Secondary Education Managers/Executives/Administrators
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the dominant types of leadership styles and behaviors of a Florida middle school faculty.
METHODOLOGY The target population included 50 instructional faculty members employed at a single middle school in central Florida. Forty-seven (94% response rate) respondents completed the LPI-Self and an LPI-Observer on the supervisor of their choice who they had worked with and believed to be an ideal leader. Seventy-two percent of the respondents were women.
KEY FINDINGS The most frequent leadership practice reported from the LPI-Self was Enabling, followed by Encouraging, Modeling, Challenging and Inspiring. The researcher concluded that Enabling was the “self-perceived dominant leadership style” of the faculty because it was the highest of the five scores for 43 percent of the faculty (followed by Encouraging with 26%). On the LPI-Observer, representing the preferred supervisory style, the most frequent practice was Inspiring, followed by Modeling and Enabling, Encouraging, and Challenging. Inspiring was the dominant supervisory behavioral preference of 34 percent of the faculty (followed by Modeling with 19%).
The dominant leadership style of females and men were the same (Enabling). However, female respondents’ supervisory preference was for Inspiring and for males it was Modeling.