Too tired to lead?: How stress, mental health conditions, and sleep quality shape principals’ self-efficacy and leave intentions

Principal turnover undermines school improvement efforts, teacher retention, and educational equity, yet research on how psychological and physiological factors influence leadership practice and sustainability is limited. This study draws upon organizational stress theories to model how work-stress influences principals’ intentions to leave their positions through stress, mental health, and sleep. Using survey data from 188 public, noncharter school principals in Texas, US, a path analysis was conducted to examine direct and indirect pathways between work-stress and principals’ leave intentions. Results show that the majority of principals struggle with high work-stress, moderate anxiety and depression symptoms, and poor sleep quality. Further, principals’ anxiety, depression, sleep quality, and leadership self-efficacy were significant mediators between work-stress and leave intentions accounting for nearly 40% of the variance. Stress-induced anxiety was related to lower sleep quality and higher leave intentions, whereas stress-induced depression was related to lower sleep quality and leadership self-efficacy that then act as serial mediators of leave intentions. This finding underscores the unique paths through which mental health conditions operate. While causes of leadership ill-being are systemically rooted, findings from this study highlight stress, mental health, and sleep as malleable levers for change to support principals’ leadership self-efficacy and reduce turnover risk.