The impact of leadership style for the employees performance in an organization
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Leadership is an important area in management that occupies of central position in our everyday life. It involves the still of leading and dealing with people. One thing among human group is that there is always a leader otherwise the group cannot live to achieve its purpose (Epley, 2020). The success in leading a group is contingent upon both leader’s ability to hold power effectively and the existence of an opportunistic situation. The problems which result within organizational members disagree on both the nature of the goals of which people aspire, and the art of leadership. Leadership as we use the term in this work refers to behaviour undertaken within the context of an organization that influence the ways in which other organizational members behave (Goleman, et al 2022),. It could be observed that leadership and management envisages deeply into what the organization can achieve if the quality of recognition is accorded to them. Leadership includes the source of influences that are built into positions in an organizational hierarchy. These include organizational sanctioned rewards and punishment authority and also expert power. It could be seen however that subordinates within the organization, though not all seem to enjoy the influence that exist all over the above organizational hierarchy provided by them in the organization (Veronica C, 2021).
Leaders need a new mix of competencies to properly shape their board and develop their subordinates to meet 21st-century challenges. Shifting cultures, rapidly changing technology and other factors will require new patterns of leadership (Veronica C, 2021).. The 21st-century leaders will need greater awareness of diverse factors and new sets of competencies - characteristics that lead to success on the job-to help them make relevant, correct and timely decisions in the leadership of change and leadership of subordinates (Sashkin & Sashkin, 2019).
Performance is an increasingly important concern for a leader who like to always see increasing performance and can employ appropriate styles to harmonize his or her subordinates to increase their performances to meet up with customers demand will be appropriate here (Hade 2022). On the other hand, the leadership style (organizational managers) might be using to control their subordinates might be downgrading the performances of their subordinates because of the way they perceived their leaders (manager’s style). In view of this, this study will be establish to find out how leadership styles could linked to performance of its employees as far as the Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State is concern.
Balanga local government area is one of the local government areas in Gombe state Nigeria. It has its administrative headquarters located in Balanga town. The local government area was created in 1991. The Balanga local government area council oversees the public administration of the local government area and the legislative council of Balanga local government area makes law that governs the local government.
1.2 Statement of the problem
In various institutions and organizations such as: ministries, agencies and government parastastal including Balanga Local Government Area, they need sound leadership styles which include corporate approaches, authoritative approaches and laissez-faire approaches to leadership. However, at Balanga Local Government area, there is common friction between individual responsibilities and roles, as stated by the annual review report by Balanga Local Government Area (2015) this causes internal politics. One of the problems of leadership style on employee’s performance is the inflexibility of the leadership styles by most leaders. Most leaders fail to adjust their style of leadership to the changing situation and current matters arising. The failure is a result of the lack of understanding the fact that no one particular style of leadership can fit into all conditions. Another of the problem of leadership style on worker’s performance is the absence of an effective line of communication between the manager and their employees. Communication gaps that exist between leaders and their subordinates in most organisations are reasons why employee’s performances are low. Leadership is said to be the backbone of any organisation. If the leadership style of any organisation is poor, it will tell on the overall performance of the organisation. With this understanding, most organisations are faced with the problems of how to investigate the leadership styles and organisational effectiveness. Knowing whether the relationship between leaders and subordinates affect organisational growth and even having broad knowledge of the leadership style adopted by the organisation can improve organisational effectiveness. It is on this background that this research aims to assess the effect of different leadership styles on the performance of workers at Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State
1.3 Research Objective
The objective of this study was therefore to investigate the effect of different leadership styles on the performance of workers at Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
1.3.2 Specific Objectives
The study was guided by the following specific objectives:
1. To evaluate the effects of transformational leadership on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
2. To evaluate the effect of transactional leadership on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
3. To evaluate the effect of laissez-faire leadership style on worker performance Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
1.4 Research Questions
The study sought to answer the following questions;
1. What is the effect of transformational leadership style on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State?
2. What is the effect of transactional leadership style on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State?
3. What is the effect of laissez -faire leadership style on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State?
1.5 Hypothesis
The following are the hypothesis develop for this study.
1. There is no significance effect of transformational leadership style on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
2. There is no significance effect of transactional leadership on worker performance in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
3. There is no significance effect of laissez-faire leadership style on worker performance Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
1.6 significance of the study
The study findings are expected to benefit Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State, Academicians, and Ministries, Parastatal, agencies and organizations intending to obtain better performance from their workers by using new approaches to leadership and reducing the influence of authoritative leadership as well as increasing the use of corporate leadership.
The study would also be useful to leaders, councilors, and managers in organizations by employing leadership styles in relevant situations. This would help reduce social accidents, wastage and internal conflicts in the working environment.
The research is also intended to be useful to future researchers, students and academicians to see the importance of different leadership styles on performance. This study will add to existing knowledge.
1.6 Scope of the Study
This research study will be delimited to identifying the effect of different leadership styles on the performance of workers at Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State. Questionnaires will be used in collecting data from staff of Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
There is bound to be problems in the course of carrying out any research. The ability of the researcher to minimize the problems will go a long way to improve the quality of the work. Also, time and financial constraints posed a lot of limitations to this study. Finally, the work is limited in Balanga Local Government Area of Gombe State. This being so, care should be taken in generalizing the findings to firms outside the area of study.
