Transformational Leadership Training for Vocational School Principals in Ponorogo District : Strengthening Professional Learning Communities

: This community service aims to improve the social competence of school principals through transformational leadership training to encourage professional learning communities in the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity era. The method used in this community service used an IGROW-based coaching approach. The target participants of the training consisted of principals and vice principals of vocational schools in Ponorogo District who were accompanied by coaches from the field of education management with expertise in transformational leadership and educational organizations. The evaluation of this training was conducted using questionnaires. The data collected from these instruments were then analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results of this activity showed that this transformational leadership model training was carried out well and smoothly so that the targets and outcomes of this community service activity could be achieved. Participants were active in conveying and elaborating on the leadership problems faced in their schools. The analysis of the training implementation evaluation data showed that principals were highest in applying the inspirational motivation aspect of transformational leadership. This aspect of inspirational motivation could include the principal's ability to inspire and motivate staff and teachers to achieve the school's vision and goals. This indicates the importance of the principal's role in fostering a positive work environment and motivating their team to achieve better.


Introduction
Educational organizations in the era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 have great challenges due to the rapid changes and developments that are exponential.The VUCA era (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) makes organizations unable to ensure the current conditions being faced, let alone ensure the future to be faced (Juhro, 2020).Leaders in the VUCA era must be able to lead their human resources to be able to face change (Pertiwi et al., 2022).Transformational leadership is appropriate in this VUCA era because it manifests participatory leadership (Juhro, 2020).Transformational leadership promotes the common interests of subordinates and helps realize common goals (Tobirin, Ali Rokhman, 2022).Leaders must align with their followers to collectively achieve the vision (García-Martínez, 2018).Transformational leadership can not only drive horizontally and vertically an organization but can also give the organization the capacity to be agile in any situation (Barnett et al., 2001).Transformational leadership can inspire and direct its members to achieve a shared vision (García-Morales et al., 2012).
The research concluded that as a leader, the transformational leadership style applied by the principal affects the professional learning community in the school.Leaders in the VUCA era must improve their ability to create flexibility, creativity and confidence for their followers.One of the strategies is that educational organizations must be able to transform themselves into learning organizations (Nur Jannah et al., 2021).Transformational leaders have charisma and provide intellectual stimulation and inspire their employees, improve communication, trust and knowledge sharing (Haetami et al., 2023).Learning organizations will have an advantage in competition by focusing on their organizational structure, ability to communicate, share knowledge and experience (Chawla & Lenka, 2018).
Based on the initial analysis of partner problems in the Principal Work Conference (MKKS) of Vocational Principal in Ponorogo District, there are challenges in improving and transformational leadership capabilities of school principals.School principals have not fully implemented leadership that is able to encourage professional learning communities in schools (Windasari et al., 2023).Schools as educational organizations must be able to transform into learning organizations that can develop attitudes and behaviors that enable organizations to stay alive and lead in the VUCA era.Previous research identified that transformational leadership is necessary to implement a learning organization because it can provide dynamism and support to members to create a school that always nurtures learning (Chawla & Lenka, 2018).Schools must be able to grow and develop continuously in order to be competitive in the current and future.Transformational psychological leadership style is positively correlated with organizational learning ability (Lee & Ding, 2020).Transformational leadership will encourage the implementation of professional learning communities and foster innovation and maximum learning quality.
Based on the condition of the problems faced by partners, it is necessary to initiate training activities to solve these problems.Through transformational leadership training activities as an effort to enrich professional learning communities for principals of vocational school in Ponorogo district, it is hoped that it will be a solution to the problems experienced.Training activities will be carried out directly at Vocational School 3 Ponorogo offline to ensure the delivery of material and coaching activities can run according to the expected expectations.This community service aims to provide increased understanding and skills regarding transformational leadership to principals and vice principals of vocational high schools in Ponorogo Regency to support the development of professional learning communities.

