The prior considerations lead us to consider an all-important quality of administrative
leadership—vision. I use that term here in two senses. The first
refers to a firm commitment to an ideal—the educated person and an ideal
educational process for cultivating that person. Educational leaders know
full well the difference between the ideal and the realities in schools. Senge
(1990) suggested that a tension necessarily exists in corporations between a
shared vision and perceived organizational limitations. Senge asserted that
this tension can be generative when leaders mobilize the members to use
that tension creatively. It is the awareness of the unnecessarily large gap between
the ideal and the real that fuels the commitment of educational leaders
to close that gap.