Relationship between Principal's Leadership Styles and Teacher's Job Satisfaction and Mental Health

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between principals’ leadership style with teachers’ job satisfaction and mental health in Boukan. Research design was descriptive-correlational. From among 102 principals, 63 respondents (36 male and 27 female) and from among 2700 teachers, 338 teachers (189 male and 149 female) were selected from schools in Boukan through stratified random sampling. In order to collect data, a use was made of Luthan's Leadership Style Questionnaire (Luthans, 1989), Job Descriptive Index (JDI) (Smith, Kendall & Hullin, 1969) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) (Goldberg and Hiller, 1970). Data analysis involved descriptive and inferential statistics such as Pearson’s correlation coefficient and MANOVA. The results showed that the principals’ humanistic leadership style had a significant positive relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction and a significant negative relationship with teachers’ mental health. Further, the principals’ task-oriented leadership style had a significant negative relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction and a significant positive relationship with teachers’ mental health. There was also a significant negative relationship between teachers’ job satisfaction and teachers’ mental health. As regards the principals’ humanistic leadership styles no significant difference was found among principals of elementary, secondary, and high schools. There was, however, no significant difference among them in terms of task-oriented leadership style. Thus, teachers’ job satisfaction and mental health is dependent on the principals’ leadership styles to a large extent. That is, principals with humanistic attitudes enhance teachers’ job satisfaction and mental health.