of a facilitating and rewarding environment ,competent and committed people first do not like to come to the teaching and in case they joint teaching they are reluctant to act as leaders in educational institutions, if they perform ,there is a high demand for those people ,who quite the institutions, if they perform there is a high demand for those people who quit the institution before they contribute visibility to the organization for a long time .so it requires an urgent attention from the management to manage their institution. The ultimate test of a leader in educational institution is the degree to which he/ she identifies develops and enriches the potential that exist in the institutions and in its people by serving for a long time

Role of Principal/ Director in Team Building-

Team building interventions are one of the most commonly used methods of achieving organizational effectiveness. Teams are very effective today in the competitive era where quality of services is of prime importance for sustainable growth for educational institutions. In fact, efficiency and integration of efforts are achieved by means of division of work, creating levels of authority and functional units and delegation assigning duties, authorities and responsibility to others. In traditional educational institutions classical structure was existing in which people used to act efficiently and predictably as machines .Teachers and used to work as specialized people as they are directed by the principal. Now also there is a sea change in the environment of educational institutions due to changing value system, competition and demand for good teachers. Therefore, modern organizational concepts are to be used and adapted by the leaders of educational institutions where they need to e more flexible, organic and open. The task and the rolls are to be less rigidly defined allowing people adjust them to situational requirements. Now decision making need to be more decentralized, authority and influence need to flow more directly from the person who has the edibility to handle problem at hands. Since the teachers and employees seek more autonomy, openness, variety, changes and opportunity to try to new ides, therefore, the need of the hour is to for realms in educational institutions to run them effectively and efficiently. Teams are more likely to be used within an organic form of organization because they provide flexibility and freedom. The purpose of having teams in educational institutions should be:

i. To make recommendations to the principal or Head of the institutions on specific issues for which it is created;

ii. To conduct the affairs of the organization smoothly; and

iii. To carry out day to day academic and non academic activities smoothly, so that the principal/ head of the institution can think largely the activities outside the organization.

Team is a group of people with a full set of complimentary skills required to complete task, job or project, especially educational institutions so many works starting from admission of students to teaching to conducting examinations, disciplines, sports, extra–curricular activities majority of these tasks are interdependent an needs cooperation of each and every individual working under a principal or Head of the institution, cannot do anything alone. He needs the formation of teams to look after all these works. Here the formation of a team largely depends upon the leadership ability in the principal or head of the institution. Normally teachers by choice are few and for a principal to work with teachers by compulsion in a team requires a lot of behavioral intervention and involvement without-which the desired result will be difficult to achieve, therefore, in these circumstances the leaders of the educational institutions have to use situational approach to facilitate the formation of teams ( who is suitable to fit with whom to work comfortably to complete the task easily) in the institutions and motivate team to get the best result for the organization. Once the teams are formed, the role of the leader is to empower the teams so that they will start working for the organization and as a leader he/she should simply provide the guidance and support to them to achieve the desired goals set for them without any interference.

Functions of Teams in Education Institutions.

Group exists in every organization when the groups are converted into teams and develops team spirit then for the development or such organizations, sky in the limit. There can be different categories of teams in educational institutions. Teams formed in educational institutions should be more of self managed and autonomous work team which needs full freedom and least interferences from the principal or the head or the institutions the teams once assigned the responsibility and understood it well, once they start performing the results will be outstanding. In educational institutions team whether of the teachers or teacher and students can work in achieving results at the time of admissions, student union elections examinations, sports, disciplines and other extra curricular activities. The performance of the teams and achievement or their result will bring name and fame to the institutions, which will ultimately enable of the achieve effectiveness in this regard a right leader and his role is unique and inseparable in these context.

CONCLUSION:
In retrospect, today there are so many educational institutions in our country. Many more are coming up in every passing day. Majority of them have leadership crisis, their crisis is to be managed in our planners and policy makers in education need to design appropriate policy and procedure to select and retain right leaders by the educational institutions which will minimize the problems of students, parents and the founder of these organization too

REFERENCES:

1) Warren G. Bennies (1989) Managing the Dream: Leadership in the 21^st Century.Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol2 (1), P.7.

2) Conger, J.A. and Kanungo, R.M.(1988)(Eds) Charismatic Leadership: The Elusive Factor in Organisational Effectiveness , Joss, Base, Sanfrancisco, PP. 78-79.

3) Bass, Barnard M.(1990) from “Transactional to Transformational Leadership to share the Vision” Organizational Dynamics, Winter, PP-19-31.

4) Luthans F.(1995) Organisational Behaviour 7^th Edition Macgaw-Hill International Edition, P.563

5) Sherman, S.(1993) Are you a Good as the Best in the World? Fortune, Dec. 13, PP95-95

6) Luthans, F. and et.al. New Paradigm organizations: From total Quality to Learning to World Class. Organizational Dynamics, Winter. PP.5-19

Received on 24.03.2011

Accepted on 12.10.2011