Relationship between manager’s empathy and leadership performance in Kenya

Abstract

There is a need to help managers at the South Eastern Kenya University to attain higher levels of empathy. This is because empathy is known to have a strong influence on leadership performance. This study focused on the relationship between manager’s empathy and leadership performance in South Eastern Kenya University, Kenya. The study was conducted in South Eastern Kenya University. It targeted all the 75 managers in the 75 Departments at South Eastern Kenya University. Each of these departments is headed by one manager.4 out of the 75 managers were used for pilot study leaving the researcher with a sample of 71. The researcher employed purposive and census sampling techniques in selecting a sample of 71 respondents. It employed an ex post facto research design. The researcher tried to relate this after - the - fact treatment to an outcome. The target population included all the 75 managers in South Eastern Kenya University. Data was collected through administration of structured questionnaires with the selected respondents. The questionnaire used a five - point range Likert scale to assess strategic managers’ empathy and leadership performance. The collected data was then processed and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) version 28.0 for windows. The findings of the study showed that there is a strong positive (r = 0.831, p=0.000) relationship between empathy and leadership performance. The findings of this study could help universities to boost the level of manager’s empathy and this in turn may lead to the improvement in leadership performance. The study recommends that: the University administration should continually train their staff on the relationship between the managers’ empathy and leadership Performance; they should employ personnel with high degree of empathy skills through conducting interviews with questionnaires that assess these attributes and invest heavily in teamwork activities so that they may have employees who have high degree of empathy.