Leadership Development among Polytechnic Students in Ghana

Abstract

Within the last decade, both public and private organizations all over the world have witnessed a great number of top level leaders, who either had to resign voluntarily from their positions or they were fired due to incompetence and weak leadership. Larbi (2011) has observed that there is a sheer dearth of authentic, visionary and skilful leaders in Ghana. Also, leadership development is an aspect that is lacking in higher institutions of education (Morris, 2012). Leadership is shaped by a wide-range of qualities and leaders need to be groomed to demonstrate different skills based on contextual realities as well as the needs of followers. Thus the two questions that this study intends to answer are: How can we give leadership education to students? How can we prepare leaders for this generation and the next? This paper proposes six elements for facilitating leadership development among Polytechnic students in Ghana. The study also expounds on some leadership theories and concepts proposed by prominent scholars on the subject matter. Additionally, the historical and current Ghanaian context is described. The current context provides useful background information for teaching leadership to Ghanaian higher national diploma students. The six critical factors the authors propose and seek to develop among Polytechnic students are: Emotional intelligence, systems thinking, life’s vision and mission, critical thinking, teamwork building skills and ability to learn. Applying the background information as well as the proposed six characteristics of leadership, the study then describes a recently developed leadership course which is presently being taught to all students pursuing the 3-year Higher National Diploma (HND) programme in Wa Polytechnic as a component part of the entrepreneurship training module.

Keywords: leadership, leadership development, Ghana, characteristics of leadership