How do teachers perceive meaningful leadership? Overview of a qualitative exploration

Abstract

Leaders" self-realization and their intra-group behaviors at work are influenced by elements such as a sense of meaningful purpose and intrinsic motivation. This study aims to construct a model of meaningful leadership, based on the values, aspirations, and attitudes of a leader and how these qualities help them develop positive organizational cultures. The research, based on constructivist grounded theory design, utilized semi-structured interview technique with 15 teachers, examining their perceptions of meaningfulness and leadership. These interviews revealed ten core dimensions of meaningful leadership: An ultimate purpose in life, sharing meaning, understanding, linking the past, present, and future, wisdom, peacefulness, a sense of ethics, serving others, inner motivation, and fostering unity. These dimensions can be considered essential when identifying meaningful leaders. This proposed model of leadership, with a focus on meaningfulness, can play a pivotal role in an organization by contributing to self-realization of members and ensuring the unity of purpose. In educational organizations, a meaningful leadership approach can leverage leaders" efforts by providing an intrinsic motivation source for all school members.

Analysis of the Relationship between Teachers' Perceptions of Organizational Identification and Meaningful Work

“…As meaning makers, leaders identify their followers' meanings with those of their organizations and can inspire beyond these legal ties. However, it can protect employees like teachers from emotional problems (Göçen, 2021). Thus, meaningful work can be seen as a structure that is compatible with the individuals, enabling them to realize themselves and contribute to society.…”

“…Meaningful leadership can contribute to self-realization of members in educational organizations, and provide an intrinsic motivation factor for all school members. In qualitative research with teachers, ten main themes about meaningful leadership emerged (Göçen, 2021): a high purpose in life, connecting the past-present-future, allocation of meaning, peacefulness, insight, serving others, a moral compass, fostering unity, and inner motivation. In a similar study on how leaders can build their meaningful work and their employees' meaningful work (Frémeaux & Pavageau, 2022), 42 interviews with leaders were conducted.…”

Meaningful Leadership and Employees’ Well-being: Process through Meaningful Work

“…Therefore, our study contributes to the literature on well-being and leadership in number of ways. First, it responds to the researchers' call to bring an empirical test of meaningful leadership as it is only theoretically defined so for (Frémeaux & Pavageau, 2020;Göçen, 2021;Van Knippenberg, 2020). Second, Frémeaux and Pavageau (2020) theoretically define that meaningful leadership contributes to meaningful work of the employees and our research witnessed it by testing this relationship empirically.…”

“…Various theoretical perspectives on leadership behaviors are available and being discussed in the literature for a long. Meaningful leadership is a new concept, according to which a meaningful leader serves the community and colleagues as a servant leader, understands persons and events as a wise leader, and shares meaning as a moral leader (Göçen, 2021). Despite challenges, he/ she acts fairly, has coherence and supports the principle as an ethical leader, and has purpose pursuit and acts consciously as a visionary and purpose-driven leader (Göçen, 2021).…”

“…There are several theoretical perspectives available to build upon when leaders' behaviors are under discussion, many of which have been discussed many times in published research and few are very scarce. Meaningful leadership being an emerging theoretical perspective is defined by Göçen (2021) as "an approach adopted by leaders that nurture heightened awareness of life goals among others in the organization, which in turn strengthens and satisfies their own sense of meaningfulness". Moreover, Inceoglu et al (2018) suggested that researchers need to understand process through which leaders' behaviors affect the well-being of employees and Arnold et al (2007) found that meaningful work mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and psychological well-being.…”