Leadership Styles and Employee Job Performance in Serere District Local Government, Uganda

ABSTRACT This research study was conducted on leadership styles and employee job performance in Serere District Local Government located in Eastern region of Uganda in Teso-sub region. Fhe key leadership styles studied include; transactional, autocratic, Transformational leadership and laissez faire leadership styles. The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between leadership styles and employee job performance. The key objective was to find out the prevailing leadership style in Serere District Local Government. The research study used qualitative, descriptive, co relational and cross sectional research design. The study used a simple random sampling strategy in which a sample size of 181 was selected from the population of 330 comprising of 15 women organizations, 20 youth organizations, 15 opinion leaders and 280 leaders at Serere District Local Government. The significance of the study was to help local governments identify leadership styles associated with jot effectiveness; findings would also be used by other researchers as reference. Meanwhile, the central government would use findings for policy review. A multi factor questionnaire by Bass Avolio (1995) was used to derive a self~ administered questionnaire for data collection. The study revealed that the most dominant leadership style was transformational leadership, followed by transactional, laissez faire while autocratic was the least executed. The study further established a significant strong positive relationship between transformational leadership style and employee job perfo rmance while other leadership styles exhibited some degree of influence on employee job performance. In conclusion. I propose that leaders should use transformational leadership and should execute less of laissez-faire and autocratic styles of leadership. I recommend that government authorities set up training programs to enhance better leadership styles, leaders should always clarify expectations to employees prior start of work, there is also need for policy review by central Government and leaders ought to lead by example, leaders should treat subordinates with respect and confidentiality. Future research should focus on: attitude of employees towards a job and employee performance. Generally, it should focus on other factors that impact on employee job performance other than styles of leadership.