The relationship between toxic leadership behaviors of school principals and life satisfaction of teachers

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the toxic leadership behaviours of school principals and the life satisfaction of teachers in public primary schools. In this study, relational and descriptive scanning models based on general scanning model were used. The population of research consists of 2254 teachers from 60 primary schools in the central district of Diyarbakır, and the sample of the study consists of 380 primary school teachers from 25 schools randomly selected from the population of research. The data of the study were collected by Toxic Leadership Scale including four dimensions and 30 items developed by Çelebi, Güner and Yıldız (2015) and The Satisfaction with Life Scale consisting a single dimension and 5 items developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985) and adapted into Turkish by Dağlı and Baysal (2016). These are the important findings of the research: (1) The average perception of teachers towards their own school principals' toxic leadership behaviour is at the "disagree" level on Toxic Leadership Scale. (2) According to the perceptions of teachers, the item with highest average on the scale is "his/her current mood determines the atmosphere of the work (disagree)", the item with the lowest average "now allowing employees to try new ways/approaches/innovations (disagree)". The average level perception of the teachers regarding all dimensions of toxic leadership scale is at the "disagree" level. (3) There was no significant difference found in teachers' perception of their school principals' toxic leadership behaviours based on "education" and "marital status" variables. On the other hand, significant differences were found according to "gender" in all dimensions, "professional seniority" in unappreciativeness, utilitarian and psychological dysfunction sub-dimensions, "school size (the number of teachers)" in unappreciativeness, utilitarian and psychological dysfunction sub-dimensions. (4) The average perception of teachers' own life satisfaction is at the "slightly agree" level on The Satisfaction with Life Scale. (5) According to the perceptions of teachers' life satisfaction, the item which has the highest average of perception is "so far I have gotten the important things I want in life (moderately agree)", the item which has the lowest average of perception is "the conditions of my life are excellent (slightly agree)". (6) No significant differences on the perceptions of teachers' life satisfaction were found in terms of "gender", "marital status", "professional seniority", and "school size" variables. (7) A negative significant relationship at low level was found between the toxic leadership behaviours and the life satisfaction of teachers (r=-0,329). The more toxic leadership behaviour school principals have, the less life satisfaction teachers have. Furthermore, the toxic leadership behaviours of school principals explain 10.8% of teachers' life satisfaction levels. Keywords: Toxic, toxic leader, school principal, life satisfaction, teacher.