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Leadership Style and Philosophy

Jason Ma

Master of Education in Leadership, Grand Canyon University

EAD 501: Educational Administration: Foundations for the Developing Leader

Dr. Carlson

February 23, 2022

Explanation of Personal Values and Beliefs

My value and belief have always been to be kind to others. Growing up as a victim of

bullying, I have always felt mistreated and would not want the same experience to happen to

anyone else. This leads to how I think, make decisions, the types of goals I set, and how I

interact with others around me. As I navigate my way around this world, I often think about the

types of things I am saying and doing and how it affects others. When I make decisions, I would

always consider how it affects the people around me. This usually costs me to avoid danger or

conflicts because it would negatively affect the people I know and care about. This will make me

think about how others perceive me through my decisions and communication.

To combine with the value previously stated, part of being kind to others is to help those

in need when I have the ability and resources to do so. Growing up, I enjoyed giving up my time

volunteering for different activities and events I am a part of. When I used to attend church, I

would arrive at our small group meetings a couple of hours early, help with setting up, help with

music selection, and stay an hour or two to help put everything away and lock up the church. For

me, I find joy when I have something to do and when I have a purpose. The purpose I gave

myself was to help in any way I could. As a student, I would volunteer for any job that I can

have to help my band and especially my band director. Because of this, I am often the first

person everyone goes to when they need assistance in band. All of that translated to when I was

working as a coach. Knowing that I wanted to be a music teacher, I volunteered more of my time

with my previous band director in assisting him in the events he was attending as well as helping

out the band. After volunteering my time, The director hired me as a coach. That just made all of

the volunteering more worth it because I am now getting paid for what I would have done for

free.
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A part of my value is also striving to be perfect. Growing up, I always wanted to have

control of everything that I did. I would volunteer to work at my Chinese School over the

summer because I saw how it could have been improved as a student. I did the same thing in

middle school and high school at my old church because I knew I could work the PowerPoint

slides and the sound system better than whoever was doing it. When I start to work on something

that I care about, I would always spend time researching and making the product or the activity I

am doing to perfection as possible with what is given and provided to me. As I teach my students

their music, I would always push them to strive for perfection. What they will produce will never

be perfect, but they can be pretty close to perfect with practice if they put in the effort. When I

set my goals, I would look at what I would like to accomplish and set smaller, more achievable

goals that would ultimately add to what I am working for. Setting smaller incremental goals

allows me to make sure I can look at every aspect of the goal and perfect it as much as possible.

When I communicate with others, I would like to always think through precisely what I would

like to say to get all of my points across perfectly.

Leadership Style Aligned

The leadership style that I find most closely aligns with my values and beliefs is the

transformational leadership style. Northouse states that transformational leadership is a process

that changes and transforms people and their emotions, values, ethics, standards, and long-term

goals (Northouse, 2018). As I lead my students and my ensembles, I am pushing them to raise

their standards. Many of the younger students have not had the experience of putting in time and

effort to strive for perfection. As they spend more time in my ensembles, I will continue to raise

the standards, so the students understand what it is like to push themselves and challenge their

musicality with each passing rehearsal. Over time, the students will continue to work hard and
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strive for perfection while playing music and eventually in everything they do.

Though I mostly find myself aligned to the transformational leadership style, I also

partially align with servant leadership. I enjoy helping people succeed. As a teacher, I try my

best to provide my students with the resources and help they need to succeed. The best way to

help them is to be of service to them. This part of me would also define me as a servant leader.

As Robert Greenleaf stated, servant leaders have a natural feeling to want to serve, “to serve first

(Greenleaf, 2002).” Greenleaf also stated that the servant would be aspired to be a leader by

wanting to serve. This attribute is different from people who choose to be a leader first because

they need to obtain power or gain some material possessions. As the semester went on, I had

students asking to drop my elective band classes because they were running into academic issues

with their other classes. Out of kindness, rather than letting the students drop, I decided to stay

after school for an hour or two extra to give those students time to complete their homework.

Any students in need of help with a subject I know received some homework and tutoring help

from me. I did this selfishly to ensure the students did not drop my class due to their declining

grades. I also did it because I felt this would be an excellent way to serve my students outside of

what is required of our class so I can see them succeed in all of their other classes.

Integrity and Fairness (B)

As an educational leader, it is my job to be accountable for every student’s academic and

social success. To do that, I must be a leader with integrity and uphold fairness in my school. All

students who enter my school have an even and fair opportunity to be successful. Staff and

faculty members working for the students will also have to promote integrity and fairness

towards the students. I will encourage teachers to provide students with the resources they need

to be successful in their classes. Many students come from all different types of backgrounds and
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home life. Every family has different financial backgrounds, and every family has different

resources they can provide to the students. It is my job as the educational leader and our job as

educators to provide the students with resources to help them succeed in school. We must also

teach the students to find ways to navigate their way through school and eventually lead to the

real world.

Model of Effective and Inspirational Leadership

A philosophy and motto I adopted from my first year as a teacher was that everyone

needs a teacher. It does not matter if the person is a student, a teacher, or even the administrator

on campus; that person needs a teacher. As a teacher and an eventual leader, I believe that I am

still a lifelong learner. I need to make sure I can find people I can trust to be my mentor who will

lead me to learn to be an effective and inspirational leader.

As a partly transformational leader, I can create an effective and inspirational

environment by setting high standards for my staff. As I am setting these standards, the delivery

of these standards must be “in an encouraging and enthusiastic fashion (Anderson, 2017).” On

top of that, I would need to coach, mentor, and provide feedback based on the individual’s needs

that can help challenge preconceived ideas, reaccess values and beliefs, and adopt new ideas

(Anderson, 2017). While we strive for the common goal and vision of educating students,

allowing everyone to make mistakes and learn the lessons of the mistakes will help inspire others

to try and experiment to see what is effective and what is not.

The servant leadership part of my model is an effective leadership model because it

allows all voices and opinions to be heard. When performed correctly, this model will allow me

to have an open discussion with the entire staff to discuss issues on campus. As the leader, I will

not be sitting on top and above everyone; instead, I will be sitting among my co-workers and
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making our discussions together. “The servant leader’s commitment to individual growth

cultivates an environment of academic freedom and provides tools for effective scholarship

(Allen et al., 2016).” Through individual growth, the teachers are inspired to push harder and

work harder for their students. By allowing others to grow, it allows for better discourse and

communication between the staff, as well as better communication between staff and students.

As I continue with my career, which way I lean as a leader will shift from year to year,

from situation to situation. Over the next few years, my experiences will help shape whom I end

up as a leader. Regardless of how I land, I will continue to strive for perfection and be a kind,

caring, and helpful educator and leader.

Reference

Allen, G. P., Moore, W. M., Moser, L. R., Neill, K. K., Sambamoorthi, U., & Bell, H. S. (2016).

The Role of Servant Leadership and Transformational Leadership in Academic

Pharmacy. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 80(7), 1–7. https://doi-

org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.5688/ajpe807113

Anderson, Matthew (2017) "Transformational Leadership in Education: A Review of Existing

Literature,"International Social Science Review: Vol. 93 : Iss. 1, Article 4. Available

at:http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol93/iss1/4

Greenleaf, R. K., Senge, P. M., Covey, S. R., & Spears, L. C. (2002). Servant Leadership : A

Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness: Vol. Twenty-fifth

anniversary edition. Paulist Press.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). 8 Transformational Leadership. In Leadership: Theory and practice

(8th ed., pp. 216-217). Chapter, SAGE.