Abstract:

The cognitive, emotional and persuasive functions of metaphors are well known - in resorting to metaphors, users transfer a literal meaning onto a divergent dimensions, allowing for the experience and understanding of a thing in terms of another. By examining the metaphors employed by other users of language, researchers gain access to the world images they construct and the socio-linguistic determinants of their cognition. Analysis of metaphors has become a central feature of phenomenological research in organizational  management and leadership, particularly in the interpretive paradigm.

This article analyzes the understandings of the phenomenon of leadership shared by school principals in Poland, looking through the lens of the metaphors employed in their definitions of the term. The authors analyzed 171 semi-structured interviews with a stratified sample of school principals in Poland, conducted as part of a diagnosis of leadership competencies commissioned for a project co-funded from the European Social Fund. Stratification considered three criteria: time in office, the type of community served by the school, and the gender of the respondent. The authors aimed to catalogue the metaphors employed by the respondents and to perform a hermeneutical reading of the emerging patterns in their images of a leader.

Keywords:

Leadership, educational leadership, metaphors.