How to get through hard times: Principals' listening buffers teachers' stress on turnover intention and promotes organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

When principals listen to their teachers, they may foster an open and receptive work environment that helps teachers adapt during stressful times. Two studies examined the role of perceived principals’ listening to teachers on workplace outcomes. Study 1 ( N = 218) was conducted during the first nationwide lockdown in Israel. Study 2 ( N = 247) was conducted during a later lockdown and controlled for social support to test the independent effects of the two distinct interpersonal experiences. Findings supported our hypothesis that principals’ listening would relate to lower teacher turnover intention. In addition, in line with our hypothesis, teachers high on perceived stress generally reported higher turnover intentions. However, the detrimental effect of perceived stress was not observed when teachers evaluated their principals as good listeners. Finally, we anticipated and found that principal listening is associated with organizational citizenship behavior. Specifically, teachers were more likely to help one another when feeling listened to by their principals.

Communicating for workplace connection: A longitudinal study of the outcomes of listening training on teachers' autonomy, psychological safety, and relational climate

“…Studies have shown that when teachers feel stress, this negatively affects the quality of their work (Herman et al, 2018). However, recent literature suggests that the harmful outcomes of teaching‐related stressors can be buffered when teachers feel listened to (Rave et al, 2022). Other work indicated that teachers who have positive relational experiences in their workplace that are shaped by the nature of their interactions with their peers show higher workplace well‐being along with the three other key dimensions of positive relationships: autonomy, psychological safety, and energy deriving from a sense of relatedness with others (Kun & Gadanecz, 2022).…”

Rethinking abusive supervision: antecedents and reparative mechanisms of abusive supervision, including supervisor frustration, coworker support, guilt, and supervisor OCB in a mediated-moderation model

“…Role overload frustrates employees. It might result in negative work outcomes, i.e., prohibiting employees from engaging in extra-role behaviors (Montani & Dagenais-Desmarais, 2018), causing stress among family members (Halinski & Duxbury, 2022), and causing frustration among individuals at work (Rafique, 2022). When employees are frustrated, it can lead to supervisor incivility and abuse (Eissa & Lester, 2017;Rafique, 2022), thus threatening positivity at work.…”

“…It might result in negative work outcomes, i.e., prohibiting employees from engaging in extra-role behaviors (Montani & Dagenais-Desmarais, 2018), causing stress among family members (Halinski & Duxbury, 2022), and causing frustration among individuals at work (Rafique, 2022). When employees are frustrated, it can lead to supervisor incivility and abuse (Eissa & Lester, 2017;Rafique, 2022), thus threatening positivity at work. Some workplace events can minimize the impact of workplace frustration, i.e., coworker support that minimizes the negative impact of destructive workplace behaviors (De Clercq et al, 2020;Kashif et al, 2021).…”

“…Supervisors perform OCB to support their subordinates, i.e., to support their families (Yin et al, 2021), thus increasing employees' perceptions of job satisfaction (Ballalis, 2018). The dominant stream of recent research presents perceptions about OCB (Tripathi et al, 2023), which can potentially repair damaged relationships at work (Arshad et al, 2021;Rave et al, 2022). Thus, OCB can be positioned as a reparative mechanism, but research in this direction is scarce (Wuttaphan, 2022).…”

“…This is where we position supervisor frustration and role overload as antecedents of abusive supervision. Supervisor frustration as a consequence of role overload, resulting in abusive behaviors by supervisors, is an interesting topic to advance our understanding in this field (Rafique, 2022).…”