Resilience to Stress by Executive Leaders: A Comparative Study

Abstract

High-caliber leaders can work under pressure, respond to changing circumstances, and bounce back from failures. This study compared executive leaders' stress-coping abilities and compared them to their coworkers' perceptions of each leader. Multiple case study design was used. The study included seven Vice-Chancellors and five coworkers from each Selected Public Sector university as participants. Self-assessed Inventory of de Varies (2005) and Observation sheet were used as data collection tools. Friedman’s test and paired sampling t-test were used to compare self-assessed and observed perspectives. There was no significant difference in self-assessed views of university executive leaders about stress resilience but they agreed on getting stressed due to heavy workload and health problems of one or more close family members. At the same time, there were disparities among self-assessed opinions of leaders and observed views of their respective co-workers except in two cases, there were similarities among the views of the Vice-chancellor and their co-workers.