Impact of Leadership Styles of Principals on Teacher Educants: A Study of Colleges of Education in Northern Ghana

The study examined the impact of leadership styles of Principals of Colleges of Education in Northern Ghana. A descriptive survey research design was used together with a convenient sampling technique. Using a structured questionnaire, data were gathered from one hundred (100) Teacher educants and Principals from the Colleges of education in Northern Ghana. The Likert rating scale was adopted to indicate the extent of agreement or disagreement. The findings indicated that the majority of the respondents agreed their principals have a good relationship with teacher educants. The personality traits exhibited by the Principals in the Colleges of Education in Northern Ghana varied and each of the leadership styles exhibited exerted positive but insignificant effect on teacher educants performance. It is being recommended that to promote teacher educants satisfaction at the workplace, principals must create congenial climate in their respective colleges to ensure that teacher educants can share and freely express their opinions. Pre-service and in-service training programmes must be organized periodically to improve performance.

INTRODUCTION An Institution's success is directly linked to its leadership. 2 The style and type of leadership of a principal in an institution are to aid easy and maximum success. Leadership style is an instrument that can be used in an institution for behaviour change. According to Glanz, leadership style can determine an institution's goals and how to accomplish them. 3 He also confirmed that Leadership style can be a motivator whereby one person who is the head motivates others towards the achievement of some goals of an institution. The willingness of the followers to follow also makes a person a leader. The Principal of a college of Education is the chief executive or administrator and the head of staff of the students. Administratively, a principal is expected to be knowledgeable in the area of leadership. He should be capable of addressing issues at different levels. Leadership is concerned with human experience and academic work.A leader's style is demonstrated activities which makes them recognized in an institution.
A leader should be able to address issues at different times. Human experiences are part of leadership and this energizes an organized group. This is of prime importance to administrators and people partake in all organizations administrative work. Keith indicates that "when you cut doors and windows for a room, it is the holes which makes it useful" therefore, people still believe that adequate school staff, good educational plans/programmes, facilities and equipment's will still need the ability of a leader to coordinate all these for the success of the school. 4 A school's programmes will be rendered unproductive if the leadership style of the principal is ineffective, though the school may have the best programmes, adequate resources and motivated staff. According to Glanz, "it is highly pertinent to know that leadership style is concerned with the initiation, organization and direction of the actions of the members of a group in a specific situation towards achieving the objectives of the group. '' 5 Standards are perceived to be falling with regards to Colleges of Education in Northern Ghana. Schools have been blamed by society for mass promotion of students, teachers accused of not doing their work and parents not paying attention to their wards academic progress. The government is not exempted; they have been blamed for failing to meet the needs of teaching and non-teaching staff with some resources. It is believed that some teachers spend more of their time doing their own business instead of preparing lesson notes. The Principals of colleges of education were also blamed for failing to exercise their responsibilities as leaders in their various colleges.
According to Koontz, if a leader of a school cannot contribute to accomplishing goals of an institution with zeal and confidence, then there would be no need to develop such a leader. 6 Staff morale would always be high if a leader coordinates with staff, leading to increased performance despite adverse environmental issues. Lee and Chuang contend that the improvement of an educational institution depends on some pillars; Quality of the teaching staff; the main objectives of the institution and availability of resources. 7 It is a known fact that any educational system aims to promote teaching and learning, therefore it is the Principal's prime responsibility to coordinate teacher educants to facilitate the learning process. Leadership roles are needed here to facilitate and carry out this. A Principal must provide a leadership style which will trigger a conducive atmosphere. 8 Principals are expected to behave in a particular way towards teacher educants. This is because of the leadership roles and qualities they have. However, roles may be different from styles. One may wonder what relationship may exist between the expected and the perceived leadership styles of Principals. The study seeks to examine the extent to which various leadership styles by principals in colleges of education in Northern Ghana have impacted on the work of teacher educants..

