Analysis of Leadership Styles of Senior Managers via Social Media

Today's new crises have characteristics such as being unexpectedly large-scale, being on new or unprecedented issues, being not limited to a particular sector, arising from political, natural or technological reasons, affecting a society or many countries at the same time, and the reasons are complex and being very difficult to define. This global health crisis experienced contains many features of the new crisis definition. The challenge of leadership in this environment is to prevent these and similar risks or to turn them into opportunities. Senior leaders are a key factor before, during and after the crisis. Because the leader's quality and leadership style affect the length, severity and final results of the crisis.The main objective of this study is to determine the leadership styles of the company's top executives in the Pandemic Process, which are on the Fortune 500 Turkey List (2020). The study discussed transformative, interactive, democratic and authoritarian leadership from leadership styles that can help businesses get out of crisis or uncertainty. In the research using qualitative research method, data was obtained from personal Twitter posts of company senior executives. The resulting data were encoded and classified, and themes and sub-themes were obtained.The data was analyzed using MAXQDA software.As a result of the analysis, it was determined that seniorexecutives made statements in accordance with leadership styles other than authoritarian leadership from four leadership styles.In addition, it has been observed that the posts of the managers concentrate on the characteristics of transformational leadership, such as future-oriented, benefiting the organization, society or group, motivating the audience, focusing on activities that create value and reinforcing success by rewarding.