Lessons for School Principals from Transformational Leadership Characteristics

This study was carried out in selected public secondary schools in Kenya. It is on the realization that the work of the school Principal is not easy and many find themselves in leadership without proper preparation for the hard task. The school principals’ work is a high-stress job especially because he or she has to do virtually everything related to students, teachers, parents, subordinate staff and the community at large. This kind of leader would require extra-ordinary characteristics to be able to be successful. Majority of principals perform decimally in all the areas that spell success in secondary schools especially in discipline and academic performance. The purpose of this study was to find out how principals’ transformational leadership characteristics were correlates to effective school performance. Kouze’s and Posner’s leadership Practices Inventory(LPI) “self” questionnaire was used to measure Principals’ transformational leadership style. LPI “others” was used to triangulate the principals’ response with the teachers. The target population consisted of 72 Principals in public schools and 139 principals in private schools. There were also 1210 teachers in public secondary schools and 1500 teachers in private secondary schools in Nairobi County. The findings indicated positive correlations between the Principals’ transformational leadership characteristics with effective school performance. Keywords : Secondary schools, transformational leadership, modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, encouraging the heart, enabling others to act. DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-12-06 Publication date : April 30 th 2019