The Influence of Leadership Style on Employee Task Performance in the Microfinance Industry

Abstract

The study examined the impact of leadership styles on task performance in the micro-finance industry. The study is a quantitative in nature and adopted a cross-sectional research approach. With a sample of 118 employee sampled from Micro-finance firms and were drawn using the convenience sample technique. The researcher gathered data on the variables of interest and used both descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze the data and test the various hypotheses. Data was collected through the administration of questionnaires and was analyzed using SPSS. The findings of the research disclosed that the transformational leadership style was the dominant style in the Micro-finance industry. Again, it was discovered that transformational leadership style had a significant positive relationship with task performance; whiles transactional leadership style also correlated positively with task performance. From the findings of the study, it was deduced that gender did not account for any major differences in leadership experience among employees. It was thus recommended that managers are trained and encouraged to exhibit both transformational and transactional leadership in order to engender task performance among their employees.