Summarizes a study that gathered information from 375 teachers regarding the most harmful mistakes they believed their school principals made. The most significant mistakes included ineffective human relations, poor interpersonal communications, insufficient educational priorities, avoidance of conflict, failure to lead, lack of knowledge about…

There is a plethora of information about the qualities and skills needed to be a good educational leader. The focus, however, is usually on what educational leaders "should do" rather than on what they "should not do." This paper presents findings of a study that identified the mistakes that school administrators, educational leaders, or…

Most administrator training programs focus on what educational leaders should do rather than what they should not do. This digest offers an overview of mistakes administrators should try to avoid. The emphasis on the negative stems from the belief that undesirable behaviors are far fewer than desirable ones. The digest reviews the types of…

The authors describe various methods of measuring a principal's leadership behavior. They have developed a new survey instrument that can be used to analyze the leadership behavior/style of a principal. The instrument consists of 49 positive and negative behaviors that measure how a principal interacts with staff in the following five leadership…

A survey of 208 teachers/graduate students at a Georgia university found that teachers regarded their principals' supervisory behaviors positively. The supervisory climate was more positive in elementary than secondary schools. More experienced and educated teachers were more dissatisfied with their principals' level of trust and decision making.…