Leadership and Managment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Leadership and Managment - Essay Example ssion of poverty, school failure and social exclusion by enhancing the life chances for children less than four years of age growing up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods† (House of Commons, 2010:15). In order to achieve this, the institution strives to reach out to the most disadvantaged and or vulnerable families and children, engaging parents of these children and general community in the whole process as well as integrating and making services easily accessible to the community. Thus, the centre’s major goal is to put the vulnerable child and family at the heart of the program, providing them with essential day care and early education services necessary for their direct and easy entry into primary school. The non stop focus on the involvement of the parents and the community at large by the institution can be attributed to the roots in early childhood education and day care. Management Structure/Skills Centro Sure Start Children’s Centre operates under what can be described as an autocratic form of leadership where employees are to follow strict procedures, guidelines and policies. This form of leadership can largely be attributed to the government ownership or rather fund that the centre gets. The major issue with this leadership style is that decisions are made from the top with little or no consultation from the bottom of the leadership hierarchy. However, this little or no consultation makes such decision making processes rapid. In addition, it can result in some employees feeling devalued due to their inability to contribute their ideas. However, effective leaders can employ some of this style’s features in a sensible way, for instance in cases where the manager is the most qualified. Perhaps, one can term the leadership style used as heroic where the... This paper approves that leaders at Centro Sure Start Children’s Centre are capable of building relationships with their team members, the community as well as with other agencies playing a role in its activities. In addition, the delegation of duties to junior members of teams is seen as an important tool of empowering the staff and instigating a shared decision making model in the institution. Managers organize, plan, control and co-ordinate while leaders direct, inspire, advocate for and build teamwork, gain acceptance while at the same time setting an example to the junior staff. This essay makes a conclusion that different researches exist regarding educational leadership with almost all putting emphasis or rather focusing on the beliefs, values, skills and knowledge that many view to be the ideal for a good leader or leadership, rather than focus on actual practices of leadership. According to Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris and Hopkins, the existing literature spills out less regarding the specific requirements for successful leadership and more about effective practices of leadership. The overlaps between the different leadership forms like collaborative, shared, participative and democratic has resulted in the use of the term distributed leadership to refer to a form of leadership practice in Sure Start Centres that is devolved, dispersed or shared. However, it should be understood that distributed leadership does not mean everyone leads; rather, it means the practice is distributed beyond the manager.