Academic Leaders’ Self Emotion And Their Leadership Styles In Private Universities In Uganda

Academic Leaders’ Self Emotion And Their Leadership Styles In Private Universities In Uganda

 Kiggundu Zaharah Faridah, Kayindu Vincent, Ganatusanga Haruna Sinan, Kamya Edward
Kampala International University, Uganda

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2023.7485

 Received: 03 April 2023; Accepted: 18 April 2023; Published: 14 May 2023

ABSTRACT

Self-conscious emotions are those affected by how we see ourselves and how we think others perceive us. They include emotions like pride, jealousy, and embarrassment. Self-consciousness and self-awareness are sometimes healthy signs of emotional maturity. They can help you fit in and function within a community This is part of the study carried out in private universities in Uganda. It examined the relationship between academic leaders’ self emotion and their leadership styles in private universities in Uganda. Self emotion was conceptualized as accurate assessment and accurate self awareness and self Confidence. The findings revealed that there is no significant relationship between academic leaders’ self emotion and their leadership styles in private universities in Uganda.

Key words: Academic leaders; Self emotion; Leadership styles; Private universities

INTRODUCTION

Not until the year 1988 did the first private university in Uganda come in existence and by the year 2022, there were 33 private universities in Uganda. These universities are mushrooming at a high speed but one of the challenges they are facing is poor management as many of them use emotions to make decisions (Kayindu, Kazibwe and Turyatemba (2019). It is however not clear how these managers, especially those directly concerned with academic affairs are influence by their emotions to choose the leadership style to use. Therefore, a study was carried out to investigate this. The study was guided by the hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between the level of self confidence and leadership styles.

LITERATURE REVIEW

 Having self-conscious emotions in moderate amounts is healthy. Having overwhelming self-conscious emotions isn’t. The symptoms of healthy self-conscious emotions include having pride in accomplishments, enjoying engaging in social environments and apologizing for mistakes and taking responsibility. Symptoms of unhealthy self-conscious emotions include responding to embarrassment with anger and hostility; avoiding social experiences; placing blame on others for one’s mistakes; feeling responsible for wrongs made against yourself; having low self-esteem; as well as experiencing agitation, anxiety, depression, or nervousness (Khokhar, 2009).

 Emotional competence is particularly central to leadership, a role whose essence is getting others do their jobs more effectively. Interpersonal ineptitude in leaders, lowers everyone’s performance, wastes time, creates acrimony, corrodes motivation and commitment, and builds hostility and apathy. A leader’s strengths or weaknesses in emotional competence can be measured in the gain or loss to the organization of the fullest talents of those they manage (Goleman, 1998).

The search for personality, social, physical or intellectual attributes that would describe leaders and non leaders goes back to empirical investigations done by psychologists in the 1930s in the late 1980s the trait theory was revisited with the hope to identify the trait of leaders so that it could be more easier to select people to fill leadership roles (Robbins, 1998).

University leadership and management has significantly changed and these have impediments that hamper the ability to lead and perform roles. Leadership styles are key resources for building and maintaining teams of educational profession as well as for achieving change and reform in an effective and efficient way. Of recent in Uganda, the situation on higher education and leadership has taken a different trend where investors, religious bodies, group of professionals, regional based leaders have set up universities and the rate at which universities are growing is high. Currently, there are about 30 Universities in Uganda and this growing trend has raised questions from the public on the issue of leadership styles.

Apparently, as observed by Ounyemi(2007), there have been concerns about how academic administrators in Ugandan Universities generally carryout their duties. Additionally in Ugandan Universities, cases of student strikes, high labour turnovers, internal organizational conflicts, social loafing by staff, low relationships between senior and junior staff all these have led to assertions that academic leaders in today’s competitive and demanding workplace, Universities in particular are dependant on their own technical skills and do not have working relationships with people below them. Is there something unique in the way University administrators in Uganda behave?

 How should the Universities select the right people to assume formal positions requiring leadership? Are the leaders in Universities free to vent their anger, catostrophy or otherwise let distressing emotions run amok? Thus handling an emotional situation demands troubleshooting skills, being able to establish trust and rapport quikly, to listen well and to persuade and sell a recommendation ( Goleman, 1998). One therefore needs capacities like self awareness, perspective talking, sense of presence since you are the person at table that everyone is looking and relying on. Emotional intelligence requires a leader to manage own emotions to be able to manage others in a positive way.

It is however a query If a leader’s self emotions and other attendant factors may have a bearing on leadership styles of administrators in Ugandan Universities? Thus within this context, the researcher conceived this study.

Emotional Self awareness and Leadership styles;

Emotional self awareness also termed as self awareness refers to knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources and intuitions. Also recognizing one’s emotions and their effects(Goleman, 1998). Goleman goes ahead to explain that, different leaders have different ways of handling situations in order to balance their duties at work places through decision making, intuition may play its biggest role in work life when it comes to people however this ability lies at the heart of self awareness. Awareness of how our emotions affect what we are doing is fundamental. Administrators who lack this ability are vulnerable like the investment banker to being sidetracked by emotions run amok. Thus a leader who excels in this competence, is aware of his/her emotions at any given moment often recognizing how those emotions feel physically as these feelings can be both articulated and demonstrated.