LEADERSHIP STYLE AND PERFORMANCE IMPACT
Research indicates that an organization's behaviour is highly identified by quality leadership styles. Management to execute and collaborate effort is hinged on leadership style and capabilities. 9 Lee and Chuang agree that subordinates are inspired through excellent leadership style as a potential to enhance efficiency. Santora et' al and Venkataraman explain that leadership as individual behaviour is to guide a group to achieve the common target. 10 Fry contends that motivation by leadership is a good strategy to enhance staff potential for development and growth. 11 Teece et'al and Koontz, opine that Leadership styles can facilitate and improve performance when institutions face some new challenges. 12 Leadership style is a reflection of institutional productivity of its members measured through growth, development and success. 13 Leadership styles on performance are a key driving force as noted by some researchers in understanding the effects of a firm's performance. Previous studies also indicate that management development is a potent source for effective leadership and a competitive advantage in organizational performance. 14 Linking valued reward to job performance and ensuring that employees have adequate resources to get the job done is dependent on leadership. 15 Leadership strategies that create a vision, communicate through metaphor are deemed visionary. 16 Zhu suggests that visionary leaders normally result in high levels of trust, motivation, commitment and cohesion. 17 Kouzes and Posner opine that leadership is important not just in your career and within your organization, but important in every sector, be it a community or an entire country. 18 He also agrees that we need more leaders who can unite us and also ignite us. Mehra et' al argue that institutions need effective ways to enable them to take advantage over others; longstanding ways to focus on the effects of leadership style. 19 Leaders are believed to play very pivotal roles that help shape collective norms and cope environmentally for collective coordinating action. Leaders who have centred perspective have over the years provided insights into the relationship between team performances. 20 Studies have shown that the strategic role of a leader is to explore and investigate how to employ leadership paradigms in organizational performance improvement. 21 Competence such as culture, skill and leadership styles are sometimes intangible as key sources of performance strength and processes in an organization. Leadership styles do affect student's satisfaction, expectation and staff motivation. According to House and Aditya's, the effects of leadership style on performance in an institution have not well been studied. 22 They also reviewed a study which criticized leadership style studies for focusing excessively on superior-subordinate relationships to the exclusion of several other functions that principals perform. 23 Existing studies on leadership solely depends on the analysis of leaders. Micro-level research was distinguished by House and Aditya's "that focuses on the leader with the subordinates and immediate superiors, and macro-level research that focuses on the total organization and its environment. " 24 Some scholars have also suggested that leaders and their leadership style go to improve their subordinates and organizational outcomes. 25 Fenwick and Gayle indicate that there is a missing link in understanding the relationship between leadership style and institutional performance. 26 Some scholars believe that leadership enhances institutional performance while others contradict this, by stating that different leadership concepts have been employed in several studies, making comparisons impossible.

Theories of Leadership Styles
Two conceptualized factors were proposed by Burns to differentiate between "extraordinary" from "ordinary" leadership style. 27 Transactional leadership style is based on a conventional exchange relationship in which followers' compliance is exchanged for expected rewards. In contrast, transformational (extraordinary) leaders raise follower's consciousness levels about the importance and value of designated outcomes and ways of achieving them. Followers are motivated to transcend their self-interest for the sake of vision of an institution. Engagement of the followers emotionally, morally and intellectually encourage them to develop and excel beyond expectations. 28 The process of influencing some major changes in an institution leads to the achievement of institutional objectives and strategies. 29 As indicated by Bass, transactional leaders work on how to achieve their institutional cultures by following existing rules and procedures, transformational leaders normally change their cultures based on vision and assumptions. If an organization adapts to changes in technological advancement leadership becomes a critical factor to success. 30 Operationalizing Burns' work by developing a range of leadership model is attributed to transactional leadership and transformational leadership as some of the recent publications may refer to. 31

