Effect of Inclusive Leadership on Teachers’ Involvement in Creative Tasks: The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety

Abstract

This study focuses on the link between inclusive leadership and teachers’ involvement in creative tasks with mediating role of psychological safety. The particular contexts of the study are service based organizations, i.e. public and private high schools. Data were collected from 290 teachers performing their duties across urban & rural area schools of Sargodha, Punjab. The data collection tool is the quantitative questionnaire. The study was quantitative in nature that made use of descriptive as well as inferential statistics to analyze the data. The data had been collected through convenience sampling on the basis of availability of the research participants. For data collection, cross sectional method was used. The results of SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) analysis indicated that inclusive leadership is positively related to teachers’ creativity at their workplace. Moreover, analysis also indicated that inclusive leadership is associated with psychological safety, which, in turn, stimulates teachers’ participation in creative tasks. That association showed indirect effect. It was analyzed that a strong and statistically significant effect of inclusive behavior of head teacher on teachers’ creativity became insignificant when teachers psychological safety as a mediator was inserted into the module. The study recommended that our school leaders need to practice inclusive leadership for enhancing creativity in teachers. Also steps should be taken by higher schools administration to train school heads on inclusive leadership.

The Influence of Principal Inclusive Leadership and Teacher Efficacy on Teachers’ Innovative Behaviour

“…Ross and Bruce (2007) and Messmann and Mulder (2011) found that positive communication with others influences innovative behaviour, guidance, support, and feedback from colleagues, managers, and others positively impact teachers' innovative behaviour. Inclusive leadership is positively associated with teacher creativity in the workplace,when leaders demonstrate openness to teachers' opinions, they readily engage with teachers to discuss new ideas,and stimulate teachers' creativity in the workplace (Uzair-ul-Hussan & Hassan, 2018).…”

Impact of inclusive leadership on variables affecting employee performance: A review of empirical papers

“…Relational leadership theory has also been studied to explain its different facets on psychological safety and employee creative work tasks along with motivation. Similarly, Hassan and Hassan (2018) [18] analyzed the role of PsyS as a mediator between IL and teacher's involvement in creative tasks. The results from the structural equation model using AMOS on a sample of 290 teachers showed a strong and statistically significant mediation effect of psychological safety between the aforementioned variables.…”

“…Qi, Liu, Wei & Hu (2017) [35] Team [18] Employee Creativity (EC) Psychological Safety (PsyS) -IL-PsyS-EC (Supported) Javed, Khan & Quratulain (2018) [24] Innovative Work Behaviour (IVB)…”

“…Leadership as a managerial trait has over the years metamorphosed into many forms and styles that include innovative, command and control or bureaucratic (Webber, 1947), laissezfaire, situational (Blanchard & Hershey, 1969), servant (Greenleaf 1970), charismatic (House, 1976) transformational (Burn 1978), affiliative, authoritative, coaching, democratic, coercive and pacesetter or transactional (Goleman, 2002) [18] . The 21st century leader is, by definition, an inclusive leader.…”

“…Hollander (2012) [19] examined the presence of value and respect of employees, adequate encouragement and feedback to provide ample grounds in nourishing skills and deriving better employee performance. Inclusive leadership attributes viz., openness, tolerance in demanding situations, risk taking, adaptability and independence play an important role in the functioning of the leader thus leading to organizational success (Hassan & Hassan, 2018) [18] . Inclusive leaders assist employees by displaying concerns about how their employees feel, and also focus on their interests and expectations.…”