Method
The method used in this community service used a coaching approach with the IGROW model (Holtshousen, 2015).In this training, the target was the principal and vice principal of vocational schools in Ponorogo district.The training activities would be accompanied by a coach who has expertise in the field of transformational leadership and educational organization.The IGROW model was used as a training method aimed at targeting specific skill problems in the context of transformational leadership skills.This coaching model is beneficial to educational organizations and has shown consistent success.In applying the IGROW model in the coaching process to be systematic and effective, it is based on 5 main components, namely, Intention, Goal, Reality, Options and Will/Way forward.

Figure 1. IGROW coaching model
The stages of the training model with a coaching approach carried out by the Community service team are as follows: 1) Intention The first step of the IGROW process is to identify the problem and address it with the partner.The coach begins the identification and coaching process by detailing the transformational leadership issues in the school.At this stage, specific but measurable indicators are broken down to understand the extent of the problem.The coach is fully present to listen and respond to the partners.The list of partners who will conduct the identification is outlined in the table below: 2) Goal The second step of the IGROW process is to provide partners with clear objectives.Offering specific goals will provide precise indicators of what partners need to do to achieve the end result and the level of improvement required.At this stage of goal formulation, an understanding will be given first related to the concept of transformational leadership to make it easier for school principals to determine the goals to be achieved.The material that will be delivered is described in the following table:

3) Reality
The third step of the IGROW process requires the partner to engage more with the coach.The coach will assist partners to find the root of the problem through a list of questions that have been compiled.In this activity, partners will be given worksheets to identify problems that have arisen in each organization they oversee.This form of assessment focuses more on assessing leadership styles in schools.The questions used in the self-assessment include: Table 3. Assesment focus Type Question Self-assessment 1.
What kind of leader have I been? 2.
What will I be remembered as in the future?

3.
Who am I helping to develop right now?

4.
Where is the development that I would prefer?

5.
What will I leave behind when I finish my term of service?

6.
Have I used coaching as a 'tool' to transform teacher performance?

7.
I used mentoring as a way to transform teacher performance?

4) Option
With the problematic behavior identified, the fourth step in the IGROW process is to determine potential options for the partner.The coach with the partner develops a plan to improve the leadership competence of the principal.This fourth activity is the stage to formulate a concrete plan to be done by the partner in implementing transformational leadership in the school.5) Will/Way forward The final step of the IGROW process is to identify what comes next for the partner.At this stage, the coach and partner use a development action plan (DAP).The DAP is used to understand the goals and outline methods to achieve those goals.The resulting development action plan includes feedback as part of the plan.The development plan is a follow-up action to be taken with the partner's commitment.The evaluation of this training was conducted using instruments distributed to participants, such as questionnaires or surveys.The data collected from these instruments were then analyzed using descriptive statistics.Descriptive statistical analysis includes the presentation of data in the form of frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations, which helps in understanding the distribution and trends of the evaluation results.