Transformational Leadership Style
The process of motivating others is the difference between transactional and transformational leadership styles. The behaviour of a leader originates from the beliefs and values of the leader which transcend to subordinates to do more. 32 Transformational leaders are more engaged with others who rise to high levels through motivation and morality. 33 Followers of transformational leadership style feel trusted, admired, respected, and motivated to do more than what was originally expected of them. 34 Leaders who motivate by making awareness as more important a task, inducing them to transcend their self-interest for the sake of an institution are believed to be transformational. They also encourage followers to think critically, seek alternative ways to their jobs, which may result in mental stimulation. 35 Through these, level of satisfaction, commitment and performance increase to the achievement of organizational goals. 36 Four behavioural transformational leadership components were proposed by Bass. He mentioned the following; intellectual stimulation, individual consideration, charisma and inspirational motivation. 37 Instilling pride, trust, respect and sense of vision are some attributes of a charismatic leader. 38 Subordinates go beyond self-interest by providing confidence and reassurance that obstacles would be overcome for the good of the group. 39 An inordinate amount of confidence and trust is placed on charismatic leaders. 40 Motivation and inspiration are usually a companion of a charismatic leader's style. Such leaders set higher standards to serve as reference points.Inspirational leaders provide emotional appeal and awareness to increase understanding of desirable goals. 41 The use of symbols to express efforts and important issues are expectations of followers of inspirational leaders. Followers of inspirational leadership style behave and talk more on articulation, provision of excitement and always optimistic about the future. 42 Providing team spirit, whipping up enthusiasm and motivation provide meaning to challenges of followers. Inspirational leaders envision an attractive future for an institution and the workers. 43 Stimulating intellectually, subordinates are encouraged to break away from the old ways of doing things. Promotion of intelligence, thinking logically, rationally and problem solving are some of the characteristics of intellectual stimulation. The questions that have not been asked in the past are how to include the attributes of re-thinking, seeking differing perspectives in solving and examining the completed assignment.The subordinates are encouraged to innovate, create and question problems and approach situations in new ways. Another dimension of transformational leadership is individual consideration which concerns mentoring and coaching.Close attention is paid to inter-individual differences and this acts as a mentor to the subordinates. Weaknesses are worked on and strengths are maintained and developed with alternative concerns. The followers of individual consideration turn to believe and treat the followers to rise to a level of maturity in addressing organizational challenges and goals. Max indicates that leadership is not a Science or discipline but an Art. This, therefore, means that it must be felt, experienced and created.

Transactional Leadership style
Boehnke et' al indicates that leadership that involves exchanged process with compliance to leaders' request and not to generate enthusiasm is a transactional leadership style; the focus is mostly based on internal actors performing the task for the organization and drives it to meet its set objectives. 44 Internal actors are motivated to meet the predetermined goals set by the transactional leader which ensure the understanding of the path to remove potential barriers. Jeap debunks this notion and opines that principals are no longer the only instructional leaders in schools in recent times. 45 He adds that schools have been restructured to empower classroom teachers, which results in redistribution of leadership. Power to establish norms, collaboration and maximization of harmony is solely the prerogative of the leader and eventually to the benefits of the followers. Use of positive images, resonance-building norms and optimistic interpretations by a leader would move a group to a higher level. Both corrective and constructive behaviour are exhibits of Transactional leadership style. Contingent reward and corrective dimension are characteristics of Constructive behaviour. A reward that involves clarification, use of incentives and rewards to influence activity is classified as a Contingent reward as agreed by House and Aditya. 46 Contingent reward allows for expectations and recognition to achieve a goal. Expected levels of performance are achieved through clarification of goals and objectives for group or individual recognition.Vigorous leaders by exemption are identified by the leader who sets the standards for agreement together with what establishes ineffective performance and might penalize followers for non-compliance with such standards. 47 Contingent reward leadership also monitors mistakes, deviance, errors and quickly looks for corrective possible actions to stop them.

METHODOLOGY
A survey research design was used to find out leadership styles of Principals of colleges of education in Northern Ghana on teacher educants work. The research is focused on prevailing beliefs, attitudes and relationship that exist between teacher educants and their Principals.

