Quality Leadership

True quality leaders can be a rare find in 'stepping stone' educational settings, where the leaders/principals come to begin their own learning journey. The path up the promotional ladder is often designed with short placements pressured by the demonstration of leadership initiative. Many start with what Hough & Paine (1997) define as autocratic and bureaucratic and further develop elements of consultative and collegial decision making strategies during their placements. Such inconsistencies in leadership stability can eventually do more harm than good to a school as the change of leadership always brings a change of vision and direction, that is then discarded with each new principal's agenda.

Tribus defines quality management as harmonising the efforts of people within the work environment. Attention to the processes within this social system hold the key to quality leadership and management. It takes time to create and sell an empowering vision which will ultimately lead to shifting the paradigms of people and existing system. This scaffolding and building trust is essential to leadership.