Discussed in this paper are experiences with leadership and power from the points of view of four women elementary school principals and the teachers with whom they work. Focused on the concepts of leadership, communication, decisionmaking, and conflict resolution, data were collected through semi-structured and unstructured interviews with principals, and surveys and structured interviews with teachers. Interview data were analyzed by transcription to determine emergent themes; survey data were analyzed statistically. Findings included descriptions of principals’ uses of facilitative power from their self reports and the reports of those teachers with whom they worked. The paper also provides examples of power as both a multi-dimensional and multi-directional concept.
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