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Abstract
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. Our results confirm that school principals should focus their leadership behavior both on individual need satisfaction of teachers as well as on team development.
Highlights
Teaching is considered as a challenging profession involving a wide range of job demands such as dealing with work overload, school class heterogeneity, cooperation within and outside the school, and administrative tasks (e.g., Brägger, 2019; Keller-Schneider, 2018; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2018)
We examine the association between the transformational leadership behavior of school principals and the need satisfaction of teachers
The present findings underline the importance of transformational leadership behavior for the need satisfaction of employees (Hetland et al, 2011; Kovjanic et al, 2013) and the positive association between received social support and psychological need satisfaction (e.g., Fernet et al, 2013; van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, 2010)
Summary
Teaching is considered as a challenging profession involving a wide range of job demands such as dealing with work overload, school class heterogeneity, cooperation within and outside the school, and administrative tasks (e.g., Brägger, 2019; Keller-Schneider, 2018; Skaalvik and Skaalvik, 2018). There is a significant amount of research in the educational setting indicating that psychological need satisfaction of teachers is positively associated with effective teaching (Holzberger et al, 2014; Moè and Katz, 2020), work engagement, job satisfaction, commitment, well-being, enjoyment, and happiness at work (Collie, 2016; Aldrup, 2017; Rothmann and Fouché, 2018). Another substantial body of literature shows that leadership behavior—and transformational leadership, in particular—is essential for the psychological need satisfaction of individuals (Gagné and Deci, 2005; Hetland, 2011; Kovjanic, 2013; Stenling and Tafvelin, 2014). According to the SelfDetermination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Deci and Ryan, 2000), social support was found to be a key predictor of satisfaction of the need for relatedness (e.g., Aldrup et al, 2017; Leow et al, 2019)
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