**9. Positive leadership sub-dimensions**

#### **9.1 Recognition**

Recognition, reward and appreciation practices by the immediate supervisors at workplace bind employees towards having an affirmative approach in their assignments helping them develop self-efficacy to endure better performance and creating positive reminiscences. Appreciation and recognition influence employees in driving better output efficiency and higher level of engagement. Research indicates that simple recognition increases (31%) productivity in information technology organisation [11], also the performance enhances by (3.1) than negative interactions [12]. When there is encouragement, there is upsurge in employee performance [13] and development leading to employees experiencing a feeling of fulfilment towards the organisation [14]. These factors do create a positive environment for employee's commitment, enthusiasm, rendezvous, achievement, retention. Reward and recognitions means a lot to the employees, it not only creates positive emotions but also enhances one's commitment by creating a psychological feeling of being an integral part of the organisation which is worth more than the reward one receives. It also provides an opportunity to be an ambassador of the organisation and to cultivate an appreciative mind-set and a more collaborative attitude.

#### **9.2 Strength based approach**

It is a way of looking at people as resourceful and is based on social work practice theory, highlighting or giving importance to developing individual's self-determination and competency. A holistic and multidisciplinary approach towards promoting individuals wellbeing. Positive leadership is about fostering employee's strengths to effectively build employees competencies or skills towards utilising them for better performance. Research indicates that there is a relationship amid strengths and engagement, which is central towards employee's affirmative experiences at workplace towards better perform. Gallup study indicates that strength-based approach and development leads to increase in sales by (10–19%): profits (14–29%), customer engagement (3–7%) and engaged employees (9–15%). Positive leader's strengths-based approach is more effective focussing on individual's strengths to higher performance. This promotes employees to thrive by enhancing individual's strengths. Strengths-based practice by leaders empowers employees to nurture vigorous and optimistic workplace environment towards excellence.

#### **9.3 Positive perspective**

Provides a positive platform towards handling uncertainties, it's about how leaders look at challenges as opportunities and provide governance to achieve organisational objectives. They look at challenges as chance for growth and development. It includes de-catastrophizing setbacks, where leaders control perception and provide support or solution towards solving the problems encountered by the team or individuals in their tasks. From leadership point of view, understanding their one perspective and being rational about employee's view point increase their aptitude to lead and serve better. Leaders adopting positive perspective enhance positive outcomes through solutionoriented perspective [8, 15, 16]. The key constituent of resilience is about having a solution approach to problems encountered. When leaders have an optimistic perspective they look at solution than problems and have higher resilience. Due to this factors team members are not possible to flounder in frustration and dissuasion. They confront obstacles head-on, regain lost impetus, and move forward along with team in achieving their objectives. Sometime every individual comes across an uphill situation or tasks. How they handle these situations with positivity matters as set-backs are temporary, having positive perspective is key towards well-being.

#### **10. Methodology**

The study adopted judgmental and stratified sampling to identify the organisations and the employees need for administrating the questionnaire in information technology organisations (ITOs). The inclusion criteria for the employee to qualify for participating in the study was that they must have been employed in the current organisation for 18 months and have minimum experience of 36 months in ITO. About 1800 questionnaires were distributed and 983 fully completed questionnaires were compiled for analysis (54.6% response rate).

Positive leadership measure (PLM), designed by Arakawa and Greenberg [11] was adopted. It measures positive leadership and its sub-dimensions—(i) strengths-based approach (five items), (ii) positive perspective (five items) and (iii) recognition (seven items). The scale consists of twenty (20) items (17 items and (3) three open-ended qualitative questions) with Cronbach's α = 0.885 for the entire scale. Each sub dimension had one open-ended question. Two (2) items were reverse coded. This chapter only focuses on the qualitative analysis of the three sub-dimensions of positive leadership.

The data collected, aided in reporting the perception of the software professionals about their immediate supervisor's positive leadership practices they experienced. The interview was scheduled for a period of 15 min with three open-ended questions addressed to the participant. The design incorporated in framing the questions to map how they perceived their immediate supervisor's strength based approach, positive perspective approach and recognition practices at workplace. The three open-ended questions provided an opportunity for the employees to share their perception or experiences on the three sub-dimensions of positive leadership as experienced from their immediate supervisor. The researcher believes that the employee's perception of experiencing positive

*Positive Leadership Experiences of Software Professionals in Information Technology Organisations DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100805*

leadership practices at workplace would be influenced by their immediate supervisor's positive leadership behaviour or practices exhibited at workplace. The responses provided by the sample were classified under the three sub-dimension of positive leadership relating to approaches of strength based, positive perspective and appreciation and recognition. The responses were stratified into positive and negative responses. Further the statements were content analysed to calculate and examine certain words, their meaning etc. to examine the leadership behaviours experienced by employees at workplace based on the sub-dimension of positive leadership. **Strength based responses** were further segregated into immediate supervisors develop strengths to perform better via (a) encouragement, support, guidance and similar tasks, (b) provide feedback for improvement, (c) opportunity to learn and develop via technology support, training programs and mentoring, (d) do not develop their strengths. **Positive perspective responses** were based on immediate supervisor's emotional support, towards his team members via (a) providing positive interpretation to past experiences to solve problems, (b) assign another technical resource for support and guidance, (c) participate in problem solving exercise, provide alternate views and solves problems, (d) do not support or participate when problems arise. **Appreciation and recognition responses** were grouped in to how often the immediate supervisor uses appreciation, acknowledges and encourages i.e. (a) once in a way, (b) sometimes, (c) frequently or regularly, (d) quarterly or during appraisals. These responses were calculated in percentage to understand the importance of these sub-themes and their influence on the team members towards enhancing their positive outcomes at workplace.

