Leadership Competencies for Project Based School Management Success

Manager's leadership style influences the performances of every organization, process, activity or project. In the past 10 years, in Romania, the educational system faced important changes beginning with the decentralization, the transformation of schools into self-managing systems, continuing with stakeholder's implication in school management and the development of international project cooperation. In Romania, project based school management is a new concept for many schools, but in some institutions the manager's proactive attitude and vision settled the premises of a project-management culture. Our article examines the leadership competencies required for a successful project based school management. The analysis is based on the findings of a research conducted at regional level on a representative sample of secondary school teachers. Our research describes school teacher's opinion using a structured questionnaire approach together with constructed conversation with participants. The research involved 96 teachers from six schools. The schools involved in the research are developing an academic program based on technical or services education and the teachers included in the sample were coordinators or members in an international project team. The findings generated from our research emphasize that school principals need to improve the empowering procedure, to develop their vision and the ability to foresee the impact of changes.