The relationship between school principals' charismatic leadership behaviors and teachers' life satisfaction

This study aims to determine tehe relationship between school principals' charismatic leadership traits and teachers' life satisfaction based on the perceptions of teachers working in consists of 3125 teachers working in 74 public primary schools in the central districts of Bağlar, Kayapınar, Sur and Yenişehir in Diyarbakır province in the 2022-2023 academic year and the sample of the research consists of 655 teachers selected by simple random sampling method. For data collection, the study utilized the "Charismatic Leadership Scale" consisting of 25 items in 6 dimensions, developed by Conger and Kanungo (1994) and adapted to Turkish culture by Özdemir and Pektaş (2020), and the "Life Satisfaction Scale," developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985) and adapted into Turkish by Dağlı and Baysal (2016), which consists of 5 items in a single dimension. The data obtained in the study were analyzed using SPSS. The analysis revealed that teachers' perceptions of their life satisfaction were at a moderate level. It was found that the difference in teachers' perceptions of life satisfaction was statistically significant based on education level and gender, while there was no significant difference based on marital status, professional seniority, or years of service in their current school. Teachers' perceptions of school principals' charismatic leadership behaviors were found to be at a high level both overall and in the sub-dimensions of the scale. It was observed that the difference between teachers' perceptions of charismatic leadership behaviors was significant in terms of maintaining the current situation according to gender, but it was not significant in terms of education level, marital status, professional seniority and years of service in the school. A positive, yet low-level relationship has been found between the charismatic leadership characteristics of school principals and their teachers' perceptions of life satisfaction. Keywords: Leader, charismatic leader, school principal, teacher, life satisfaction.