How do teachers perceive meaningful leadership? Overview of a qualitative exploration

Ahmet Göçen

doi:10.33902/jpr.2021066866

Abstract

Leaders’ self-realization and their intra-group behaviors at work are influenced by elements such as a sense of meaningful purpose and intrinsic motivation. This study aims to construct a model of meaningful leadership, based on the values, aspirations, and attitudes of a leader and how these qualities help them develop positive organizational cultures. The research, based on constructivist grounded theory design, utilized semi-structured interview technique with 15 teachers, examining their perceptions of meaningfulness and leadership. These interviews revealed ten core dimensions of meaningful leadership: An ultimate purpose in life, sharing meaning, understanding, linking the past, present, and future, wisdom, peacefulness, a sense of ethics, serving others, inner motivation, and fostering unity. These dimensions can be considered essential when identifying meaningful leaders. This proposed model of leadership, with a focus on meaningfulness, can play a pivotal role in an organization by contributing to self-realization of members and ensuring the unity of purpose. In educational organizations, a meaningful leadership approach can leverage leaders’ efforts by providing an intrinsic motivation source for all school members.

Highlights

In the last decades, organizational leadership literature has begun to consider meaningfulness and spirituality as important aspects of management (Klenke, 2005; Yang, Huang, & Wu, 2019)
Meaningfulness – sometimes stated as “ a sense of meaning” by participants in Turkish contextcan be defined as understanding the purpose of life and the level of joy felt in journey toward a person‟s ultimate goals
Meaningful leadership- based on the results of the study- is defined as “an approach adopted by leaders that nurtures heightened awareness of life goals among others in the organization, which in turn strengthens and satisfies their own sense of meaningfulness”

Summary

Introduction

Organizational leadership literature has begun to consider meaningfulness and spirituality as important aspects of management (Klenke, 2005; Yang, Huang, & Wu, 2019). Terms like spirituality, meaning and meaningfulness were previously outside the purview of behavioral scientists, who focused on observable behavior or patterns (Kriger & Seng, 2005). Though the terms “meaning” and “meaningfulness” have long been considered in religious and psychology studies; spiritual leadership (Fairholm, 1996; Fry, 2003) and workplace spirituality (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000) have examined meaning and meaningful work as research topics in contemporary organizational leadership journals. Ahmet Göçen, PhD, Harran University, Faculty of Education, 63190, Haliliye, Şanlıurfa, Turkey.

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