Leadership Behaviour and Employee Morale within the Department of Agriculture

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the leadership behaviour of deputy directors of the Department of Agriculture and establish how those leadership behaviours of deputy directors impacted the employee morale of their subordinates.

METHODOLOGY
The study took place within 30 functional units (directorates) of the Department of Agriculture, involving 15 directors (50% response rate), 32 deputy directors (40% response rate), and 76 subordinates (32% response rate). Deputy directors completed the LPI-Self and the LPI-Observer was completed by their director and subordinates.

KEY FINDINGS
Deputy directors reported engaging most frequently in Enable, following by Model and Encourage, and then Challenge and Inspire. Both directors and subordinates had Enable ranked most frequently and Challenge ranked least frequently. The average scores of deputy directors were higher than those from their observers, while the average scores from the two observer groups were relatively similar. Comparisons with the Kouzes Posner normative database indicated that deputy directors’ leadership practice scores were in the “moderate” range of the distribution, while the scores from their observers (both directors and subordinates) were in the “low” range of the distribution.