ISSN 0798 1015

Vol. 40 (Number 8) Year 2019. Page 30

The leadership problem and style of managing the pedagogical staff of pre-school educational organization

El problema del liderazgo y el estilo de gestión del personal pedagógico de la organización educativa preescolar

ERKE, Viktoriya I. 1; BUBNOVA, Irina S. 2; TATARINOVA, Larisa V. 3; BERINSKAYA, Inna V. 4; BABITSKAYA, Lyudmila A. 5

Received: 11/11/2018 • Approved: 25/02/2019 • Published 06/03/2019

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Methodology

3. Results

4. Conclusions

Bibliographic references

1. Introduction

At the works of Abramyan A. (2008) and Kamenskaya V. G. (2018) are presented that a special role on improving the efficiency of managerial work of the head of pre-school educational organization (PEO) is played by professional and educational development of a specialist, including professional choice (career growth), professional training (retraining), professional adaptation, growth and improvement of professional and managerial skills in the system of continual learning. In the changing socio-economic conditions of our country, the orientation to new trends in the development of the education system in general, and the pre-school education system in particular, is a necessary component of the professionalization of the head of the PEO.

As it is emphasized in their works of recent years Kotler F. (1995); Petrova E.A. (2002); Pocheptsov G. G.  (2001); Shepel V.M. (2007); Fisher, R. and Ury, W.L. (2011), the mutual correspondence of activity and personality of the head is characterized by a certain dynamics.

Professionally important qualities of the manager´s personality are the personal characteristics providing the maximum efficiency and success of the head in the sphere of administrative activity. Therefore, the problem of determining a universal set of professionally important qualities and requirements, which influence the effectiveness of the impact on the managed objects and subjects that should meet the modern head of any managerial rank, is very relevant. According to Kamenskaya V.G. (2018), the investigation of this problem will significantly improve the efficiency of evaluation and forecasting of the optimal structure of the head´s personality.

Moreover, the specificity of education management is based on emotionally colored and subjectively significant activities, closely linked with interpersonal communication. It also determines the peculiarities of practical aspects in this professional field, in which the effectiveness of professional activity is largely associated with the personality of the manager and leader.

2. Methodology

 This research was conducted during 2014-2018. The experimental bases of the research are the municipal pre-school educational organizations of the city of Irkutsk. The shortlisting of subjects consists of 553 people, all women, employees of the PEO, including 326 educators, 227 leaders of different levels (head of the Kindergarten, deputy head of educational and methodical work, deputy head of administrative and economic work, senior educator). Managers’ age was from 30 to 62 years old.

In this investigation, the following test techniques were used: “diagnosis of the leadership skills”, according to the methods proposed by (Zharikov E. and Krushelnitsky E., 2002), “personal qualities of a manager” (Zhukovsky I., 2005), “assessment of management style through self-assessment” (Urbanovich A.A., 2002), “leadership style” (Zhuravlev A. L., 2002) to test the hypothesis about the relationship between management style and leadership qualities of a manager.

The method of "diagnosis of the leadership skills" by the authors Zharikov E. and Krushelnitsky E. (2002) allows you to set high, medium, low levels of leadership abilities, as well as a tendency to dictate by the head of the organization.

We also established the “personal qualities of a manager” (the author of the psychodiagnostic method is Zhukovsky I. (2005)), such as social morality, spiritual and emotional maturity of the personality, social intelligence.

"Assessment of management style through self-assessment" was offered by Urbanovich psychodiagnostic method (Urbanovich A.A. (2002)). The use of this technique allows identifying the leading style of management of the organization, as well as the degree of manifestation of each of the three classical leadership styles - democratic, authoritarian and liberal.

In order to obtain the most reliable results, we applied the “leadership style” methodology of Zhuravlev A. L. (2002). The methodology is aimed at assessing the prevailing leadership style: directive (it is an authoritarian style), collegial (democratic) and liberal.

We used the Spearman’s rank correlation method to assess the degree of interrelation between management style and leadership qualities of a manager, as well as to compare the self-assessment of management style with the results of assessment of management style by subordinates.

The study of leadership abilities and personality qualities of the leader was carried out according to two techniques. All managers answered the questions of the test technics individually. At the end of testing and processing the results of the study, we grouped all respondents into 6 groups (from I1- I6), while taking into account the frequency of the answers encountered.

Thus, 1 group (and 1) included respondents with an average level of leadership abilities, social morality, expressed social intelligence (19%).

Group 2 are respondents-leaders of the PEO (14%) includes people with an average level of manifestation of leadership abilities and a high level of spiritual maturity.

 Group 3 (16%) is represented by managers with an average level of leadership abilities and low social intelligence.

Group 4 (19%) are respondents with a low, poorly expressed level of leadership skills and a high level of social maturity.

Group 5 (19%) consists of leaders with an average level of leadership abilities, social and spiritual maturity, the average level of social intelligence.

Group 6 (13%) are respondents with an average level of leadership skills and a high level of social intelligence.