#### **11. Respondent sample**

Positive leadership and its sub-dimensions are explored to understand how they influence employees towards positive outcomes based on the study in ITO with a sample of 1800 software professionals.

Nine hundred and eighty three software professionals participated in this study and shared their feedback on positive leadership behaviour of their immediate supervisor. Male (60%) male and women (40%) participated in the study. They are working in the current ITOs for more than 18 months and been a software professional for more than three years.

#### **12. Results**

The results indicate that the employee's experienced positive leadership practices due to of their immediate supervisors at workplace. They exhibited affirmative behaviour at workplace which created an optimistic environment influencing employees to perform. They also supported and provided solution orientation suggestions to the challenges faced at workplace to achieve the objectives. They emphasised on developing team member's strengths towards better execution of tasks and also appreciated and rewarded their contributions towards the projects or tasks.

**The employees indicated that they experiencing strength-based approach** @ 76% i.e. appreciate team member's strengths, focus on their development and match competence as per tasks. The supervisors exhibited support and encouragement at workplace by developing individual strengths. That is "appreciating employees' strengths, matching talents to tasks, and focusing on strengths more than weaknesses". Around 37% expressed that their immediate supervisors provided positive

feedback and support to learn and develop for improving the competency. Around 29% expressed there was opportunity towards learning in terms of training programs, workshops and webinars. Apart from technical support and mentoring by supervisors.10% felt, they were given similar task based on their strengths to excel in their assignment. However, 30% felt there was no effort from their supervisors to develop their strengths.

The open end question asked respondent if the supervisor supported by appreciating individual competence, provided assignments as per their strengths and paid less attention towards their weakness. Encouragement of supervisors through (a) mentoring and coaching, (b) training programs, (c) provide similar task as per strength were experienced under strength based approach.

Sample positive responses were:

R6: supervisor provides work based on my skills, which creates confidence in me to perform.

R667: uses my strength in situations I would not have thought of. Makes me realise my potential.

R858: she identifies the gap in my performance and encourages me to fix the gap and improve the strength.

Sample negative or neutral responses were:

R26. does not develop our strength, just interested in getting the work done. R510: not really. By providing opportunities and forcing you to build your strength on your own.

R579: we have good training support system and career development programs. Supervisors shares information and does not support much in our development.

**Employees experienced appreciation and recognition @ 86.5% i.e. frequent encouragement, appreciation and rewards for team-member's accomplishments**. Among the employees who share their perspectives, 64.2% say that there is some kind of appreciation and recognition at workplace. At least once in a way or sometimes they are acknowledged for their contribution. Around 13.6% say they experience frequent, regular or monthly recognition and 8.2% say once in a quarter or during their appraisal (half-yearly or annual) they are recognised. In contrast, 23.5% did not experience the support of immediate supervisors in their development, among them 13% felt there was no support or guidance and 14% felt there was lack of recognition and encouragement. The open ended question elicited experiences if employees experienced recognition and acknowledgement for their contribution by their immediate supervisors.

Sample positive responses were:

R180: he sends out a mail to the team recognising and appreciating the accomplishment or shares it in the team meeting. It is almost instantaneous… R302: regularly, through mails appreciating the good work, rewards with smileys, recommend for reward and recognition.

R525: quite often, recognises our performance. Both formally and informally. R976: every quarterly, appreciates during team meetings and nominates for rewards.

Sample negative or neutral responses were:

R91: at our level, we do not expect these, as we need to be self-motivated and accountable.

R633: really every senior has to encourage and recognise for juniors and has to motivate the people to achieve the committed targets. R866: no recognition or encouragement for any amount of hard work and accomplishment done.

**Employees experienced immediate supervisor's positive perspective** @ 87% i.e. de-catastrophizing stumbling block, emotive coping, solution orientation, and positive elucidation of issues. Around 61% of the employees expressed they receive good support and guidance whenever they need assistance. They support them by sharing their experience to solve the issue or they themselves do it. Around 19% says that their supervisors dive deep to understand the root cause, make them understand the issue and provide solutions. Around 7% say that their supervisors assign another resource for technical support when required. Around 13% expressed that their immediate supervisor's never demonstrated positive perspective, which indicates there was no support or guidance in their assignments even if they required completing the tasks. The open ended question asked if the immediate supervisor was very supportive, addressed their project issues and were empathetic towards them.

Sample positive responses were:

R2: take up the issue from where it could not be resolved at my end. R266: gives a patient hearing to the issues faced, understand the issues and suggest measure to overcome the problem.

R302: corrective action by analysing the problem and helping us to understand the issue. Make us re-do the work based on his inputs. Suggests alternatives and also solves the problem.

R565: guide me on what i can do better and what is important for delivery.

Sample negative or neutral responses were:

R653: no support, it's a daily routine, so need to manage on own. R866: fault finding/identify a scape goat in the project.

These responses of all the three dimensions of positive leadership describe the software professional's emotions or perceptions about their positive leadership experiences at the workplace. This provided an understanding about the importance of how virtuous behaviour is vital at workplace and these behaviours are the basic qualities that enhance the well-being and happiness of employees. When leaders understand and recognise the importance of practicing virtuous behaviour at workplace it will lead to positive organisational outcomes.
