Leadership behaviors of youth leaders

The aim of this study is to determine the people-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors of Youth Leaders who serve in Youth Centers of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Turkey. The research was carried out by relational screening model and quantitative and qualitative research approaches (mixed method) were used together. The population of the survey is the youth leaders who are employed in Youth Centers of Turkish Ministry of Youth and Sports; whereas, the sample is the youth leaders who participated in the survey (n=303). Leadership Survey, which was developed by Fred Luthans (Nebraska University) in 1992 and adapted to Turkish language by Sabire Cömert in 1999, was used as quantitative data collection tool. In qualitative sense, an interview form was used, which was developed by the researcher based on scenarios and semi-structured questioning technique. For data analysis, in order to determine the differences between the groups quantitatively, the parametric tests, that is, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Tukey and LSD tests were utilized; whereas, for qualitative data analysis, descriptive and content analysis methods were utilezed. In conclusion, on quantitative scale, leadership behaviors of the Youth Leaders related to task and people orientation have been found to have a medium level ; however, people oriented leadership scores differed significantly regarding gender, duration of work in the field of youth, in their geographical region and type of task. Qualitative analysis reveals that leadership behaviors of the Youth Leaders oriented to people is emphasized in communication, team work, delegation of authority, confidence, inclusion (incorporation), representation, guidance and creativity; for task-oriented behaviors; objective awareness, planning, specifying rules, volunteering, decision-making, being a role model and orientation have been identified as the main themes.