Do you remember that one teacher or mentor who inspired you? Have you felt passionate about something simply because they encouraged you?
If you have, they likely were a transformational leader with a bold executive presence. In addition to motivating students, transformative leaders are key to motivating principals and teachers.
This innovative leadership style helps inspire positive change in those who choose to follow the leader through a number of different techniques. These leaders are involved in the process, empower those around them, and genuinely care about motivating through education.
A major component in transformative leadership is innovation. A quote by educator Peter Drucker explains this perfectly: “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”
In a shifting world, it’s more important than ever for leaders to re-evaluate their executive presence and focus on becoming transformational leaders within their schools. Let’s take a look at how to do this.
What Is Executive Presence?
The phrase “executive presence” is relatively new to the leadership lexicon and isn’t typically applied to leaders within educational institutions. But executive presence is part of a leader’s “it” factor, something you can’t always put down in words.
Executive presence can be boiled down to three main pillars:
- Gravitas — the projection of assertiveness and confidence.
- Communication — some leaders project this in the way they command a room.
- Appearance — looking the part.
Maintaining executive presence as a teacher helps students look up to you and inspires them to listen. Students look up to teachers who have an executive presence.
What Is Transformational Leadership?
Transformational leadership is an emerging style of management where leaders work to encourage, inspire, and motivate those around them.
The hope is that the whole team will feel inspired to innovate and create change, which in turn will help the school grow and succeed.
Transformational leadership is about caring about the rights of students and inspiring them to be the best version of themselves.
How do leaders do this? At the executive level, principals should strive to set an example for their team by instituting a strong sense of culture, ownership, and independence. Giving employees a chance to build rapport, even asking remote employees fun team-building questions over a Zoom call, can also help develop a culture of accountability and connectivity to one’s team.
A transformational leader should avoid micromanaging and instead trust teachers to make their own decisions in their roles. With this management style, principals are inclined to give teachers more room to be creative and find new strategic solutions to old problems.
Ross Perot said, “Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity.” A transformational leader lets those around them make mistakes so they can learn and grow.
As part of this leadership style, teachers train students to become transformational leaders through a mentorship track. This can be done through speeches, school activities, and other group discussions to help inspire others.
How Do Executive Presence and Transformational Leadership Intersect?
Great leaders are rare. And great transformational leaders who have that “special something” are even more uncommon.
A survey by Gallup found that great leaders have the following qualities and characteristics:
- Complete transparency.
- Decisions are driven by productivity.
- Compelling mission and vision.
- Clear accountability.
- The ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
Students may be evaluated on their performance, but transformational leaders need to possess soft skills to succeed. New leaders and more established leaders should focus on building their soft skills — for both themselves and their students.
A study by Namrata Kala, an assistant professor of economics at MIT Sloan, discovered that a worker’s soft skills had a 250% return on investment less than a year after a candidate’s training concluded.
The study found that candidates who didn’t complete a soft skills training program benefited from being around those who did. Likewise, teaching students about the importance of soft skills will be pivotal to their success in the workplace and other areas of their lives.
Soft skills are even more important for leaders looking to harness their executive presence, as soft skills affect the way people communicate. Be intentional in your communication and always run a grammar check to be sure your message isn’t hindered by avoidable errors.
Refined soft skills will help you better establish yourself as an executive presence, which is particularly important if you want to be a transformational leader who can influence and inspire others.