An exploratory study of a leadership style and communication style measure for a sample of men and women elementary school principals in North Carolina

The purpose of this study was to: 1) conduct exploratory psychometric and statistical analyses of self rating measures of leadership (LEAD-Self) and communicator style (CSM) using a sample of male and female elementary school principals (N=251) and 2) determine any significant sex differences in responses to the two measures. Demographic data were collected to supplement the analyses. The results showed that there were no differences between the men and women on the LEAD-Self leadership categories. Men and women equally chose the selling and participating styles. Also, no sex differences were obtained for the leadership adaptability scores from the LEAD-Self. On the communication style measure women showed significantly higher mean scores on the subscales of: Friendly, Animated/Expressive, Open, Dominant, and Attentive. Similar gender differences have been reported in previous studies except for the Dominant difference, where men have usually been higher. Factor analyses of the CSM subscales by sex showed remarkable similarities between the factors and Norton's (1983) subscales. A comparison of the factors for men and women showed strong similarities. The CSM items for men and women loaded on ten factors almost the same as Norton's (1983) eleven subscales with the exception of the Animated/Expressive and Dramatic subscales. These subscales loaded on a single factor for men and women. The items for the Attentive and Precise subscales loaded on a single factor for men but on different factors for women