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.