Leadership Style: Impact on the Work Performance and the Morale of Staff

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the leadership style of public school principals and determine whether there was a correlation between the leadership style of leaders and the work performance and morale of staff members.

METHODOLOGY
Participants in the study were staff members employed by the third largest school district in the state of Georgia and a random sampling technique was used in the selection process. These consisted of two school principals, and 12 academic staff members who rated the leadership style of their school principal (LPI-Observer). Internal reliability (Cronbach alpha) coefficients in this study were .83 Model, .70 Inspire, .77 Challenge, .88 Enable, and .91 Encourage. The researcher combined the LPI scores for Model and Enable and labelled this “leadership style” and used the score for Challenge as a measure of “work performance” and the combined scores from Inspire and Encourage to assess “staff morale.” Three staff members wrote down their responses to semi-structured open-ended questions that were influenced by elements derived from the LPI, and these results were coded by the researcher.

KEY FINDINGS
Model was the leadership practice with the highest average frequency score, followed by Enable, and then Encourage, Challenge, and Inspire. Simple regression analysis, leadership style accounted for 75 percent of the variance in work performance; while leadership style accounted for 91 percent of the variability in staff morale.

The author concludes:

The more leadership exhibited dimensions measured on the LPI, the higher the staff’s work performance and morale. Hence, leadership style is closely associated with work performance and morale, and could have a stronger effect on morale and performance (p. 80).