Influence of leadership competencies on leaders' maturity in paddy farming technology in the Muda area, Malaysia

In developing countries such as Malaysia, rural people have depended on extension workers and farmers leaders for technical advice and information (Tiraieyari, 2009).The farmer leaders should influence others to adopt and practice the best technologies in their farming, so that they can improve their paddy productivity and increase their income. For these reasons, paddy farming leaders in study area play an important role in agricultural process and agricultural extension. The mature leader is the one who sees leadership as responsibility rather than privilege. They have integrity and consistency, they are usually modest, loosing no opportunity to stress that real achievement has come from team work and not from inspiration of just one individual (Wang et al., 2005). Hence, maturity is a combination of factors: attitude, skills, learning, education; but it is also a matter of values: honesty, respect, humbleness, loyalty. Usually, when a leader lacks of maturity, he / she creates and participates in fraudulent or illegal situations that affect the followrs (Goleman, 1998). The best leaders are those who can contribute and achieve the goals, when a leader achieves goals, it may be assumed that he has an acceptable level of maturity (Balsanelli et al., 2008). However, paddy farming leaders in the granary area are facing some problems. Among those is the adoption of the technology that has been transferred to them, about which they are not very knowledgeable. Their knowledge and skills are low because of the lack of training offered to them from agencies, resulting in a lack of competences (Ahmad et al., 2015). Therefore, they do not transfer new information that they have about new technology to other farmers because the relation or the communication between the leaders and farmers is not well conducted. As a result, their maturity level may be regarded as low. This study was designed to identify the maturity level of paddy farming leaders in paddy farming technologies and to determine the level of knowledge, attitude, skill and practices of paddy farming leaders in paddy farming technologies and to examine the perception levels of respondents toward extension agencies and extension programs and activities. Finally, the study also was aimed to determine the relationship between paddy farming leaders’ level of knowledge, attitude, skill and practices in paddy farming technologies and the level of maturity of paddy farming leaders in paddy farming technologies in Muda area. A total of 260 respondents were selected using a random sampling technique. The study employed a questionnaire consisting of two sections: Section 1, sociodemographic factors of respondents in the area of study, and Section 2, statements about the maturity, knowledge, attitude skill and practices, of paddy farming leaders towards paddy farming technologies. A five-point Likert scale was used to examine the dependent variable. This study used SPSS software to analyse the data for frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, correlations and linear regression. The results revealed that maturity level of respondents in paddy farming technologies was moderate and the level of knowledge, attitude, skill and practices of respondents in paddy farming technologies was moderate. Based on results Pearson correlation shows there was a significant relationship between level of knowledge, attitude, skill and practices of respondents in paddy farming technologies and respondents’ level of maturity in paddy farming technologies. The results shows also the most contributing factors to paddy farming leaders’ maturity level in paddy farming technologies is attitude which had a strong power in predicting of maturity level of respondents. The respondents in study area had moderate level of maturity in paddy farming technologies. Hence, this study recommends MADA to carry out proper and efficient training needs analysis to ensure the effectiveness of training for respondents in the near future to improve their productivity in paddy farming and proper training needs for the paddy farming leaders that is found with to have training gap needs as depicted by their moderate level of maturity. Specific courses and workshops could be created such as organizational communication, leadership foundations, group dynamics, grassroots programming, and capacity building and empowerment of communities to improve their ability to lead others then to reach to high level of maturity.

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