Self awareness is cornerstone in leadership styles because its serves as an inner baramoter, gauging whether what we are doing is indeed worthwhile. (Goleman, 1995), administrators who never make connection between how they behave under stress and their ability to retain loyality and talent or meet the bottomline, may move into their late forties and get an inking that something’s been missing. This can lead to using a wrong style of management at a particular circumstance due to the inner turmoil the administrator has moved with to work.

Accurate self assessment and leadership styles

Accurate self assessment accounts for knowing one’s strengths and limits. It explains why different personalities perceive and do things differently? (Goleman, 1998). Indeed he further argues that accurate assessment is pivotal in administration because it helps administrators have aspects like knowing their strength, weakenesses, be reflective, learning form experience, open to candid, feedback, new perpespectives, continuous learning, self development and able to show a sense of humour and perspectives about themselves. Salovey and Mayer etal (1995), observe that if cases of conflict at different  levels of the organization, universities in particular are to be curbed, the academic administrators in Universities need therefore to be initiators or promoters of the aspects of accurate self assessment adding that if the administrator has got poor working relationships with his surbodinates, the imitation of accurate self assessment among subordinates may tend to be difficult since its hard to measure one’s self assessment which may be among the factors affecting leadership styles.

In congruence to the above, Goleman(1998) asserts that, Mort awakening started when he accepted an invitation to become CEO of Perot systems, a computer service company to the organizational world he had known years earlier as CEO of the computer services gaint EDS, everything was different not just the technology , the market and the customers but also the people who worked for him and their reasons for working. He realized that, he too must change by creating an understing of himself.

He therefore went through what he described as a time of intense self- examination wrestling with questions that went to the heart of leadership style he had prided himself on. Academic leaders in Ugandan Universities therefore need to be keen on the style of leadership they use so as not to create immense personal misery for their surbordinates. This is inline with the statement made by Jeo in Goleman (1998), that a leader today needs to be receptive and honest. It’s therefore imperative for the leader to first discover himself, identify the problem before he can lead.

Self Confidence and Leadership styles

Of late, we can nolonger let go emotional Intelligence in management of Universities. Emotional intelligence is increasingly relevant to leadership and management because it provides a new paradigm of understanding and assessing one’s behavior, style of management, attitudes, interpersonal skills and potential (Khokhar, 2009). Although Universities have the right to hire the right people to fit in the right jobs, self confidence as an element of self emotions has to be considered vital and a sin qua of superior performance and without it, the administrator may lack the conviction that is essential for taking on tough chanllenges. Self confidence thus gives the requisite of self assurance for plunging a head in as a leader. Therefore, those who lack self confidence every failure confirms a sense of incompetence. The absence of self confidence powerlessness and crippling self doubt. Extreme self confidence on the other hand may look like arrongance, especially if the person lacks social skills.

METHODS

The study was conducted following a quantitative Ex-post facto design. Data was collected through administering two sets of questionnaires to a sample of 299 both male and female administrators who were chosen from the middle level units in the university. The data collected were edited, coded and entered after which summary statics were generated and multiple regression analysis were conducted.  The validity of the data collection instruments was ascertained through expert judgment while reliability was done through pretesting.

Sample

299 respondents participated in this study and these involved HODs, Deans, Directors, Associate deans who were selected from eight Universities in Uganda.

Data Analysis

Pearson’s Linear Correlation Co-efficient was used to measure the relationship between the two variables among administrators in selected Universities in Uganda.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The findings indicated a non significant relationship between academic leaders’ self emotion and their leadership styles in private universities in Uganda (sig, 0.57) as shown in table 1.

Table 1 showing the relationship between academic leaders’ self emotion and their leadership styles in private universities in Uganda

Source: Primary data

Findings as shown in table 1 revealed that there is no significant relationship between academic leaders’ self emotion and their leadership styles. Self-conscious emotions, such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride, are a variety of social emotions that relate to our sense of self and our consciousness of others’ reactions to us. Self-consciousness and self-awareness are sometimes healthy signs of emotional maturity. They can help a person fit in and function within a community. Feeling guilty after saying something hurtful is often perceived as showing good character. Feeling remorse after making a mistake may help patch up relationships. Positive self-conscious emotions and negative self-conscious emotions can be healthy and powerful motivators. In this way, leaders dominated by such are more likely to use leadership styles like democratic style. Excessive self-conscious emotions can be extremely unhealthy. They may worsen symptoms from conditions like anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder. They can also cause social anxiety and isolation and in organizations, a leader with such can easily use leadership styles like laissez faire style and autocracy. This relates to a study carried out in secondary schools in Wakiso district which unearthed that the laissez faire and autocratic headteachers were mainly in government aided schools especially the SEED schools. In such schools, headteachers are like small gods; pride and arrogance is the norm (Kayindu, 2020). Though this study which was not carried out in universities gives an impression that the management of educational institutions, whether primary, secondary, tertiary institutions or universities, does not differ much as in all institutions, serious, committed, as well as the mediocre leaders or managers are found.

 These findings are in line with a statement that, self confidence may provide individual administrators with greater perceived control over interpersonal events(Goleman, 1998) and that these administrators possess high levels of self efficacy and provide orientation for followers.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A change in emotional intelligence is likely to affect leadership styles. To this end therefore, it is recommended that academic administrators as well as educational governing bodies in Uganda, need to  take into account assessment of emotional intelligence skills.

REFERENCES

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