Okul Müdürlerine Yönelik Motivasyonel Dil Ölçeği: Türk Kültürüne Uyarlama, Dil Geçerliği ve Faktör Yapısının İncelenmesi

Many researches have been conducted on leadership style. There is no ideal definition and way found in the literature to define and develop leadership. Every society has taxonomied leadership according to their values. The term “born to be a leader” belongs to the leadership style approach that purports leadership as genetically gained properties. The physical traits depicted are found in the basement of the trait approach. Having found some adverse outcomes in the trait approach, the style approach is starting to become emphasized. This approach analyzes and defines the behaviors of successful leaders and deals with the fact that a leaders’ ability to solve problems come from his/her effective problem solving ability. According to studies that ascertain the situations of a leader’ successes, the reason leaders emerge is due to the environment in which he/she dwells. The core point is that no leader's behavior is valid in every situation. Different leaders’ behaviors are at stake in different situations and groups (Şişman, 2011). A newer, realistic theory was needed because criticism about the trait and style approaches. With the rise of research on leadership, the perception that one trait cannot define leadership ability and that no leadership behavior exists that fits in every situation has caused situational leadership to emerge, consisting of both approach-trait and style-trait, which considers the work of necessity and quality. Blanchard (2007), who studies situational leadership, posits that a leader must adapt his effective leadership approach to his substantial context, reclaiming his followers' loyalty and efficiency for the task. As for Fiedler’s (1971) situational approach, a leader's effectiveness depends on the interaction between leaders and the context in which events occur. The core aim of this approach is to define factors that orchestrate the relations between a leader's traits, behaviors, and performances. The Path-Goal theory’s theoretical background relies on the expectancy theory of motivation. The behavior grid of followers depends on the need of the conduct to be satisfied. Path-Goal theory seeks for how to find a method in which a leader's effect causes the followers to increase their success rate. This approach has a third dimension that motivates the followers to reach their aims by their leader (Sökmen & Boylu, 2009). Although most of researches have implicitly emphasized motivation and communication, the studies that have questioned the language effects on personal and organizational outcomes remain limited (Mert, Keskin & Baş, 2011). Mayfield, Mayfield and Kopf (1995) express on a scale improvement study that leadership studies have concentrated mostly on behavior, traits, and abilities; however, the language that leaders use has not been scrutinized much. Deriving from the idea that the language leaders use has not been scrutinized much, Mayfield, Mayfield and Kopf (1995) developed a scale to find the most effective level of communicative language ability of a leader can use on a follower. They acknowledge that language is important from the perspective of followers' motivation and output. Managerial communication can function in three ways according psycholinguistics and language theory. (a) Perlocutionary language is used for giving direction and reducing uncertainty. When a manager provides information and feedback about a worker’s tasks, goals, and rewards, the worker’s motivation and job satisfaction is likely to increase (b). Illocutionary language occurs when a manager shows e ncouragement, empathy, and concern through communication, (c) Locutionary language is explanatory speech. Through such speech a manager can help workers understand the organization’s unique culture, structure, rules and values. Locutionary language is a meaning-making communication style. The environment in which a follower is working must have symbolic statue. The meaning constituted in the organization serves as interior and exterior award, presenting social interaction and integration for creating an organizational identity for followers, though (Sullivan, 1988; Mayfield, Mayfield & Kopf, 1995; Mayfield, Mayfield & Kopf, 1998; Karaaslan, 2010; Mert, Keskin & Baş, 2011). Research on motivational language is barely found in the Turkish body of literature. One of the most important is the validity and reliability of motivational language scale (Mert, Keskin & Baş, 2011). The research tested the scale developed by Mayfield, Mayfield and Kopf (1995) in terms of reliability and validity. The research performed by Mert, Keskin and Baş (2011) is an important step that gave a way to Motivational Language Theory. Another is the research on the mediation effect of Leader-Member Exchange for the relationship between Motivational language and organizational citizenship (Karaaslan, 2010). We intended to define the situation as how school principals use motivational language with teachers (the heart of the school), including which variables they speak in their daily spoken activities, and collecting the data to learn what kind of outcomes this causes. Upon surveying the literature we did not find any trace of how educational administrators use motivational language. We aim to compel an empiric study to analyze the factor structure of the Motivational Language Scale and adapting this to Turkish culture in order to learn the perceptions of the schools’ teachers