ABSTRACT

Leadership style can lead to the achievement or downfall of the business. The banking industry in Kenya has experienced first rate modifications introduced about via globalization, liberalization, intense competition amongst competitors, converting regulatory hints, generation, and more stressful clients. Those adjustments within the dynamic enterprise environment require leadership which can permit each the people and the enterprise to adapt and achieve success. The maximum commonplace management patterns and frameworks include autocratic leadership, bureaucratic leadership, charismatic management, transactional leadership, and transformational management. No matter all the headlines approximately banking profitability, SACCO’s and financial establishments are nevertheless no longer making enough return on funding, or the return on fairness, that shareholders require. The SACCO’s are also no longer meeting client prospect. Nowadays it is all about the purchaser enjoy, and plenty of SACCO’s are feeling stress because they may be not delivering the extent of carrier that customers are disturbing, especially with regard to generation. The study was aimed at determining the influence of leadership styles and performance of Sacco’s in Kenya. The objectives were to examine out the effect of transactional leadership, transformational leadership, bureaucratic leadership and democratic leadership style in performance of Sacco’s in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The target population was 303 which consisted of non-management employees in four major Sacco’s in Kirinyaga County. The researcher used stratified random sampling technique. Data was collected through questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression. The analysed data was presented using tables, charts, graphs, percentages and frequencies.Hypothesis testing revealed statistically significant results for the relationship transactional leadership had weak positive significant effect on performance, transformational leadership had positive and significant effect on performance, bureaucratic leadership had stronger positive and significant effect on performance, and democratic leadership had weaker positive and significant effect on performance. The study concluded that the other methods of leadership should be applied based on stages in growth of the organizations to enable overcome challenges that come with implementation of the styles. The study recommended Sacco’s that the need to transform their leadership styles to enable them turn around their performance and remain competitive in the financial sector.Future researchers should considerother leadership styles such autocratic, laisse-faire .Future studies may also adopt different research design such as causal effect as opposed to descriptive design.