Influence of Leadership Styles on Community Development Projects in Ilorin Metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Many communities have been developed through their local leaders who did not only act as pioneers of projects but also helped in influencing and motivating their people to action. For any community development projects to be successful, influential local leaders must be involved else they might undermine the progress of such projects. The research design adopted for this study was descriptive survey method. The instrument used for the study was tagged Leadership Style and Community Development Questionnaire (LSCQ) with the reliability value of 0.82, while the data collected were analysed with mean, standard deviation and multiple regression. The population of the study comprised of the residents of Ilorin metropolis while 300 participants were selected using simple random sampling technique. Therefore, the combination of the different leadership styles (independent variables) significantly predicted community development (dependent variable) (F(3, 296) = 8.009, p<0.05). Thus, there was significant influence of Leadership Styles (Democratic, Laissez-faire and Autocratic) on the community development. Thus, it was recommended that community leaders should always be diplomatic and they should adopt appropriate leadership styles that are prone to bringing about successful development within the community.