Leadership In The Field Of Education

It is becoming extremely difficult for many leaders especially those in the field of education to focus on how to positively transform people in the course of pursuing a task. Many students are churned out in great numbers from our various educational institutions in Ghana.

In the various educational institutions which includes the universities and Senior high schools, students population is extremely high and hence it has become very difficult for school administrators and lecturers to pay serious attention to the human resource and to find ways of continually developing it, rather more attention is directed at how to get a particular task performed.

For instance teachers who mark the scripts of Senior high school graduates do focus on how to get many scripts marked in order to get more money rather than thinking about alternative ways to exploit students talents and creative skills.

What I am trying to posit is the fact that many educational administrators and heads, although grouped under tasked oriented and people oriented, are more task oriented than people oriented. They pay more attention on how to get a particular task performed to the neglect of the development of people, by empowering them and helping them harness their creative abilities.

Amartya Sen, a development economist once opined that development is about the individual, thus how to empower the individual and to make him more capable for life. According to Blake and Mouton (1964), leaders who emphasize consideration (people centred) tend to provide group harmony and cohesion and provide a high degree of job satisfaction among subordinates and consequently lead to high productivity. On the other hand, leaders who emphasize initiation structure ( task oriented leaders) tend to stress the completion of specific tasks in accordance with deadlines and the achievement of organizational objectives. This emphasis would be expected at least over the short run to encourage high output but where it is pursued to the exclusion of consideration (people centred), high level of employee dissatisfaction may be expected. Thus, great leaders are both task and people oriented while poor leaders become fixated on one, the other or neither. However, organizational goals can never be achieved without proper leadership behaviours in play.

Although it has been the trend that conventional wisdomholds that high productivity leads to high returns, organizational leaders especially those in education should not be too much focused on how to get a task performed but must also pay attention to how to get people transformed.

In order words, educational administrators must be both task oriented and people oriented, attention must be directed at both the task at hand and the human being. A purposeful leadership must aim at blending the development of people to the task at hand to unlock the future prospect of Ghana’s educational institutions.

In recent times in Ghana, it has become a very serious trend since most graduates in the various universities are unable to secure job after completion. Although one may attribute this to unavailability of jobs, increasing population among others, most employers have consistently opined that these graduates lack employable skills that will help them perform in the job. In other words, due to leadership that is more oriented at a task, educational administrators pay little attention on how to develop students employable skills.

It is worth mentioning that Ghana stands the chance of developing rapidly should we focus on how to appropriately blend a particular task and how to get people involved in a task. This is particularly evident in the private schools at the basic level that tends to churn students that are more developed in terms of creative thinking, problem solving and good communicative skills than public ones where more attention is directed at the pursuance of a task.

Educational heads and administrators must notice that development of their subordinates and students in performing a task is key to unlocking Ghana’s development prospects and the surest path to growth, hence more attention should be directed on how to appropriately blend a particular task with how to develop people.

Written by Mavis Abban.
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