Abstract:
The aim of this research was to examine the impact of principals’ leadership styles on teachers’ job performance in Governmental Secondary schools of South West Shoa Zone. In the empirical investigation, descriptive survey design was used. In the quantitative phase, the data collection was done by means of self-constructed structured questionnaire that focused on dimensions of leadership styles and factors of job satisfaction. From total selection of 299 sampled respondents, data was collected from 292 respondents constituting 260 teachers drawn from 13 sample schools in 5 randomly selected woredas. In the second phase, namely qualitative phase, interviews were conducted with a sample of 13 principals, 14 vice principals and 5 supervisors who were randomly selected from the larger sample. The data analyses for quantitative and qualitative phase were done by SPSS of version 20 and constant comparative method respectively. The findings indicated that the democratic leadership style was commonly practiced by Governmental Secondary school principals of South West Shoa Zone. The findings also indicated that both Democratic and Bureaucratic leadership styles promote high teachers’ job performance under the study area. Autocratic and laissez faire leadership styles did not enhance teachers’ job performance. Finally, recommendations were made in the areas of leadership styles so as to adopt a mix of Democratic and Bureaucraticleadership styles and establishment of a reward scheme to enhance teachers’ job performance in government secondary schools of South West Shoa Zone. On the other hand, the use of autocratic and laissez faire leadership styles should be discouraged by school principals as they could not bring a better job performance among teachers.
