The effect of the role of critical leadership styles and the mechanism of employees' psychological distress on employees' engagement

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effect of critical leadership styles and the mechanism of psychological distress of employees on the employees' engagement. The current research is applied in terms of purpose, and descriptive-correlative in terms of nature and method. The statistical population (300 people) was the administrative staff of education in Yazd city in 1401, who were selected by simple random method and through Cochran (169 people). Data collection tools, transformational leadership questionnaires of Bass & Avolio (1995), autocratic leadership of Hanges & Dickson (2004), employees' engagement of Rich & Lepine (2010), and finally Kessler et al.'s employees' psychological distress (2002) that had good validity and reliability. The results of hypothesis testing were used by SMART-PLS software and using t-test statistics and path coefficients (β), which indicate a significant effect between research variables. Also, the mediating role of employees' psychological distress was confirmed in the influence of transformational leadership on employees' engagement., but it was not confirmed in the effect of authoritarian leadership on employees' engagement. According to the findings of the research, it can be stated that to increase or decrease the employees' engagement, attention should be paid to transformational and authoritarian leadership, because they can have positive and negative effects on employee engagement. Of course, psychological distress can also be helpful in this field, because if the psychological distress of the employees cannot be reduced, irreparable damage will be done to the employees' engagement.