NATIONAL FORUM OF APPLIED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL

VOLUME 21, NUMBER 1, 2007--2008

PRINCIPALS’ LEADERSHIP AWARENESS

AND SCHOOL CULTURE: A CASE STUDY

Shirley Johnson
Steve Busch
Sam Houston State University

ABSTRACT

The climate and culture of a campus is impacted by the leadership behaviors of

the campus principal. Often the principal is unaware of this impact because
those behaviors are directly related to underlying motivations that affect faculty
reactions. Two important leadership behaviors exhibited by principals,
authority and structure, are explored through a case study of three elementary
principals and their faculties to determine the impact on school climate.
Findings explain how principals’ leadership behaviors can affect trust and
positive relationships that are crucial to a healthy campus culture and climate.

Through recent years, much has been written about the impact of
culture and climate on the instructional delivery system at the campus
level. Most administrators understand that the premise of the research
findings are directly relevant to the quality of relationships; yet, many
principals are still experiencing difficulty implementing strategies to
improve campus culture and climate. Since relationships are tangled in
one’s personal behavior, it becomes imperative to exam those
behaviors and honestly explore how they impact the school.

The difficulty in understanding the impact of personal behavior

on the climate of a school is directly related to self-awareness
(Johnson & Busch, 2006). We may read the words and comprehend
the message regarding our personal behaviors, but we may be unaware
that certain personal behaviors are problematic within our leadership

40
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style and may contribute to a negative impact on the culture and

climate. Practicing principals or students in principal preparation
programs make substantial deposits to their personal knowledge base
through graduate studies or through professional development; yet,
this training does little to influence their behavior in an actual
administrative position. With the emphasis in improving climate and
culture, we must find ways to enable principals to “see” their behavior,
but more importantly, to understand the personal motivators that drive
their behavior and describe the impact on school culture and climate.
This is difficult work because it involves surfacing perceptions and
beliefs that are shaped by numerous personal and environmental
factors.

Since the effect of principal leadership on student performance

in a school is mediated by the condition of the school’s culture and
climate, it is crucial that we understand more about the underlying
motivators of the leader’s personal behaviors and explore how these
behaviors significantly affect school culture and climate. When
considering that the basis for the creation of any culture consists of the
underlying social behaviors that shape beliefs over time, the notion of
how school leaders impact the development of culture is of significant
importance. Evans (1996) stated:

Authentic leaders build their practice outward from their core

commitments rather than inward from a management text. In
addition to their craft knowledge, all administrators have basic
philosophies of leading, of school functioning, and of human
nature, philosophies that are deeply rooted in their
personal history and professional experience. These
philosophies guide their behavior, but they usually remain
tacit. (p. 193)
Combs, Miser and Whitaker, (1999) explained the impact of
behaviors on leadership through the person-centered view in the
following statement.
 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 42

The person-centered view of people contends that we do not

respond directly to the forces exerted on us. Instead, we
behave in terms of the meanings of perceptions that exist for us
at the moment we act. More specifically, people behave
according to how they see themselves, the situations they
confront, and the purposes they seek to fulfill. (p. 10)

Lewine and Regine (2000) stated it differently: “When the

individual soul is connected to the organization, people become
connected to something deeper – the desire to contribute to a larger
purpose, to feel they are a part of a greater whole, a web of
connection” (p. 27). Enabling principals to identify and understand
those perceptions and beliefs is the beginning of assisting principals in
developing personal self-awareness. This is also the basis of our
research; to explore the impact of personal behaviors related to
maintaining a healthy culture and climate.

Theoretical Constructs
Most available information from one research project or
another is summarized into “how to” books that outline either step-by-
step climate improvement strategies or general discussions of ways
that administrators can positively impact the culture and climate. This
information is marvelous and very helpful; missing, however, is the
opportunity to examine the one variable that Bosker, Witziers, and
Krueger (2003), Leithwood (1992) and Hallinger and Heck (1998)
suggested must be understood if administrators are to make progress in
further understanding how to improve the culture and climate of a
school. That variable is the principals’ personal behaviors and their
impact on a school’s culture and climate. Examining the principal’s
relationship with the school climate is the center of our work and the
results are beginning to open a window to the heart of principals’
personal behavior as it relates to campus leadership, building and
maintaining the school’s climate, and improving student achievement.
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When discussing the principal’s impact on schools, Hallinger

and Heck (1998) suggested that the principal’s influence has an
indirect effect on learning and is mediated by their interactions with
others, situational events, and the organizational and cultural factors of
the school. Ogawa and Bossert (1995) reported that leaders function
within organizational cultures and affect the ways in which members
of the organization interpret events which then influences their
behavior. Hall and George (1999) stated that the manner in which
teachers perceive and interpret the actions of the school principal leads
to the development of the culture of the school and the principal’s
overall approach to leadership is related to the successful
implementation of innovation by teachers.

