My Principal’s Leadership Style

Introduction

School Profile

I am working in MARA Junior Science College, Kepala Batas. It is a fully-boarded secondary school with 1000 students ranging from form 1 to form 5 and more than 120 of work force including the teachers and staffs. The school is opened in 2008 and from that moment on, it emerged to be one of the icons in Kepala Batas and had become one of the selected MJSC to be crowned as Ulul Albab among the other five in Malaysia.

The Ulul Albab Program is introduced in 2010 here and this Ulul Albab Program is a specialised program intended to incorporate the Islamic Education whilst at the same time retaining the conventional education program based on the Malaysian Integrated Secondary Curriculum and Syllabus. As such, the ‘extra’ programs that they would have here including the sunnah-related programs like swimming, horse riding and archery. Apart from that, the students are required to memorise the 30 juzuk of Al-Quran and that is part of the compulsory program that they have to commit with.

The school is located in the heart of Kepala Batas district; branching from Seberang Perai from the south all the way to the north. Locating about half an hour drive from both Sungai Petani and Penang, it is a surely nice place to be in and infrastructures are well-equipped. People from Sungai Petani and Penang are well connected to a well-built facilities around with Institut Latihan Kemahiran MARA locating next to it.

The Principal Leadership Style

The base line that I can see from the working and leadership style of the Principal in my school is that it can be somewhat an Autocratic type of Leadership. He is a kind of friendly at a glance, when mixing around—in terms of what we can say as the way he socialize; he is not that sociable. So, in this case I can say that he really is a kind of introvert and the relationship with the teachers are not that close. He does not mingle around with people and he is always in his room for like twenty-four seven and I cannot say much about that because it is his style at the first place.

We (all of the teachers) rarely see him going around the school checking things and getting to know the conditions around the school. He is always in his room and waited for any information to be served by one of his trustworthy person. He rarely does any kind of investigation and would digest any kind of information that comes his way as true regardless of whether it is really true or not.

I am aware that his autocratic style is always controversial—in a way that he will axe anyone that go against him or rejecting his idea. It is very prominent especially in the teachers’ meeting whenever he is collecting the ideas from the teachers and trying to propose for everyone’s opinion in any issue. But in the end, any opinion will be left out as just an opinion and he will stick to what he thinks is “the best and the right way to do” even though many of us disagree. It is always like that and it seems like he is the sole decision maker for the school’s objective. Most of the time, the meeting held was totally useless—considering the time wasted there for hours just to listen to his decision even though many opinions arose.

Whatever it is whenever it comes to the completing any goal, he wants it to be on time and by hook or by crook the task given to any party should be completed within the time frame given no matter what kind of problem the person would be having. Intrinsically, this would eliminate the sense of humanity as the leader is not having any empathy to the people who worked under him.

I am not sure why he is implementing this kind of leadership in the school. He started off as a history teacher, and after that he moved to vice principal position before he was given the role as a principal. According to his colleagues who had been working with him as a teacher long ago in MJSC Taiping, he was not a kind of autocratic type. He is very friendly and concern about his friends and colleague. Only when he moved to Vice Principal position, they could sense the slight change and starting from the first day being a principal here, he is fully autocratic type. It is something that logical to say that, by doing so (being autocratic) he could disregard any kind of favourism in working. Meaning that, he is not ready to treat anyone as ‘special’ or having some kind of advantage from others. That is a good thing. At the same time, being an autocratic would set a scale to the people he leads that he is not that ‘somebody’ whom you can come over and try to bribe or get close for any kind of hidden agenda, maybe.

Apart from that, being an autocratic would lead a principal to be having a group of people who are ready to work beyond the limit with triple-extra effort in order to achieve his goals. The con is that he cannot avoid the pressure to pressure people. But he will get the job done at a specific due time and achieving his goal right away. Besides, he will also have people who are ready to commit even in a extremely stressful condition (because they are

being forced by the deadline). However, he has to deal with the quality issue as the people are working under pressure and somehow or rather, they cannot come with the work that is up to the expectation as they are trained to work with a mind-set of ‘as long as I have done my part’. This is rather dangerous and unhealthy to the school or any organization as well because the quality issue had fallen to number two or three.

