Leadership behaviour displayed by heads of school - its extent and importance.

This paper reports results of analyses of data from an online 360° feedback survey with 19 heads of school, 23 line managers and 120 significant others (peers, academic staff and administrative staff) from Australian universities. It focuses on the heads' effectiveness, and the extent and importance of several leadership roles. A series of repeated measures analyses of variance that examined the differences between the heads' of school self-perceptions and the perceptions of their line managers and significant others were undertaken. The analysis of the effectiveness data showed that the heads' of school self-evaluations were lower (but not significantly so) than the scores from the other two groups. The three groups agreed on how much importance they ascribed to the leadership roles, and on the extent to which these roles were displayed by the heads of school. There were significant differences between the roles in the extent to which they were displayed and considered important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]