Principals' Leadership Behavior as a Predictor of Counselors' Morale in Secondary Schools in Nigeria

The manner in which a school principal behaves has a direct influence on the behavior and professional disposition of school counselors and other personnel around him. This study investigated principals' leadership behavior, disaggregated into initiating structure (task-oriented behavior) and consideration (relationship-oriented behavior), as a predictor of counsellors' morale in secondary schools in two Local Government Areas of Owerri Education Zone, Imo State. A predictive correlational survey design was adopted. The population comprised 180 secondary school counselors, all of whom were studied using the census method. Two research questions guided the study, and two null hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. Data were collected using the Principals' Leadership Behavior and Counselors' Morale Questionnaire (PLBCMQ), a 24-item four-point Likert-scale instrument validated by three experts and yielding Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of .81, .84 and .87 for its three sections. Research questions were answered using simple linear regression to determine the proportion of variance in counselors' morale accounted for by each leadership dimension, while the hypotheses were tested using the regression ANOVA F-test. Findings revealed that both initiating structure and consideration significantly and positively predicted counselors' morale, with consideration behavior emerging as the markedly stronger predictor, accounting for 37.5% of the variance in morale compared with 14.9% for initiating structure. Based on the findings, it was recommended that principals be trained to prioritize consideration behaviors, such as approachability and recognition of counselors' welfare, alongside, rather than instead of, the task-oriented behaviors needed to keep counseling units functioning effectively.