LEADERSHIP SKILL AMONG FRONT LINE MANAGERS OF CO

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess leadership skills among frontline managers (Branch Managers and Customer Service Managers) of Commercial Bank of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. For the reason of the banking industry service nature, front line managers are the lynchpin to organizational performance and business results if they are provided with a right knowledge and skill to do the job so, leadership development is becoming an increasingly critical and strategic imperative for Commercial Bank of Ethiopia to be competitive in the current business environment. The target groups selected for this study were three: first-line managers namely branch managers and customer service managers and non managerial staffs of grade IV, III and II branches located under the four district offices of Addis Ababa. 370 sample participants were selected from the total population (92 FLMs and 278 non managerial staffs). The Closed ended questionnaire prepared based on various scholars work were distributed to 46 branches by using simple random and purposive sampling method. From this data 304 of them were returned and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Interpretation is made on the mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage results. The findings from the overall result of the research show that The overall result of the perception of the non managerial staffs about their FLMs level of leadership skill shows that staffs are nearly agreed with the personal quality of their FLMs’ However, they are neutral or negative thought about their FLMs skill of positioning, purpose, people and performance management or they believe that there is a major skill gap on FLMs. And the perception of FLMs’ on their leadership skill shows that FLMs are strongly agreed with their personal quality skill and also moderately agreed with their skill of positioning, purpose, people and performance management. This indicates that the two group perception was contradicting to each other. And also the FLMs’ responded that from the selected obstacle work overload and lack of training has a significant effect or association with their staff management role. Finally, the researcher recommends that CBE human resource development office should identify the leadership skill gap of FLMs and implement the most effective leadership development method and work more on leadership skill development of frontline managers especially on young and low experienced once and empowerment of women’s to leadership should also be put into practice to get the benefit of gender diversity on leadership. As the main focus of this study was assessing the results provided by the non managerial employees of branches and FLMs, a further related study were recommended with more detail discussion on the leadership skill quality differences between top level management and frontline Managers as well as among different levels of line managers by using appropriate statistical measurement technique.