3.1 Crises and leadership in Indonesia

In an organization, a crisis is a situation that can be faced at any time in line with the dynamics of social change and natural conditions. Crises can be classified into two types: natural crises and crises caused by humans (Hutchins, 2008). Natural crises were described as natural borne disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and fires, while scandals, bribery, corruption, and terrorist attacks were classified as human-caused crises. In the life of a state, war is also classified as a crisis caused by humans.

Crises may cause severe emotional and social distress, which can occur at any time without warning (MacNeil & Topping, 2007). Likewise, Winkleman (1999) explains that crises are unpredictable events that threaten the function and existence of the organization. Conversely, a crisis can be considered as the right time to change the course of the organization, as stated by Brockner and James (2008) and Rochet et al. (2008), if stakeholders can handle the crisis appropriately, so the organization has the opportunity to move towards a better future. Therefore, a crisis should be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat, indicating that stakeholders are expected to be able to control the crisis.

Good crisis handling through appropriate strategies and transformational leadership styles has been described in several studies, which are generally associated with corporate organizations (Harwati, 2013; Pillai, 2013; Schuh et al., 2013). When facing a crisis, an organization needs to focus on the importance of a two-way communication style (paying attention to the interests of subordinates), re-evaluating existing strategies and implementing new strategies. This kind of character is the hallmark of visionary, transformational leadership.

The leadership of the president in Indonesia is closely related to the crisis. Sukarno was Indonesia's first president and a proclaimer. He played an important role in liberating the nation from Dutch colonialism. At the beginning of his leadership, Indonesia faced a tough crisis due to military pressure from allies and internal separatisms. During 1945–1949 Indonesia's people struggled against serious crises including military attacks, economy, and politics. In that era, Sukarno succeeded in bringing Indonesia out of the crisis, and Indonesia was acknowledged as a sovereign state.

Unfortunately, Sukarno was less successful in managing the government, mostly when friction occurred with Hatta, his vice president. Different from Sukarno, Hatta exhibited an administrator leadership type (Feith, 1964). During the 1955–1965 era, the ability of Hatta's administrators to manage the government developed rapidly. The friction led Sukarno to move into the sole leader after adopting guided democracy.

In 1965, the Indonesia Communist Party subversive occurred, which marked a new chapter of the crisis in Indonesia. This situation worsened Indonesia's economic, and political situation, which culminated at the end of Soekarno's rule. Suharto then took power from Sukarno and officially became president in 1968. Suharto inherited a crisis that was the result of the rebellion. In 1965, inflation reached 594% and increased to 635% the following year. Besides, riots and mass killings occurred in various regions, with nearly half a million victims. The Indonesia parliament re-elected Soeharto in 1971, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, and 1997. In 1998, his term ended after resigning on May 21, following mass riots and occupation of the parliament building by thousands of students. He is the longest-serving president of Indonesia.

Regarding President Suharto, Madril (2017) stated that the New Order government led by President Suharto should be a regime that would correct the abuse of power perpetrated by the previous administration. One of the important agendas of the government was overcoming the problem of abuse of power and corruption in the government sector. Several laws and regulations, the president's legal policies, and institutions were formed to carry out this mission. However, the New Order government finally failed and became a corrupt regime.

Economically, Indonesia indeed experienced rapid progress in economic development so that it was often referred to as the Southeast Asian tiger. However, in the period 1985–1998, Indonesia changed, due to Soeharto's economic policies, which prioritized the interests of his family and group. Therefore, the outcome of this economic development was like a fire in the husks that may explode at any time if the country's economic conditions deteriorate. When the economic crisis hit Asia, this became a reality, especially in Southeast Asia. The crisis encountered Indonesia and it resulted in a significant impact on Suharto's rule. This multidimensional economic crisis caused the New Order to lose public confidence, finally, the regime collapsed after control Indonesia for more than 32 years. The mass unrest that ended the Suharto presidency terminated the New Order era, but the crisis for several years afterward. President B. J. Habibie, who was appointed to replace Suharto, inherited various problems, including the economic crisis, corruption, and violence against the territorial integrity of the country and the dominant role of the military in society.

Despite a lot of efforts conducted by Habibie to overcome the crises, the hard situation had not finished. The separation of East Timor became the anticlimax of all the crises that ended Habibie's presidency. The handling of the crisis carried out by Habibie did unsatisfied the opposition so that the Habibie regime terminated. Habibie's failure was mainly because he did not want to process the legal case of his former president Suharto. Habibie was considered to demonstrate ties to the New Order. The people demanded immediate elections to elect the people's representatives as well as the president and vice president.

