Self and followers’ assessment of four key leadership areas: an action research

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore how a leader of an organization performs on
four key leadership areas as perceived and assessed by himself through
reflection and as appraised by his followers and investigate the implications of
the findings of the study to leadership in the Ethiopian context. The research is
basically a descriptive action research that aims to explore the performance of a
leader of a public training and consultancy institute using instruments that
measure four key areas of leadership, namely, ten leadership qualities, type of
power used by the leader, his role in establishing and leading teams and his
emotional intelligence. To this end, two sets of questionnaires for each of the
areas of leadership were administered to be filled in by the leader himself and by
a sample of his followers drawn from all key divisions of the organization. A
total of 20 subjects (about 40% of the total population) including the leader
filled in the questionnaires. Findings indicated that on the whole the leader and
followers rated differently the leader’s performance on most of the areas of
leadership though insignificantly. The leader scored better and higher on most
areas compared to others’ rating on his performance. Based on the findings of
the study, points of agreement and disagreement between how the leader
perceivedhimself and how he is perceived by followers are explored, and actions
are suggested to improve as needed.