The Relationship Between Manager’s Leadership Style and Employee Engagement in Geothermal Development Company (Gdc)

Abstract

Leadership style is a pattern of behavior designed to integrate organizational and personal interest in pursuit of an objective. The guidance and direction of the leaders, that is leadership style is important in ensuring that strategies are implemented successfully by an engaged work force. Employees who are engaged in their work in the organizations give companies crucial competitive advantages including higher productivity and lower employee turnover. This research investigated the relationship between managers leadership style and employee engagement in an organization. The first objective of the study was to establish the leadership styles at Geothermal Development Company. The second objective was to establish the level of employee engagement in Geothermal Development Company, the third objective was to find out the relationship between managers leadership style and employee engagement in Geothermal Development Company. This study adopted a descriptive survey design in the investigation of the objectives. Stratified sampling technique was used to select the sample after which stratified random sampling was used to select 200 respondents from the organization. The study used both primary and secondary data. The data collected was analyzed using mean, standard deviation and regression analysis. The key findings of the study were that Geothermal Development Company predominantly uses democratic leadership style, and transformational leadership style. Another key finding is that the level of employee engagement is relatively low in the organization and the last finding was that their existed a direct relationship between managers leadership style and employee engagement. The implication of the study was that leadership styles are important in influencing employee engagement. Organizations should pay attention to this and incorporate leadership styles as one of the strategies in ensuring achievement of employee engagement. The study recommends that organizations should be aware that transformational and democratic leadership styles are important and implement them. The study also recommends that organizations should use the various leadership styles characteristics to influence employee engagement with regard to goal achievement. It can be concluded that by allowing employee to make their own decisions about work, to control their work, and to achieve their goals may help employees become more engaged in their jobs. Further to this it is recommended that managers within organizations involve employees more in setting goals. Organizations also need to formulate ways of recognition of contribution by employees that would help define what determines employee engagement.