Abstract:
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between principals’
leadership styles and teachers’ job satisfaction. In this study, descriptive survey and
correlation method were employed by using simple random sampling method. The
selected respondents in the research were 170 teachers from 8 primary schools. 168 of
them were responded and returned.The response rate was 98.8%. The instruments were
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) used to measure leadership styles and the
researcher prepared questionnaire to measure teachers’ job satisfaction. The findings of
the study revealed that teachers observed their principals leadership style as
transactional and as laissez-faire. Transformational leadership behavior was not utilized
as expected. The finding shows that teachers had low level of satisfaction with
supervision, payment and promotion, high level of satisfaction with work itself and with
colleagues. The finding of the study also showed transactional and transformational
leadership styles havepositive relationship with teachers’ job satisfactionand statistically
significant. But transformational leadership style had more and significant positive
relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction. The study also showed that laissez-faire
leadership style had a very weak negative correlation with teachers’ job satisfaction and
was not statistically significant.According to the data analysis, it can conclude that
principals practiced more transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles than
transformational leadership style. On the other hand, laissez-faire leadership style had
insignificant relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction.Finally, recommendations were
made in order to change the current leadership styles of principals and to enhance
teachers’ job satisfaction of primary school in BatiWoreda. Sothe principals should give
due attention for transformational leadership style to create trust and respect on teachers
so as to bring effective teachers’ job satisfaction by promoting teachers moral.