These researchers concluded that the impact that principals

have on student achievement is directly related to the culture and
climate rather than a direct result of the principal’s leadership. Given
that the principal’s effect on student achievement is indirect, then
understanding their personal behaviors and motivations becomes
crucial in understanding that impact on campus climate.

Case Study Research

In a recent qualitative case study of three large, inner city

elementary schools in the greater Houston, Texas area, we examined
the perceptions of teachers regarding their principals’ behaviors as
they managed the school. We were interested as to whether teachers’
perceptions of their principals’ behaviors matched those of the
teachers. The principals’ leadership behavior was measured by the
Leadership Profile and the teachers’ perceptions through a series of
focus group questions targeting principals’ leadership behavior and
their impact on student achievement and school climate. In addition,
the principal was asked the same series of questions posed to teachers
in the focus groups. Before proceeding with the findings, it is
important to understand the basis structure of the Leadership Profile so
as to better understand the findings.
 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 44

The Leadership Profile

In our work with administrators for more than a decade, the

principals who became questionable for tenure were those whose
performance was shaped by the ethereal “difficult to describe”
category rather than concrete examples of performance flaws or
deficits. Seeking ways to illuminate those difficult to describe
performance issues, it became important to find an assessment or
instrument that would enable principals to understand the impact of
their behavior and allow the supervisor to appropriately describe the
problems. Creating these descriptions allowed both the principal and
the supervisor to understand exactly what the behavioral issues were
and then better plan for improvement.
The Birkman Method@ (Birkman, 1995) was selected to better
describe these behaviors; however, the language in the assessment was
modified to match educational administrators. Out of that
modification, The Leadership Profile (Johnson, 2003) emerged to
more appropriately describe the usual behavior of each principal, their
underlying motivations (needs), and the stress that results when the
individual’s needs are not met. The Leadership Profile results provide
four major clusters of leadership behaviors that describe (a) building
relationships, (b) organizational behaviors, (c) decision-making, and
(d) goal achievement. Each cluster is comprised of several components
that provide the administrator with a glimpse of how they are most
likely to impact their school and primarily its culture and climate.
The Leadership Profile explains principals’ usual behavior or
their socially acceptable behaviors that they have been taught, exposed
to, or developed as a result of being associated with a specific working
and/or social environment. In most cases, the usual behavior is the
most comfortable set of behaviors exhibited: these behaviors
demonstrate when an individual is most comfortable and at their best.
The Profile also explains the level of needs the principal requires from
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other people to remain in their usual behavioral style. The usual

behaviors are not unknown to the individual; it is the needs that most
individuals are not aware of and can not generally articulate that drive
their behavioral impact. Needs are the motivating force in behavior
and when those needs are not met, an individual will exhibit stress
related behavior. Often people are not aware of this process nor the
impact such behavior can create. As a result, the individual may never
recognize the unproductive effects.

The results of the Leadership Profile are dependant upon the

principal’s answers to several sets of questions that ask for perceptions
of others and perceptions of self. The results of both sets of
perceptions provide indications of our unique actions and reactions to
the world around us. More importantly, these perceptions explain the
basis for how and why we behave. The Leadership Profile measures
these two different perspectives of the principal’s behaviors and offers
a more incisive and complete assessment of behavior coupled with the
principal’s natural strengths and limitations.

Findings

The results of the Leadership Profile (LP) provided

comprehensive data regarding the principals’ behavior for the 11
components that comprise the categories of: (a) building relationships,
(b) organizational behaviors, (c) decision-making, and (d) goal
achievement. The results of the teacher focus groups were coded as to
the relationship of each comment to the 11 LP components for each of
the principals. When the results were analyzed, the teacher responses
matched the results of the principal’s profile almost perfectly.
However, the principals’ interview responses, in most cases, did not
agree with the LP results or the teachers’ responses. Again, in almost
every category, the principals’ interview response matched their usual
behavior LP scores but did not match their need and stress scores.
 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 46

When principals received the LP feedback in conjunction with the

results of their interview, they were amazed. Their mantra was, “I was
totally unaware of what I was doing.”

