Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of toxic leadership of principals on creating organizational trauma mediated by emotional exhaustion, organizational cynicism and hypocritical behavior in schools. The research was a descriptive correlational study. The study population was 16750 people in all secondary school teachers in Khuzestan province in 1400-1399, from which a sample of 407 people was selected based on Cochran's formula by stratified random sampling. For data collection, Schmidt (2008) Toxic Leadership Questionnaire, Vivian & Horman (2015) Organizational Trauma Questionnaire, Hills Emotional exhaustion Questionnaire (2019), Nafee Organizational cynicism Questionnaire (2013) and Hadavi Nejad (2011) were used. Cronbach's alpha values were 0.96, 0.93, 0.94, 0.91 and 0.97 respectively. Structural equation modeling through LISREL10.30 software was used to analyze the data. Results: Toxic leadership of principals have a positive and significant effect on organizational trauma in schools (0.32), on emotional exhaustion (0.31), on organizational cynicism (0.28) and on hypocritical behavior (0.34) (P value<0.05). Emotional exhaustion (0.48), organizational cynicism (0.42) and hypocritical behavior (0.45) had a positive and significant effect on organizational trauma (P value <0.05). Toxic leadership of principals had an indirect, positive and significant effect on organizational trauma in schools mediating emotional exhaustion (0.148), organizational cynicism (0.117) and hypocritical behavior (0.153).