Population, Sample Selection and Sample Size
Kothari opines that fields that can be researched into service as a 'population' . 48 Millar agrees that there is a need to select a few items from a large population for study purposes. 49 This is to enable one to make inferences and to be able to generalize.The study area is the five (5) regions of Northern Ghana which has ten (10) colleges of education. The sampling technique used for the study was a convenience sampling technique. It was preferred because respondents were conveniently available. Not all the ten (10) colleges were selected for the study but one from each homogenous region was chosen for the study. Hence Saint John Bosco College of Education, Navrongo, Tamale College of Education, Tamale and Nusrat Jahan Ahmadiya College of Education (NJA) Wa, teacher educants were contacted for the study. These colleges are also sampled based on their inter and intra mixed-faith characteristics -Christian, mixed-faith and Islam. Respondents were randomly selected from these colleges of education for the study.

Data Collection and Analysis
Collection of data is very important for any research process; data inaccuracy can hamper the reliability of the research. 50 The Socio-Economics -Demographic Characteristics of a study population play a vital role in the collection of data. Data was collected from secondary and primary sources. The instrument used to gather the data was the open-ended and closed-ended questionnaire. Tabachnick concurs that the computation of indices or measures in a relationship pattern constitutes an analysis of data. 51 So, both qualitative and quantitative data analysis approaches were employed. The SPSS was used for the analyses and then quantified into simple statistical percentages.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS Teacher Educant responses on Administrative Styles of the Principals
Ogar contends that discussion of results or findings is aimed at doing two things; first to show how findings of a current study fit into existing knowledge, and secondly, to articulate the implication of the findings to life. 52 One hundred and fifty (150) open and closed-ended questionnaires were produced and validated for the respondents; one hundred (100) was retrieved. From Table: 1, results from the question" do teacher educants take part in decision making?'' The field data results showed that out of one hundred (100) respondents, 20 of them representing (20%) strongly agree, 61 of them also agree on the statement, representing (61%), 15 (15%) disagree and 4 (4%) strongly disagree. The results indicated that, to some extent, teacher educants do not take part in decision making but the majority agreed to the statement. This also supports Boehnke et al's assertion that transactional leadership involves an exchange process and allow for other people's views as stated in the literature. 53 The second question was on "The Principal's good relationship with the Teacher educants. " The data indicated that 23 (23%) Strongly agree, 68 (68%) agree while 7 (7%) disagree, 2 (2%) strongly disagree, out of one hundred (100) respondents. This reveals that the Principals have a good relationship with their subordinates.
This proves Burns' view that "when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality then that leader is a transformational leader. 54 The question "Are teacher educants allowed to express their feelings on matters that affect the school freely?" 21 out of the of respondents strongly agree, which represents (21 %), 56 (56%) agreed to the statement, 20 (20%) disagreed to the statement and 3 (3%) strongly disagree. The data indicated that teacher educants are sometimes granted freedom of expression but some teachers were rather unhappy. The next statement was: "tone of the College Principal'' the field data also indicated 19 out of the number of respondents representing 19% strongly agreed. 59 (59%) of the respondents agreed while 22 (22%) disagreed and nobody strongly disagreed. The result demonstrated that some Principals acknowledge the need for good communication in the school organization. Imperatively, communication in our schools is very important. The results also demonstrated the statement made by Lee and Chuang, who opine that excellent leadership style and good communication enhances subordinates' potentials to efficiently meet or achieve organizational goals. The question. "does your Principal Cooperate with the staff ", 43 (43%) strongly agreed, those who agree were 53(53%) and 4 (4%) disagreed with the statement. This is an indication that some colleges of education Principals know that cooperation with teacher's aids productivity and improve teacher educants' performance as indicated by Fenwick and Gayle. This is demonstrated by the 4% who disagreed to the statement.
