Abstract:
School principals’ leadership styles play a major role in teachers’ motivation. Hence,
this study investigated the relationship between principals’ leadership styles and
teachers’ motivation of secondary schools in West Showa Zone. Descriptive survey
research design was employed to conduct the research using both quantitative and
qualitative methods through questionnaires, interviews and document analysis data
gathering tools. In this study, simple random sampling, purposive and available sampling
techniques were used to select a total of 355 respondents. The data were analyzed by
using descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation Matrix. The findings of the study
revealed the three leadership styles were moderately used in the schools. Besides the
finding of the study revealed that there was a significant positive relationship between
principals’ democratic leadership style and teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.
Moreover, the study revealed that teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation was
negatively related to autocratic and laissez-faire leadership styles employed by school
principals. Thus, in order to adequately enhance teachers’ motivation to the required
level school leaders should dominantly use the democratic style over laissez-faire and
authoritative leadership styles. Additionally, secondary schools leaders, as good
governance, should revise and implement their rewarding strategies to improve their
teachers’ motivation.