Table 1
A sample of fixing the results of «diagnosis of the leadership skills» test
(according Zharikov E.  and Krushelnitsky E., 2002) within the leaders of PEO

The differentiated results of diagnosis of heads using test technique «personal qualities  of a manager» Zhukovsky I.  (2005) are presented in table 2.

Despite the insignificant differences in individual personality traits, the integrated assessment of the qualities of all managers ranges from 15 to 45 points. This indicates that all the volunteers belong to the Democrats, have a sense of responsibility. Managers try to support new initiatives, while avoiding haste in making decisions. That is, all managers have leadership skills. In this case, you can also see individual differences, so the level of social morality in the test groups I5 and I6 is very high (ranging from 16 to 21); in groups I1, I2, I4 the level is high (22-26), and; in group I3 is-medium (27 - 30). The level of spiritual maturity among all respondents is high (from 11 to 13), except the group I4 (14-15). An average indicator of social morality is established for these volunteers. In addition, the level of emotional maturity of most managers is very high (from 2 to 4), except for the tested groups I2, I3 where it is only high (from 2 to 4). Indicators of the level of social intelligence for all respondents are high (from 15 to 21).  

Table 2
Average results of the test technique «personal
qualities of a manager» (according Zhukovsky I., 2005)

The results of the relation between the “diagnosis of the leadership skills” (Zharikov E. and Krushelnitsky E., 2002) and the results of diagnosis of heads by the test technique “personal qualities of a manager” (Zhukovsky I., 2005) by means of Spearman´s rank correlation are given in table 3.

Table 3
Values of the Spearman´s correlation coefficient when comparing the indicators
of the results of the “diagnosis of the leadership skills” (Zharikov E. and Krushelnitsky
E, 2002) and the “personal qualities of a manager” (Zhukovsky I., 2005)*

*Note: rs emp.- probability of error; rs cr. is the critical value of the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.

Mathematical analysis showed that statistically significant negative correlation for the significance level 0.05 is manifested only in the pair «leadership abilities» -  “level of spiritual maturity”, where rs emp. = - 0.91 more than rs cr. = 0.85 for N = 6. We can also see a trend towards a negative relationship between "leadership abilities" and the “level of social intelligence”, where  rs emp. = -  0.83, close to the critical value.

The results indicate a small relationship between the techniques that assess the quality of the leader personality; on the contrary, these techniques consider different qualities of the person (table 3).

“Diagnosis of the leadership style” using the technique “assessment of management style through self-assessment” (Urbanovich A.A.,2002) revealed that the majority of managers often have a democratic leadership style (table 4); the permissive style is practically not expressed.

Table 4
“Assessment of management style through self-assessment” (Urbanovich A.A.,2002) of the PEO managers

As we can see from table 4, authoritarian-individual style of management dominates in the group I1 of volunteers. It reveals strongly marked leadership skills and the desire for individual power, inflexibility and determination in judgments, exactingness, inability to take into account the initiative of subordinates and provide them with independence, excessive sharpness in criticism, assessments bias and ignoring public opinion. On the other hand, these leaders have good results in a single-democratic style, which may indicate the flexibility of leadership depending on special aspects of the situation. The tested groups I2, I4, I6 are highly expressed in a single-democratic style (from 14 to 20 points), reflecting the ability of managers to coordinate and direct the activities of the team,  to provide independence to the most capable subordinates, fully development of initiatives and new methods of work,  to persuade and provide moral support,  to be fair and tactful in a dispute, to study individual personality traits and social and psychological processes of a team, to develop publicity and criticism, and to prevent conflicts and create moral atmosphere in the team. The leaders of I2 and I5 have a combination of authoritarian and democratic styles, when a leader applies flexible methods of working with people and focuses on the business management style.

According to technique (Zhuravlev A. L.,2002) “style of management” was made  the assessment of leadership style. Average results are presented in table 5.

Table 5
Results of the diagnosis of leadership style by subordinates, according
to the “leadership style” technique (Zhuravlev A. L., 2002)

These results confirm the predominance of the collegial management style that is typical for the democratic leadership style. Let us use the Spearman´s correlation coefficient calculation formula to estimate the relationship between the results of the management style evaluation of managers and subordinates (table 6).

Table 6
Empirical values of the Spearman correlation coefficient
based on the results of the management style diagnosis

The data in the table show that the results are significantly different for all indicators. The obtained values rs emp. are less than the values of rs cr.= 0.85 for N = 6. The probability of arithmetic mean error for most features is higher than the five percent level (P > 0.05). However, it can be noted that there is a strongly marked trend towards a positive interrelation between the authoritarian-individual management style (self-assessment) and the Directive style (rs emp = 0.71), passive-conniving style (self-assessment) and conniving (rs emp = 0.84).

Using the calculation of the Spearman´s correlation coefficient, we assessed relationship between the management style and leadership skills of the manager (table 7).

The obtained data indicate that the authoritarian-individual style positively correlates with leadership abilities (rs emp= 0.94> rs cr) and is negatively related to the level of social intelligence (rs emp= 0.91> rs cr). Similarly, there is a tendency towards a positive relationship between the directive style of leadership and leadership qualities (rs emp= 0.83 < rs cr) and a negative relationship between directive style and the level of spiritual maturity (rs emp= –0.74 < rs cr). We can also note the tendency to the relationship of single-democratic management style and the level of spiritual maturity (rs emp= 0.77) and social morality (rs emp= 0.66).

