Authentic Leadership Style: Data Analysis

This paper presents the analysis of data collected based on a questionnaire. The data was collected to assess the individual understanding of authentic leadership. Data was collected using a questionnaire with sixteen questions that were pre-designed to ensure that information was collected with regard to four dimensions of authentic leadership. The four processes included the self-awareness perspective, the internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, and relational transparency. While the four phrases were not mentioned in any of the 16 questions, the researchers used a scoring tool which used the sums of the single digit answers provided by the respondents in the questions on the questionnaire.

To score the self-awareness perspective, the researchers summed the answers to items 1, 5, 9, and 13 of the questionnaire. Item 1 tested whether the respondents could list their three greatest weaknesses while item 5 looked into the three greatest strengths. Item 9 looked into how the respondents used feedback especially as a tool of understanding their personality while item 13 looked into whether the respondents accepted the feeling they have about themselves.

The internalized moral perceptive looked into the internal perceptions and perspective on morality. The key focus was on whether the respondents’ actions reflect their core values, whether they allow group pressure to control them, whether other people know where the respondents stood on controversial issues, and whether inherent morals guided the respondents’ actions as leaders.

Balanced processing basically looked into the involvement of others in decision making. The scoring was based on whether the respondents seek others’ opinion before making decisions, whether they listened closely to ideas of those who disagreed with them, whether they emphasized their own point of view at the expense of other people in the organization, and whether they listen carefully to the ideas of other before making decisions.

 Relational transparency perspective focused on the interactions between the respondents as leaders and other people in their environment or organizations. The scoring was based on whether the respondents openly share their feelings with other people, whether they let other people to understand who they (respondents) are as a person, how often they portray a false self-image in front of others, and whether they admit their mistakes to others.

To each of the 16 questions, the respondents were allowed to give an answer in digit 1 to 5 with 1 presenting a strong disagreement and 5 presenting a strong agreement. The lowest expected score was therefore expected at 5 while the highest score was expected at 25. To interpret the scores, the researchers focused on the range between 16 and 20 to read as strong authentic leadership and a score of less than 15 to read as weaker authentic leadership. The data will be analyzed, summarized, and discussed in the following few paragraphs.

Data Analysis

Data was collected from a sample of 30 respondents. Other than the four dimensions described above, the data also included information on the age, gender, education, experience, and position held by the respondents. All respondents were in the 23-34 years age bracket, 21 were with 9 being female. The respondents either had high school level of education, a diploma, bachelor’s degree, or a master’s level of education. Lastly, all the respondents had experience of between 1 and 10 years. The raw data summaries are presented in the following four tables.

The following pie chart presents the ages of the respondents grouped in the age brackets shown in the key area of the pie chart.

In the following few sections, this paper will look into the results of data analysis on each of the four dimensions of authentic leadership, focusing majorly on the descriptive statistics

Self-Awareness Process

The analysis of the data collected for self-awareness from each of the respondents indicates that the largest score was 18 while the smallest was at 12. The standard deviation was 1.56 while the Mean stood at 15.1 and the median was at 15. The 95% confidence interval is at 0.58 indicating that majority of the respondents stand in the 0.58 deviations from the mean.

To rate the scores, the COUNTIF function in Microsoft Excel was used. It indicates that 14 out of the 30 respondents had stronger self-awareness while the rest 16 had weaker self-awareness.

Internalized Moral Perspective 

The analysis of the Internalized moral Perspective reveals that the sample had a mean of 14.67, median of 15, and a mode of 19. The standard deviation stood at 3.25 while the minimum and maximum scores were at 8 and 19 respectively. The confidence interval at 95% confidence level was at 1.21 points from the mean.

From the COUNTIF function of MS Excel, 11 respondents had stronger internalized moral perspective while 19 respondents had weaker internalized moral perspective.

Balanced Processing

The analysis of balanced processing dimension revealed that the sample had a mean of 14.6 indicating a weaker level of balanced processing. The mode was at 14 while the median was 14.5. The standard deviation was at 2.84 deviations with a confidence level 1.06 at 95% confidence level. Additionally, the minimum and maximum scores were at 8 and 19 respectively.

From the COUNTIF function, the respondents with a stronger balanced processing were at 13 while those with weaker balanced processing were 17.

Relational Transparency

The mean for the relational transparency scores stood at 13.3 and this can be interpreted to mean that the majority of the respondents had weaker relational transparency. The mode was at 17 while the median stood at 13 scores. The standard deviation was found to be at 2.75 while the minimum and maximum scores stood at 10 and 17 points respectively.

From the COUNTIF function, the respondents with strong relational transparency were only 9 while the rest (21) had weaker relational transparency.

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Authentic Leadership Style: Data Analysis