The Effect of the Leadership Style of Construction Project Engineers in Mashhad on Job Stress during the Covid-19 Outbreak

Quarantine and restrictions imposed on construction industries following the Covid-19 outbreak postponed construction, leading to a capital recession of engineers and occupational stress. As leaders of construction projects, engineers should be able to choose a leadership style that facilitates occupational stress management. The current descriptive study was conducted on 312 construction project engineers in Mashhad in 2022 using a simple random sampling method. The Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid. Leadership Self-Assessment Questionnaire and Schwepker and Dimitrov's job stress questionnaire (2021) were research tools. Questionnaires were prepared using the “Avalform” website, and the link to the questionnaire was sent to the engineers. The results showed participative, autocratic, conservative, and Impoverished leadership styles were the most frequently used among civil engineers, respectively. The mean score of job stress was higher in the group with autocratic leadership style than in other groups (21.23 ± 5.58), followed by participative (19.76 ± 8.01) and conservative (19.07 ± 6.82) leadership styles. Given that civil engineers most frequently used the participative leadership style, and this group experienced high job stress, future studies should focus on teaching job stress management strategies.