Even though all the responses were revealing, the principals’

behaviors from the Organizational Behaviors category (structure and
authority) had the greatest influence on the perceptions of the teachers.
The Organizational Behaviors cluster describes the principal’s
behaviors regarding the LP components of structure and authority.
Structure describes how the individual controls issues associated with
detail, structure, follow-through, and routine. It also provides a
glimpse of how persistent the principal is in the completion of
activities or in follow-through. Authority describes how the principal
manages authority, whether giving or receiving it. Both components
combined illuminate a revealing pattern of principal’s behavior related
to the organization and management of the school and eventually how
that behavior affects the climate and trust base of the school.

Educational research supports this same notion that the school

leader’s attention to structure within the school is an important part of
impacting student outcomes. Waters, Marzanno, and McNulty (2003)
identified the leadership responsibility of order as directly related to
student achievement in schools. Order describes the leadership
responsibility of establishing standard operating procedures and
routines within the school organization. Leithwood et al. (2004)
highlighted redesigning the organization as one of the core leadership
practices in schools that contribute to student achievement:

Successful educational leaders develop their districts and

schools as effective organizations that support and sustain the
performance of administrators and teachers, as well as
students. Specific practices typically associated with this set of
basics include strengthening district and school cultures,
modifying organizational structures and building collaborative
processes (p. 7).
47 NATIONAL FORUM OF APPLIED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL

Imposing structures on schools simply with the intent to “fix or repair”

organizational deficiencies is believed to be detrimental to the
improvement of student outcomes. Witziers, Bosker, and Kruger
(2003) reported that it appears that when school leaders implement
activities aimed at improving the school there is a negative effect on
student achievement. The researchers caution that this finding should
be interpreted carefully and that it could be the result of principals in
schools with low student performance feeling compelled to take action
to improve their schools. This would seem to suggest a “quick-fix”
mentality that would impose structure without integrating them into
the mission and culture of the school.

In regard to the principal’s use of authority, Fullan (2001)

described the leadership behaviors that successful principals exhibit in
their schools in the following manner:

Leaders in a culture of change realize that accessing tacit

knowledge is crucial and that such access cannot be mandated.
Effective leaders understand the value and role of knowledge
creation, they make it a priority and set about establishing and
rein forcing habits of knowledge exchange among
organizational members…Control freaks need not apply:
people need elbow room to uncover and sort out best ideas.
Leaders must learn to trust the processes they set up, looking
for promising patterns and looking to continually refine and
identify procedures for maximizing valuable sharing.
Knowledge activation is about enabling, not controlling (p.
87).

When analyzing the results of our research, several concepts

emerged that related the principals’ use of structure and authority to
the faculties’ perception of trust toward the principal. Kochanek
(2005) in her book, Building Trust for Better Schools: Research-Based
Practices, discussed numerous models of trust building and related
them to public schools. The important emphasis of all the models
Kochanek discussed is that trust evolves over time through repeated
 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 48

interactions. Trust building in schools must begin with the reduction of

vulnerabilities in order to increase the number of positive exchanges
that builds trust. Since the principal in a school holds the formal
power, it is incumbent that he/she to bring the faculty and others
together to increase those positive interpersonal exchanges that build
trust. These models and theories are extremely powerful; however, an
important aspect has been discounted that carefully factors into the
processes Kochanek suggested for building trust.

Principals intuitively know that they must develop a foundation

of trust relationships if they are to be effective. In most cases, the
principals speak from their frame of reference and are not considering
how their personal perceptions shape their relationships and reactions.
Often the expectation is that faculty fulfills their needs while faculty
needs are often not considered. Faculty needs are often ignored not
because the principal is selfish or does not like certain faculty, but is
due to a total lack of awareness regarding their own individual needs
and how those needs impact or intersect with the needs of others on
the campus. Since the building of trust is so crucial to creating a
positive climate, the principal must become aware of his/her needs and
find productive ways to create a level of trust that will enable the
campus to achieve higher levels of performance.

Conclusions

While examining the principals’ use of structure and authority,

it became clear how a principal can create immense distress among
faculty by simply responding to their own need behaviors. For
example, a principal in our research demonstrated a high usual
structure behavior which is defined as possessing the ability to create
systems and procedures that enable the campus to run very smoothly.

In the focus groups, this principal’s behaviors matched the

teachers’ responses as they described her as being very organized and
establishing efficient procedures. They said, “The building runs very
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smoothly most of the time, but there are ‘times.’” In most cases this
principal was very consistent with her use of structure because she not
only had a high usual score, but also a high need score, meaning that
she personally needed for the building and her personal life to be
highly structure and predictable.

