School Principal Holistic Leadership: A Study in High Performance Schools in the Central Zone, Malaysia

This paper aims to study the leadership behaviors of principals from high performance schools located in the central zone of Peninsular Malaysia. Target sample included a total of 442 teachers from 19 secondary schools. The sample was selected by simple random sampling technique. The instrument of 35 items holistic leadership was used for data collection. Five styles of leadership were assessed. The results show that the instructional style had the highest levels (Mean=4.801), followed by a structuring style (Mean = 4.738), a personnel development (Mean=4.714), a participative style (Mean= 4.623), and an entrepreneurial style (Mean=4.461). The overall holistic leadership of principals is high with Mean=4.667. These finding suggested that the holistic leadership among high performance school principals is at a high level. This is in line with the status of the schools as high performing schools. The goal of the Education Ministry to produce high performance leadership among school leaders is on the right track in these particular schools.