According to Mujani and Liddle (2004), Habibie was like a candle whose policies provided a way for democracy and freedom in Indonesia, but these policies prevented Habibie from being re-elected in the 1999 elections. The various policies produced, for example, new election law, pers freedom, military reform. He also provided the opportunity for the people of East Timor to conduct a referendum. As a result, East Timor was separated from Indonesia based on the results of the referendum.

This is stated in the state speech.However, Wahid exhibited a peculiar style of communication. As stated by Barton (2002), his communication tends to be non-formal and sometimes considered impolite. During his presidency, a relaxed and flexible climate was typical in organizational life. This meant that his presidency was not taken seriously by Indonesians. This was reflected in the media coverage at that time, where almost all of the news related to Wahid was depicted as “a joke” (Barton, 2002). In line with that, Pausacker (2004) notes that Gus Dur tried to become a Semar, a shadow puppet hero who became a caretaker/tutor.

His successor was Megawati Soekarno putri, the first female president of Indonesia. Megawati inherited crises that were still unfinished during Wahid's era, particularly the economic crisis and Aceh's separatism. Her leadership style was very different from Wahid. Her assertive personality emerged to the public when she proposed the use of military force in dealing with restive provinces (The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2002). Moreover, he rarely commented publicly on any issue which he thought would exhibit an impact on Indonesian unity, which makes him appear before Indonesians as firm and authoritative or firm and authoritative (Mujani & Liddle, 2004).

When the wheel of power rolled on to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was elected through the 2004 general elections and the direct presidential elections in 2009, the situation was still not very favorable. At the beginning of his leadership, Yudhoyono encountering a crisis due to natural disasters and the threat of separatism from the Free Aceh Movement. In dealing with separatism, Yudhoyono's government put forward a diplomatic approach. His government signed a tentative peace agreement in Helsinki with rebels from Free Aceh Movement. The agreement, among other things, calls for Free Aceh Movement rebels to surrender their weapons in exchange for a promise of amnesty from the Indonesian government. It was a hopeful omen in a conflict that plagued life on Sumatra's northern tip since 1976, killing more than 12,000 people (Enia, 2008). Almost immediately, the deal was hailed in the press as a victory for “disaster diplomacy,” the idea that natural disasters can open up space for peaceful diplomatic interactions between conflicting states or domestic factions (Aglionby, 2005).

Regarding SBY's leadership, Supriyadi (2018) explained that his detailed attitude made him always careful and detailed in solving a problem. Besides that, he always provided direct direction and supervision to his subordinates. The transformational leadership shown by Yudhoyono was evident from his ability to motivate people, carry out rooted programs, and prioritize approaches for problem-solving. Yudhoyono can complete his leadership of up to two terms of office.

Joko Widodo replaces Yudhoyono. In the first period of leadership (2014–2019), his leadership can be said to be crisis-poor. In his second term of leadership, Indonesia is facing the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The handling of this crisis will be a big bet for Joko Widodo to be able to maintain their government for the next 4 years.

3.2 Transformational leadership to overcome crises

The concepts of the Transformational Leadership theory were first put forward by James MacGregor Burns. It defined the mutual help concept between leaders and subordinates to boost and advance motivation level and enthusiasm (Burns, 1978). Transformational leadership attracted a vast amount of empirical research attention, and since 1990, more studies were devoted to this leadership style than to all other significant leadership theories combined (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). These studies suggest that transformational leadership exhibits an essential effect on those criteria of interest. In the first meta-analysis of 39 studies, Lowe et al. (1996) found that transformational leadership was positively correlated with subordinate effectiveness. A contingent reward was correlated positively with the criteria as well, but the results were weaker and less consistent.

In this paper, the transformational leadership theory is discussed in the framework of Bass's theory. Transformational leadership is a multidimensional concept (Avolio & Bass, 1995). Four main elements are found in transformational leadership: idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, individual judgment, and inspirational motivation. Transformation leaders tend to provide intellectual stimulation to their team members by establishing the moderating role played by learning orientation in between leader and employee creativity (Jyoti & Dev, 2015). What distinguishes Bass's leadership theory, in this study we split the individual judgment into two, namely the ability to demonstrate commitment and willingness to listen and to pay special attention to all people need for its achievement and development. President leadership is different from company or school level organizations where member size is usually less than a thousand. Managing a country with millions population requires the ability to pay attention not only to each person but more generally means to pay attention to all levels of society and all representative groups fairly and proportionally. All of our findings were summarized in Table 1.