Administratively, is the workload too much for the Principal? This question was the sixth question and the field report reveal that nobody strongly agreed to the statement. Out of one hundred (100) respondents, 71(71%) agreed to the statement, whilst 16 (16%) disagreed and 13 respondents representing (13%) strongly disagreed with the statement. Colleges of education Principals of Northern Ghana are not autocratic in dealing with teacher educants. It confirms what Bush opines that the heads of department are the instructional leaders in the college. Fry affirms that due to the pressure on principals, they delegate and not self-centred. 55 Table 2, indicates that 12(12%) strongly agree, 23(23%) of the respondents agree while 43 (43%) of the respondent disagree and 22 representing 22% disassociated themselves from the statement that says that Principals are dictating or domineering during meetings. This result shows how some of the Principals of colleges of education in Northern Ghana behave during staff meetings. The progress of an institution can be disrupted due to the style of leadership of a principal. This result defeats Lee and Chuang's opine that, subordinates are inspired by excellent leadership style to enhance efficiency in achieving organizational goals. 56 The second statement from Table 2, which said "principals do not entertain advice from any teacher educants'' , 34 (34%) of respondents strongly agreed, those who agreed were 50 (50%), 10(10%) disagreed and 6(6%) strongly disagree.
This is an indication that the majority of the Principals solicit for some ideas from their Teacher educants. It also buttresses the point of Judge who opined that we need more leaders who can unite us and also ignite us. 57 From Table 2 the third statement which states that "does the Principal delegate authority to the teacher educants'' , Field data reveals that 21 (21%) of the respondents strongly agree, 64 (64%) those who agreed are 10 (10%) disagreed and 5 (5%) of the respondents strongly disagreed. Majority of the Principals believe in the delegation of power to ease administrative workload as the results revealed. On the question of whether the "Principal gives financial support to teacher educants" it was revealed that 19 (19%) strongly agreed to the statement, 6(6%) agreed while 52 (52%) disagreed with the statement and 23 (23%) of the respondents strongly disagreed. Revelation from the analysis indicates that the majority of the teacher educants do not receive enough support from the Principals when it comes to personal monetary issues in the Colleges of Education in Northern Ghana.
The next question was on "does the Principal considers individual differences in dealing with teacher educants" the data revealed the following; 16 (16%) strongly agreed with the statement, 55(55%) agreed while 20 (20%) disassociated themselves from the statement and 9 (9%) strongly disagreed to the statement. On financial support, 19(19%) strongly agreed, 6(6%) agree, 52(52%) disagreed and 23(23%) strongly disagreed. This means that when it comes to the area of monetary rewards and support for teacher educants, the leadership styles of the principals are so poor. Kouzes observed that "personality trait is very imperative in the smooth running of an Institution. '' 58 A bad personality trait of a Principal is likely not to enjoy his or her subordinate's cooperation. A good Principal should exhibit a good personality trait to improve teacher educants output at the workplace.  On the question of "does the Principal meet with Teacher educants on school matters", the results indicate some mixed feelings from the respondents. But 63% of the respondents indicated that some Principals of colleges of education in Northern Ghana do consultations and seek some ideas from teacher educants.

Recommendations
Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that; Principals should keep their effective disciplinary roles in the colleges of education in Northern Ghana. Training workshops on leadership should be organized periodically for both Principals and teacher educants; this would promote satisfaction at the workplace. Leaders must create a congenial atmosphere so that teacher educants can freely air out their grievances. Collaboration and opinion sharing must be a key factor for job satisfaction and stress-free work. Principals, policymakers and teacher educants would see some relevance in this study which would go a long way to contribute to knowledge.

Conclusion
This study sought to discuss the relationship between the leadership styles of Principals of Colleges of Education and the performance of Teacher Educants. From the data collected and analyzed in this study, it can be concluded that the leadership style of Principals certainly affects the success of the Institution. Based on the findings of the study, the authors conclude that there were varying leadership styles across the colleges of education in Northern Ghana. The Principals administrative styles are to some extent inadequate for effective College governance. Principals of colleges of education in Northern Ghana exhibited varied personality traits which exerted a positive but insignificant effect on the teacher educants. Some also demonstrated flexibility in terms of leadership styles.