Leadership Behaviour and Its Effectiveness From Subordinates' Perception

This study has four objectives, first to determine the level of leadership effectiveness and leaders’ behaviour from subordinates’ perspective. Second to determine the relationship between leaders’ behaviour and leadership effectiveness. Third to determine the influence of leaders’ behaviour toward leadership effectiveness from subordinates’ perspective and the last one to determine the differences of perceiving leadership effectiveness base on subordinates’ demographic factors. This study is a cross-sectional research, which is using survey method. In gathering the data, the questionnaire is based on the previous study by Brown (1964) and Mirza (2003). The population of this study is 200 academics staff (lecturer) in Universiti Teknology MARA Perlis. A total of 105 usable questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 52.5 percent. Leader behaviour was measured by adopting the general scheme provided by Brown (1964). Decision-making, communication skill, leadership performance and personal characteristics are identified as the most important areas for effective leaders’ behaviour. Leadership effectiveness was measured adopting the scale developed by Cumming (1967). The finding shows that the mean score of the variable above 3.5, the highest is communication skill followed by leadership performance, personal characteristic, leadership effectiveness and decision making skill. Leadership performance, decision-making skill, communication skill and personal characteristic are significantly positive correlated to leadership effectiveness. 40.0 percent of the variance (R-square) in leadership effectiveness has been significantly explained by the four independent variables (leadership performance, decision making skill, communication skill and personal characteristic). The finding also shows that demographic factors (gender, age, seniority and level of education) have no difference on perceiving leadership effectiveness. The findings support past evidence that leadership effectiveness is related to subordinates’ perception