The hesitation in the teachers’ remarks of, “…but there are

‘times’” reflected this principal’s very low stress score for structure.
Her behavior for usual and need was very predictable for the teachers;
however, when stressed, she would invariably change a building
procedure, a program detail, etc. with very little suggestion or prompt.
These changes usually would occur with a mere suggestion by one or
two teachers in the hallway. As a result of her stress behavior related
to structure, the faculty witnessed a contradiction to her usual behavior
which frequently raised levels of concern among the faculty. These
seemingly reactionary changes did not produce positive interactions
that build trust among faculty. Consequently, the faculty quickly
acknowledged her, as recorded in the focus groups, as being
inconsistent in her behavior and not trustworthy at times even though
they had previously lauded her organization and management. In the
principal’s interview, she did not perceive the impact of her behavior
on trust building and could not understand why teachers often did not
respond to her quick ability to design and implement new
programming and be open to the ideas that teachers shared with her in
the hallway. She was completely unaware of how the teachers
perceived her behavior and of the impact that her behavior had on the
building climate.

The same story was evident with another principal in the study
when teachers spoke of her stress behavior during the focus groups.
Without exception, teachers in every focus group spoke of the
principal as being a micromanager and constantly “telling us what to
do.” This particular principal registered a low usual authority score but
a high score for authority need. The low usual authority score
indicated that the principal suggested to the teachers as to how she
wanted things done and expected teachers to get them done with little
 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 50

formal direction. In the principal’s view, she expected the teachers to

know what to do because “they after all were professionals.” Her high
authority need score, which essentially meant that she needed for
things to be done just as she had assigned and in just the manner that
she expected, was in stark contrast to her usual suggestive manner. As
a result of this contradiction, the faculty described the principal as
being a “control freak,” “failing to be specific,” and “micromanaging
everything that they did.” To complicate this situation, this particular
principal’s stress score was high for the authority component, so when
the principal began to feel the pressure of the superintendent’s
expectations, etc., she began to micromanage the teachers’ classrooms
with rather dictatorial behaviors. The climate in the building was tense
and unsettled; described by the teachers and observed by the
researchers. When the principal was asked in her interview about the
feelings of the faculty, she quickly described her usual behavior
(suggestive and respectful) and could not acknowledge the controlling
behavior that caused the faculty to be uncomfortable. Unfortunately, as
the performance requirements increased by the state, so did her
controlling behaviors causing the faculty to diminish their trust in the
principal and reduce performance. Even though she could quickly
articulate the need for developing trustful relationships, it was
impossible for her to discuss her behaviors that were prohibitive to the
development of a positive climate.

Recommendations

Once again, we can articulate the strategies and cite the

literature that encourages climate change and building trust, but unless
the principal is aware of personal behavioral patterns, the probability
of creating the necessary environmental criteria that supports trust and
positive relationships is seriously diminished. Changing the climate in
a building that has been rather dysfunctional for years is almost an
insurmountable task. DuFour and Eaker (1998) offered great strategies
to begin this work among a faculty, but there is preliminary work that
the principal must do before exploring the values and beliefs with the
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faculty. To complicate this process, all of the motivating needs of the

principal will affect his or her expression of educationally held values
and beliefs. Even though supportive of consensus generated values, an
individual’s motivations will impact what the principal actually does,
defining the walk versus the talk.

The Leadership Profile generates generous feedback regarding

11 different components that assess leadership behavior. From each of
these components the principal is able to match perception to action.
In most cases, it is the principal’s needs that they are not able to easily
identify and determine impact on people and processes. With the two
components, structure and authority, discussed in this article, we did
not expect that these components would surface the level of response
from the faculty as they did. We expected that the teachers would
respond to the components that describe the principal’s behavior
regarding developing and maintaining relationships. Even though
relationship building was important to the teachers and sometimes
mentioned in the focus groups, it was the principals’ behaviors
regarding structure and authority that took center stage. The principals’
behaviors for these two components generated the following concerns
for the teachers:

• Consistency and predictability in response to systems and

procedure management
• Trust of teacher professionalism in instructional delivery
and discipline
• Clarity of instructions and expectations
• Reactionary management and oversight
• Prior knowledge of programmatic or system changes

To be sure, these are only a few of the concerns that emerged from
these two components, but the impact of the behaviors of just these
examples bring to the fore front how terribly important it is to
understand personal motives and behaviors. A principal can avow that
he/she values teacher discretion, but frequent appearances in the
 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 52

classroom to correct the teacher or offer suggestions in front of the

students or provide repeated unwarranted interference will destroy
relationships as well as trust in the principal intention.

Self-awareness is crucial to success as an administrator.

Finding the appropriate methods to enable aspiring principals to
discover those important findings is difficult, yet with the work
generated from the Leadership Profile, our next generation of research
will focus on the relationship of climate with the behaviors of
principals in schools.
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 Shirley Johnson and Steve Busch 54

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