Quality Management and Leadership in Education

Abstract

Increasingly, the notion of manager is confronted with that of leader. The literature written on this subject is considerable (John P. Kotter and Abraham Zaleznik being only two of the sound names that can be mentioned in this endeavor). Zaleznik proposed that managers were results driven and leaders were creative artists. Kotter proposed that leaders navigated change and managers navigated complexity. John P. Kotter says that today's managers need to know how to lead, be managers and leaders. The differences are: 1. Management is more formal and scientific than leadership. Management is an explicit set of tools and techniques, based on reason and testing, that can be used in a variety of situations; 2. Leadership involves having a vision of where the organization should go; 3. Leadership demands cooperation, teamwork. Researcher Warren Bennis said, “Managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do right things.” Organizations need both. So what does leader mean, what does manager mean? Why are these concepts being put so often face to face? A management specialist, P. Drucker (1954) draws a first distinction: management means doing the right thing, and leadership means doing the right thing. Such an opinion is continued by S. R. Covey (1990): "management is efficient in ascending on the scale of success, and management determines whether the ladder is placed on the right wall". In other words, the manager manages, organizes, the leader has a vision. Such a direction of analysis is illustratively supported by the metaphor of the road through the jungle: in organizing and conducting this expedition - often similar to the activity of organizations to achieve the proposed objectives - the manager prepares the tools, distributes them to the participants, writes and debates procedural manuals, in time what the driver looks for the direction, the path, has a certain sense for finding the best way. Thus, while the manager generates orders, organization, the leader creates and causes change, draws directions not only objectives, sets directions not only agendas, seeks new resources does not rationally allocate only existing ones. Assuring quality management inevitably brings multiple changes of substance and size in terms of philosophy and management practice at the level of the Romanian school. The concept of quality management necessarily includes the notion of leadership. The multiple researches carried out over time on quality management in education have consistently nominated among the factors that generate and feed this efficiency, the idea of leadership. Thus, the quality of leader of the manager is considered fundamental for ensuring quality management in the school, and the school is considered effective.