Leadership Research Summary:
- Basic psychological need satisfaction is essential for the wellbeing of teachers and motivation at work. Transformational leadership contributes to the development and maintenance of a respectful, constructive atmosphere, a supportive working climate, and has been suggested to be a crucial factor for the satisfaction of the need for relatedness of employees. Transformational leadership is also considered as an ideal leadership style in the school setting,but most studies did not distinguish between individual and team effects of this leadership behavior. In the present study, we applied the dual-focused model of transformational leadership and focused on social processes to address the question of whether individual- and group-focused transformational leadership behavior contribute differently to satisfaction of the need for relatedness of teachers.
- Based on longitudinal data with three measurement points across one school year of N = 1,217 teachers, results of structural equational models supported the notion of the dual effects of transformational leadership: Individual-focused transformational leadership was directly positively related to change in satisfaction of the need for relatedness of teachers. The relationship between group-focused transformational leadership and change in satisfaction of the need for relatedness was mediated by received social support from team members.
- These findings emphasize the importance of school leadership behavior of principals for satisfaction of the need for relatedness of teachers. The satisfaction of the need for relatedness is, therefore, not only satisfied through the direct interaction between the school principal and the individual teacher but also through interactions of the school principal with the whole team. The results confirm that school principals should focus their leadership behavior both on individual need satisfaction of teachers as well as on team development.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- The current findings provide several insights into the role of the transformational leadership behavior of school principals and received social support for the need satisfaction of teachers. The results support first findings within educational settings showing that transformational leadership can be differentiated into individual- and group-focused leadership behaviors (Windlinger et al., 2019). The current results indicate that this distinction is important for the psychological need satisfaction of teachers. Consistent with the dual-focused transformational leadership model, we were able to show two different mechanisms. 1) Individual-focused transformational leadership behavior (i.e., personal recognition, follower development) is directly related to the satisfaction of the need for relatedness of teachers. In other words, the greater an interest the school principal takes with a teacher as an individual (by empowering individual teachers to develop their full potential, enhance their abilities and skills, acts as a coach or a mentor, or shows personal recognition), the more likely the teacher is to experience satisfaction of their need for relatedness.
- One reason for the direct effect of individual-focused transformational leadership on the satisfaction of the need for relatedness of teachers might be that teachers experience individual leadership behavior as social support from the school principal. Future studies need to investigate the extent to which the two constructs differ or whether they probably measure the same aspect of the leadership-follower interaction. 2) Group-focused transformational leadership, in turn, is indirectly related to the satisfaction of the need for relatedness of teachers and mediated by received social support from team colleagues. In other words, the more a school principal communicates a clear group vision (such as emphasizing group identity and promoting teambuilding), the more likely a supportive working climate will develop that is positively related to satisfying teachers’ need for relatedness.
- The present findings also give further insights into the antecedents of received social support from team colleagues. First, as discussed above, group-focused but not individual-focused transformational leadership is an antecedent of received social support. Second, the effect from satisfaction of the need for relatedness (T1) to receive social support (T2) indicates that the more a need for relatedness of teachers at T1 is satisfied, the more social support she/he receives from the team colleagues at T2. One reason could be that the satisfaction of the need for relatedness makes a person more sociable in a team, which, in turn, leads to team members providing more social support to these individuals. In line with this argumentation, research has shown that social relatedness is experienced, if certain group characteristics are fulfilled (e.g., Ryan and Deci, 2020). These characteristics, in turn, also favor social support. Future studies are needed to examine systematically whether the satisfaction of the need for relatedness is not only a consequence but also an antecedence of received social support. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the dual-focused model of transformational leadership can also apply in the school setting, i.e., the satisfaction of the need for relatedness can be satisfied not only through the direct interaction between the school principal and the individual teacher but also through interactions of the school principal with the entire team.