Followers’ Personality and Indigenous Leadership: Perceived Astabrata Leadership Style in Indonesian Higher Education

Abstract

This study is aimed to investigate how followership personality is related to the leadership perception in the context of higher education. Regarding this study, the researcher selected 20 lecturers spread in several universities in Indonesia. The participants were selected based on the criteria required. The selected participants then filled the Big Five Personality Inventory (BFI) which had been translated and adjusted in Indonesian language and culture to categorize the leader in some types of characteristics. Next, they were interviewed to describe their supervisor on Indonesian indigenous leadership by modifying astabrata question list. This research used a qualitative method whose result was analyzed using the deductive thematic analysis in order to classify followers’ perception. The results of this study showed the correlation between followers’ level of the five traits and perceptions of Astabrata leadership. Followers with a high score of neuroticisms were associated with Perceptions of Matahari (sun) and angin (wind) leadership style. Besides, Followers with conscientiousness traits described their leader as having Langit (sky) and Bintang (stars) leadership style. In addition, Followers with extraversion trait described their leader as having Api (fire) style of leadership. Lastly, follower with agreeableness trait described their leader as having bumi (earth) style of leadership. This research ultimately identified that groups of participants with the same personality share the same perception of their leader. These findings suggest higher education policies to cluster follower personality types as an effort to improve leadership effectiveness in order to improve teamwork performance.