What Leadership Qualities and Challenges are Required to Respond to Natural Disaster? – Cases of Emergency Response Leaders in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is widely known as a land of natural disasters and remains classified as one the most vulnerable countries in the world. Over the last thirty years, Bangladesh has experienced nearly 200 natural disasters accounted for damage of asset, property and, livelihoods and over thousands of death toll. In this connection, effective leadership is critical in order to make disaster response system operative in an effective and efficient manner. This study explores the disaster leadership with a view of identifying the essential leadership qualities that are essential for leaders to effectively respond in the aftermath of disaster. The study method is qualitative and forty employees (male- 20 and female- 20) who are working as full-time managerial position in the disaster management sectors in different NGOs and governmental organization have been selected conveniently to know and explore leadership quality, experience, perception and challenges about disaster response activities in Bangladesh. Noted that these forty studied people participated in different natural disasters response activities such as Cyclone Sidr, 2007; Cyclone Aila, 2009 and Cyclone Roanu, 2016 where they played critical leadership roles. This study revealed that some key essential leadership qualities such as intuitiveness, decisiveness, communication, networking, accountability, and learning are essentially required to respond disasters effectively. Keywords: Disaster, Response, Leadership Quality, Experience, Challenges DOI: 10.7176/DCS/12-5-01 Publication date: May 31 st 2022