The assessment of teachers' perceptions of visionary leadership style and it’s effect on psychological well-being: The mediating role of mental toughness

Teachers play an important role in the education of human capital of any society, and the education of human capital is one of their most important duties, therefore, addressing the issue of their psychological well-being and improving it, is considered one of the essential issues. Therefore, it is expected that the leadership style and its related components are effective in communication, morale, motivation, satisfaction and psychological well-being of teachers. Thus the purpose of this research was assessment of teachers' perceptions of visionary leadership style and the effect and it’s effect on psychological well-being with the mediating role of mental toughness.

 The current research was descriptive-correlational and the statistical population included 3252 teachers of Kashan in the academic year of 2021-2022, who by using Cochran's formula and stratified random sampling method 334 teachers were selected as a sample. In order to collect data, three standard questionnaires of visionary leadership style, psychological well-being and mental toughness were used. The reliability of the questionnaires was obtained through Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.99 for visionary leadership, 0.82 for psychological well-being and 0.94 for mental toughness. Data analysis was done using SPSS and Amos softwares.

The results showed that mean of teachers' perception of visionary leadership style (3.56) is higher than average (3), psychological well-being mean (65.82) is higher than average (63) and mental toughness (45.93) is higher than average (42). The path analysis coefficients of the variables showed that the total effects of visionary leadership on psychological well-being was 0.96, visionary leadership on mental toughness was 0.50, and mental toughness on psychological well-being was 0.95.

According to the results of the present research, educational organizations can improve the psychological well-being of employees by developing their leadership styles and adopting appropriate leadership styles, such as the visionary leadership style, which is more suitable for the goals of educational centers.