Table 7
Empirical values of correlation between management style and leadership skills*

3.1. Discussion

According to the obtained results, we can assume that the technique “diagnosis of the leadership skills” (Zharikov E. and Krushelnitsky E.,2002) is primarily focused on the assessment of such traits as exactingness, vigor, absolute domination, self-sufficiency and independence. They reflect a more authoritarian style of management that manifested itself in a positive statistically significant correlation. The technique “personal qualities of a manager” (Zhukovsky I., 2005), assessing the degree of spiritual, emotional maturity, social morality and social intelligence is focused on the study of flexibility, loyalty, empathy, sensitivity, as well as the ability to find a compromise and listen to the opinions of others.  We can assume that taking into account these parameters it is possible to trace the trend towards the interrelation of these qualities of the individual with the collegial, democratic style of governance.

One of the main tasks of a Manager is to choose the right style of personnel management, which undoubtedly determines the success of the organization, the dynamics of its development. Not only the motivation of employees, their attitude to work, but also the organizational climate in the team depends on the management style. The adopted management style can serve as a characteristic of the quality of the Manager, his ability to ensure effective management, as well as to create a special atmosphere in the team, contributing to the development of favorable relationships and behavior.

During the process of management, each Manager performs its duties in a peculiar style  only to him. Leadership style is expressed in what ways the head encourages the team to take an initiative and creative approach to the performance of assigned duties and in what ways he/she controls the results of subordinate activities. Leadership style can serve as a characteristic of the quality of a manager's activity, his ability to provide effective management activities, as well as create a special atmosphere conducive to the development of favorable relationships and behavior in the team. Leadership is an art to some extent. Perhaps that’s why until now there is no a unique theory of effective leadership style that could be used in a variety of situations and by various managers. However, if such a style were developed, the leadership would turn into a set of standard actions and techniques that does not reflect the need of the modern time for a leader - innovator, who flexibly reacts to changes in the education and management system in the PEO.

A comprehensive analysis of the personal qualities of PEO managers, as well as the characteristics of the management style, allowed us to draw the following conclusions:

1. Despite the insignificant differences in individual personality traits (86%), the subjects demonstrate a democratic leadership style; these leaders have a sense of responsibility, support new initiatives, while avoiding haste in making decisions, i.e. have leadership qualities.

2. The calculation of the relationship between the results of leadership abilities and personal qualities of a leader using Spearman's rank correlation showed that a statistically significant negative correlation for a significance level of 0.05 is manifested only in a pair leadership abilities - the level of spiritual maturity. You can also see a tendency toward a negative relationship between leadership and social intelligence.

3. “Diagnosis of leadership style through self-assessment” revealed that the majority of managers (86%) more often manifested a democratic leadership style, practically did not express a conniving (permissive) style (4%). The results obtained are partly supported by the results of evaluating the management style of subordinates: there is a pronounced tendency towards a positive relationship between authoritarian-individual management style and directive, passive- conniving style and conniving.

4. The calculation of the relationship of personal qualities of managers with their management style showed that the authoritarian-individual style correlates positively with leadership abilities and is negatively interconnected with the level of social intelligence. Similarly, there is a tendency toward a positive relationship between leadership style and leadership qualities and a negative relationship between directive style and the level of spiritual maturity.

You can also note the tendency to the relationship of a single-democratic management style and the level of spiritual maturity and social morality. Thus, the hypothesis that there is a relationship between management style and leadership qualities of a manager is partly confirmed.

5. Successful activity of the manager is promoted by ability of the head to change management style depending on a situation, personal features of subordinates and the head and also on requirements of working process.

In conclusion, it should be noted that a person’s awareness of the causes and patterns of his behavior can radically change his attitude to working situations. Understanding the possible diversity of management methods, the use of leadership and management skills, a clear and at the same time flexible vision of problems makes the leader freer, and his activities more successful. Consequently, leadership and management skills are associated with techniques by which the manager encourages employees to perform their duties creatively and measures their performance. Thus, these abilities can serve as a characteristic of the quality of the manager, his ability to ensure effective management, as well as to create and reproduce a special atmosphere that generates certain norms of relationships and behavior in the team.

This article will be of interest to specialists in various fields of organizational psychology and, management.

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1. Сandidate of Psychology, Associate Professor of Social Pedagogics and Psychology Department of Social Pedagogy and Psychology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia. e-mail: rerkew@mail.ru

2. Сandidate of Psychology, Associate Professor of Social Pedagogics and Psychology Department of Social Pedagogy and Psychology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia. e-mail: irinaz-bubnova@yandex.ru

3. Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of English Philology Department of English Philology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia. e-mail: lorata@mail.ru

4. Candidate of Pedagogical Department of Social Pedagogy and Psychology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia. e-mail:  innaber1@yandex.ru

5. Candidate of Pedagogical Department of Social Pedagogy and Psychology, Irkutsk State University, Irkutsk, Russia. e-mail: b-l-a@list.ru