1.8 Operational Definition of the Terms
Effect: The term effect can be seen as a change that somebody caused in somebody or something else. (According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 8Th edition).
Leadership Style: John F’. Mees (2015) defined leadership style as a right of a manager to assign duties to the employee i.e. the process and method of getting people to do what the leader wants.
Employee: An employee is simply refers to someone employed by an employer in an organization to work under another person known as the manager or the supervisor officer.
Performance: This is the accomplished or to do a certain piece of work to the degree which is intended according to the organizational goals.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter reviews relevant literature written by other authors relating to leadership styles in organizations. The chapter is made up of conceptual framework, theoretical and the empirical literature.
2.1 The conceptual Review
This part of the work will be defining key terms and concepts like leadership, leadership styles and different types of leadership styles like autocratic and laissez faire leadership.
2.1.1 Leadership Concept
According to Lawal (2015) Leadership is the process of influencing others to work willingly toward an organizational goal with confidence. Leadership is generally defined simply as the process of influencing people to direct their efforts toward achievement of some particular goal or goals. According to Koontz et al (2015), leadership is generally defined simply as the art of influencing people so that they will strive willingly towards the achievement of group goals. This concept can be enlarging to include not only willingness to work but with zeal and confidence.
Leadership style is the manner and approach of providing, direction, implementing plans and motivating people as seen by the employees, it includes the total pattern of explicit and implicit actions of their leaders (Davis 2016).
2.1.4 Leadership and Leadership Style
Although leadership has been well researched over the years, there is still lack of a definition that is universally accepted. Just like Stogdill (1974) puts it, “There are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept”. The following are a few examples of such definitions Talat et al (2015) asserts that leadership is wide spread process, which calls for authority, responsibility and delegation of power. Leaders help to direct, guide and persuade their followers (workers) towards achieving their personal and organizational goals and objectives. According to Kumar (2014) “leadership is leadership is defined as a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent”. These are accomplished through the application of leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills. Leadership is the integrated sharing of vision, resources, and value to induce positive change. It is the ability to build up confidence and zeal among people and to create an urge in them to be led.
Wammy & Swammy (2014) see leadership as a social influence process in which the leader seeks the voluntary participation of subordinates in an effort to reach organization goals and therefore a leader is a person who delegates or influences others to act so as to carry out specified objectives. Memon (2014) defines leadership as process by which an individual influences the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of others by taking responsibility for setting direction for the firm, others to see and visualize what lies ahead and figure out how to archive it.
Leslie et al (2017) asserts that leadership is the ability to influence people to willingly follow one’s guidance or adhere to one’s decisions. On the other hand who a leader is; one who obtains followers and influence them in setting and achieving objectives. In Sundi (2017), “Leadership is the ability to convince and mobilize others to work together as a team under his leadership to achieve a certain goal”. Leadership is the influencing process of leaders and followers to achieve organizational objectives through change Lussier and Achua (2018). They have explained in their book that there are five key elements of this definition as illustrated in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1 Leadership Definition’s Key Elements
Source: Adapted from Lussier and Achua (2018) page 7
According to Hill (2018). Leadership is the process of motivating, influencing and directing others in the organization to work productively in the pursuit of organization goals. Armstrong (2017), leadership is simply the ability to persuade others willingly to behave differently for achieving the task set for them with the help of the group. Leadership, according to Levine and Crom (1994), “is about listening to people, supporting and encouraging them and involving them in the decision-making and problem-solving processing. It is about building teams and developing their ability to make skillful decisions”.
Conger (2015) define leadership as “individuals who establish direction for a working group of individuals who gain commitment from these group of members to this direction and who then motivate these members to achieve the direction’s outcome”. Leadership style concept.. Cuadrado et al (2017) described leadership style as consistent set of behaviors /patterns, proposing two dimensions in leader’s behavior, structure initiation which includes task oriented leaders and consideration which includes relation oriented leaders. Memon (2014) defines leadership style as a leader’s style of providing direction, motivating people and implementing plans. Leadership styles are seen as approaches that leaders use when leading organizations, departments, or groups (Mehmood & Arif, 2017) Leaders who search for the most effective leadership style may find that a combination of styles is effective because no one leadership style is best (Darling & Leffel, 2017).
Based on the above, this study adopts the definition of leadership by Hill (2018). A well-directed worker is a focused worker in terms of expectations and organizational goals, such individual tend to understand product knowledge, procedures and processes, any time we develop our workers we give them the power and the ability to produce and give their best to the organization hence increased productivity. Leadership style application is determined by leaders themselves. If leadership style applied is good and can give a good direction to subordinates, then it create confidence and work motivation to workers, thus increasing worker morale which also effects on better worker performance.
Leaders must work together with subordinates/workers to achieve better performance. Sudi (2013) in his research, worker performance is very influenced by leadership style.
Date: 2026-08-12 00:00:00.000000