Result and Discussion
The transformational leadership training activity as an effort to strengthen professional learning communities for principals of vocational schools in Ponorogo district was carried out offline located at Darul Falah vocational school.This activity was attended by the community service team and principals from vocational school in Ponorogo on Monday, 24 June 2024.The total number of participants in this activity was 25 participants consisting of representatives of vocational school principals in Ponorogo.The implementation of this community service is focused on the presentation related to the Transformational Leadership model in improving the professional learning community of teachers in schools.In this activity, the signing of cooperation documents between the Undergraduate Education Management Study Programme and several vocational schools in Ponorogo was also carried out.
The method of implementing this activity was the IGROW coaching model.In the first implementation, the community service team delivered the material offline.The training implementation includes material delivery activities by the community service team through the PowerPoint that the community service team has prepared.The first session of community service material was related to the concept of Transformational Leadership at the vocational school level presented by Dr. Ayu Wulandari, M.Pd.The second session of material is related to the Professional Learning Community Development Model related to how to encourage teachers to be able to be active in the professional learning community presented by Mrs Windasari, M.Pd.The second stage after the first is the on activity where at this stage worksheets are given to the training participants.The training participants filled in the worksheet containing instruments to identify competencies based on when carrying out the activities of the school leader's duties.The second stage is the presentation of the results of the completed worksheet, then the coach will provide feedback and suggestions for the development of the teacher and educational leader competency model.After the discussion, the follow-up activities that need to be done by the school are formulated.The documentation of the activity is presented in the picture below.The results of the implementation of transformational leadership training as an effort to strengthen professional learning communities for principals of vocational schools in Ponorogo district are that this training becomes a forum for increasing the knowledge and leadership competence of school principals.Based on the results of community service activities, it was found that the problems that exist in vocational school in Ponorogo are the absence of understanding related to transformational leadership styles in encouraging teachers to be active in professional learning communities.Based on the participants' assignment worksheets that have been filled in and presented, there are results that on average in the field implementation, the competence of the principal is at a proficient level.
Based on the results of the assignment worksheets completed and presented by the participants, it was revealed that on average, the principals' competence in implementing transformational leadership in the field can be categorized as proficient level.This indicates that vocational school principals in the Ponorogo district have been able to implement the principles of transformational leadership well in the context of daily activities in their schools.This result reflects a consistent effort to strengthen professional learning communities among vocational school principals, which is expected to have a significant positive impact on educational progress in the area.The graph of teacher competence based on the results of the questionnaire that has been filled in is shown in the following diagram:

Figure 7. Transformational Leadership Achievement Results
Based on the data presented, it can be seen that transformational leadership in a vocational school in the Ponorogo district reflects several key components.Idealized leadership was rated as the lowest with a score of 1, signifying that there is room to improve the concept or idealized view of leadership among SMK principals.On the other hand, intellectual stimulation received a score of 2, indicating that principals can stimulate and encourage creative thinking and problem-solving among staff and students.
Individual consideration scored 3, indicating that the principal can notice and consider the needs, goals, and desires of individuals in the context of the school.At the top is inspirational motivation with a score of 4, indicating that the principal can motivate and inspire staff and students to achieve higher goals.Overall, these data suggest that transformational leadership in vocational schools in Ponorogo shows good progress in stimulating creative thinking, attending to individual needs, and providing inspirational motivation.However, there is still room to improve the idealized concept of leadership across educational settings to achieve more optimal results in the construction of professional and competitive learning communities.The follow-up of this training activity will be conducted through sharing sessions held every 3 months online.This activity will involve the team and principals of vocational schools in Ponorogo Regency to monitor the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) program and the implementation of transformational leadership.Through these sharing sessions, participants are expected to share experiences, discuss challenges, and find solutions together to improve the effectiveness of leadership and PLC programs in their respective schools.

Conclusion
This transformational leadership model training was carried out well and smoothly so that the targets and outcomes of this community service activity could be achieved.Based on the data from the identification of the competencies of vocational school principals in Ponorogo, the overall result is that most of the vocational school principals in Ponorogo are at the proficient level.The coaching method used in this training is very suitable because of the lack of understanding of vocational school principals in Ponorogo regarding the transformational leadership model.Participants were active in conveying and elaborating on the leadership problems faced in their schools.The analysis of the training implementation evaluation data showed that principals were highest in applying the inspirational motivation aspect of transformational leadership.This aspect of inspirational motivation can include the principal's ability to inspire and motivate staff and teachers to achieve the school's vision and goals.This indicates the importance of the principal's role in fostering a positive work environment and motivating their team to achieve better.

Recommendation
From the results of community service activities at the vocational school in Ponorogo, it can be seen that the principals are very supportive of receiving training activities.In addition to training activities for transformational leadership models, it is necessary to conduct training activities to increase the professional knowledge of school principals considering that there are still some principals who are still at the developing level.Moreover, the recommendation from this training activity is for the education office to be more active in organizing activities that encourage principals to collaborate and share experiences.Some initiatives that could be taken include: organizing a principals' forum for idea exchange, collaborative workshops on education management and innovation, internship programs for hands-on learning in other schools, and establishing learning communities for sustainable support.