Basically, he is not having a good relationship basis with the teachers. The reason is that, he is never concern to the teachers’ welfare at the first place as he is tied with his goal. So he thinks that whatever the condition is, goals are number one and task should be done in time. No one is giving any excuse to say that they could not complete their job because of this and that as the philosophy is ‘there is no excuse for you’. When it comes to this stage, the people (teachers) are in pressure—all the time. They have to make sure that everything is well-organized and up-to-the-marque whilst at the same time, they have to sacrifice their personal life in order to make sure the goals and their commitment to the school is fulfilled. This would lead to an unhealthy relationship between the teachers and the principal as it is always ‘sour’ to do something that you are forced to do.

On the other hand so far, I found that his relationship with the students is good. But I reckon that his relationship with students are well organized due to the fact that they have got nothing to do with him with the task-oriented matter. Basically the students’ affairs are handed over to the Vice Principal of Students Affairs. Thus he had nothing much to deal with the students cases. Unless the case are serious, he will take over. However the teachers are always to be blamed whenever there is any case regarding the students arise—because he is holding to the philosophy that ‘students are our clients’. So, the clients/customers are always right.

But he sometimes showed his incompetency in handling some of the so called high profile cases like bullies and fighting. For instance, the bully case that happened last February. As far as we are concern, those who are proven to have done the wrong doings such as bullies and all are not fit to be in the MJSC system. To that extend, the students should be expelled to ensure harmony and conduciveness of the school is reserved at all times.

What happened was, he decided to overturn the case as not serious and the students were only suspended for two weeks whilst in the rulebook clearly stated that they should be expelled—just because he had been threatened by the parents that they are going to file a lawsuit for expelling their children. This kind of thing had resulted a kind of discomfort among teachers as we think that the decision made by the principals sometimes displayed his weaknesses in handling big cases in a proper way. And yet, we are still having this ‘unwanted students’ here in the school because of his infirm calibre.

When it comes to relishing the school goals, his style of leadership does not prove any kind of affirmation to the school’s progress. For example, the school had done poorly in the SPM results since last four years as we ended in the 33rd placing out of 43 MJSCs in Malaysia compared to (11th the year before) during his first term and going down further to 36 th placing in 2011. This mark has been proven further as the ranking fell down to 37 th placing in 2012 and 38th placing in 2013 respectively. While in PMR examination ranking we were in 24th

placing during his first term (beating the previous 32nd). But it turned out to be ‘unwell’ the next three years as we are only able to maintain 35 th placing for three consecutive years. The

philosophy of leadership had become unfavourable among the teachers and most of the teachers are pressured. Since last four years, the school is still finding its stable position to be the main contender in the league of elite schools. However, they could not relish the goal just yet because of few restrictions within the school, even though the teachers are all committed and fairly well at teaching whether on or off the class.

There are also few parts that he is not doing quite well in appreciating the teachers who were committing themselves with extra classes for the students. As for me, they should not be questioned why they are doing the extra classes. He would have conversely credit them by giving some token of appreciation as a pay-off for their hard work and commitment. As such, the teachers’ motivation would be lifted up and more of the quality environment would be gained in order to drive the school goal to its destination.

The autocratic style of leadership that he is implementing is none any close to that of the western theory. The basic thing of the western theory of goal orientation is there, but one-on-one orientation is not implemented at all. The vision is too general and he is not aware of the fact that everyone has their own unique quality that can be brought forward. He also has no machismo—which is a great quality to show ones stand and firmness in decision making. He is easily threatened by something that would rip away is position in advance. Apart from that, there is no short-term result oriented applied. Everything is in annually-oriented. Thus, the competency is only a kind of annual commitment rather than on-going commitment. But he insists on something that is called as ‘being committed all the time’ towards the goal. Doesn’t this contradict the first one? I think it really does, for sure. The last but not least, rationalism is not something that this man is up to. He is goal driven as if nothing comes his way. He never cares the challenges. We (teachers) are fully responsible for the things that we do and he never wants to take note about the problems that we might face. As such, he never cares about our feelings and he will never ask. Thus, he will always keep on being like that without rationalism.

In my humble opinion, his style of leadership is the catalyser to the school progress. For that reason, being an executive type of leader would bring a rewarding and much more conducive working environment rather than being iterated in the space where we are pressurised and threatened. The principal should always be the one who can be rational himself at the very first place. Therefore, the leadership that he carries forward can be instilled in a way that people who worked under him feel happy, comfortable and motivated at all times. This kind of leadership only goes with the executive type of leadership. They develop, they motivate and at the same time they encourage the people to work with them to achieve the mission. Autocratic will never bring you anywhere far in today’s modern leadership as the leadership philosophy has now become broader and people in this age are no longer interested in a Nazi-typed leadership.