An Examination of the Leadership Styles of UIL OAP Directors

Abstract

The non-experimental correlational study focused on the relationship between University Interscholastic League (UIL) One-Act Play (OAP) directors’ leadership styles, degrees, years of experience, and success in the competition. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) provided leadership insights from high school directors in Texas who compete in the yearly UIL OAP competition. A Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, scatterplots, ANOVAs, and post-hoc Tukey HSD tests analyzed data to examine statistically significant differences and relationships. No statistical difference was found between leadership attributes and degree types. Statistically significant differences exist in scores for leadership styles and years of experience Tests revealed differences between years of experience working in education and Transformational and Transactional leadership styles. Specifically, the Transformational characteristics of Idealized Attributes (IA), Idealized Behaviors (IB), and Inspirational Motivation (IM) were significant compared to experience. The Management-by-Exception-Active (MBEA) characteristic was significantly related to Transactional Leadership across experience. Further, results showed a statistically significant relationship between leadership style and success in the UIL OAP competition. Twelve of the fifteen categories examined by the MLQ had a statistically significant relationship with competitive success. Supplementary findings include statistically significant differences between the directors' leadership styles and their ages, their gender, the enrollment size of the school, and the number of years they have directed compared to their competitive success. Future research should utilize multi-rater feedback to examine whether the director’s self-reported leadership style is consistent with stakeholder perception.