Leadership Behaviors and Its Relation with Principals’ Management Experience

Abstract

This paper aims at studying the leadership behaviors reported by principals and observed by teachers and its relationship with management experience of principals. A quantitative method was used in this study. The target population included all principals and teachers of guidance schools and high schools in the Dashtiari District, Iran. A sample consisting of 46 principals and 129 teachers was selected by stratified sampling and simple random sampling methods. A leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) developed by Kozes and Posner (2001) was used for data collection. The obtained data were analyzed using one sample and independent t-test, correlation coefficient and crosstabs pearson Chi-square test. The results showed that teachers describe leadership behaviors of their principals relatively well. However, principals themselves evaluated their leadership behaviors as very well. Comparing between leadership behaviors self-reported by principals and those observed by teachers, a significant difference was found between the views and evaluations of teachers and principals on all components of leadership behaviors of principals, except that regarding empowerment. In fact, principals described their leadership behaviors better and at a more appropriate level than teachers. From the perspective of both teachers and principals, there was no significant relationship between any of the components of leadership behaviors and management experience of principals.