The first dimension of transformational leadership is said to exhibit ideal influence. This is described as a leader's behavior that makes his followers instill a sense of value, respect, pride, and articulation of the vision. Sukarno, Wahid, and Jokowi demonstrated high abilities in this character. However, reflecting on the charismatic leadership pattern, the effect would fade when the facts of the crisis faced by followers are not well understood and managed by the leader. In the Sukarno era, the food crisis, disintegration, and war faced at the beginning of independence were successfully overcome with a very concrete vision of unity and integrity so that this solution was successful. Conversely, the political, economic, and bureaucratic crises in 1965 could not be managed and resolved properly, leading to its downfall. Likewise, with Wahid, his influence as the leader of a religious organization was very prominent, but his style of communication, which tended to be greedy, and his inability to listen to aspirations from below led to impeachment.

The second indicator is inspirational motivation. Inspirational motivation means the character of a leader who can foster confidence in subordinates in the ability to complete tasks. This character may generate spirit, optimism, and high enthusiasm from subordinates. In other words, transformational leaders always inspire and motivate their subordinates. Soekarno's success in convincing people to fight together against colonialism, inviting small kingdoms to join Indonesia, demonstrated this ability. Yudhoyono's success in overcoming the tsunami disaster crisis was inseparable from his ability to articulate clear expectations for the performance of his subordinates, for all organizational goals, and being able to inspire a team spirit. This can be achieved by the existence of regulation and implementation of programs that are right on target, even in a situation where resources are quite limited.

The third indicator is the ability to generate new ideas for creative and innovative solutions. Transformational leaders must be able to foster new ideas, provide creative solutions to problems faced by their subordinates, and provide motivation to subordinates to look for new approaches in carrying out organizational tasks. Habibie and Wahid demonstrated this ability in terms of encouraging followers to rethink situations rationally and inspire them to work more creatively. Their legacy of wisdom and democracy and establishing a more civilized society became the foundation in a further era.

The fourth indicator is called the ability to demonstrate their commitment. The success of their commitments can judge the success of Yudhoyono and Jokowi in continuing their presidentship for the second period. Yudhoyono is known to exhibit a strong commitment to eradicating corruption, collusion, and nepotism in his first term of presidency. Likewise, Jokowi is considered successful in realizing his commitment to building infrastructure in all regions and especially in disadvantaged areas.

The last indicator in describing the characteristics of a leader is called individualized consideration. In this study, individualized consideration was defined as all community groups. The transformational leader is described as the ability to provide protection, enforce the law for all, embody justice and prosperity, create a sense of security and comfort, accommodate and capture all the aspirations and interests of all people regardless the race, tribe, religion and groups. In terms of this individual consideration, transformational leaders can be characterized as leaders fighting for the needs of their followers, leaders who value the potential, needs, and aspirations of followers (Wuradji, 2009) for long-term interests (Stewart, 2006). Such a leader behavior pattern put an effective leadership based on the drive that long-term goals, and exhibits high aspirations to the people around him. This indicator seems to be a character of the weakest among the other four indicators. This seems inseparable from the transactional leadership style that is done to attract as much support as possible. As a multicultural country getting majority support in Indonesia is very difficult; therefore, leaders often apply a transactional style approach to attract support from parties and other groups.

Soeharto's success in overcoming the 1965 crisis came by paying attention to community demands and using a development approach to meet the economic needs of the community. Likewise, SBY's success in overcoming the tsunami disaster was inseparable from his ability to pay attention to the needs of his subordinates. These two things are examples of the success of this indicator, although on a less large scale.

Gill (2011) suggest that the challenges of this new millennium require a paradigm shift in transformational and forward-thinking leadership styles. Historically, transformational leadership made a significant contribution to turning threats into opportunities and can bring people to rise from the crisis. Transformational leaders seek to increase follower awareness while facilitating the achievement of lower-level needs. Rada (1999) argues that transformational leadership is a dynamic process that involves both leaders and followers. In contrast to transactional leadership, transformational leadership does not depend on position. Leaders and followers under the transformational leadership model can influence each other. Transformational leaders are the architects of social organizations who develop and promote a unified mission, vision, and values. The transformational leader who exhibits a clear and convincing vision can impose his view of reality on followers. To the extreme, transformational leaders can embrace pseudo-manipulation and participation tactics designed to control behavior (Green & Roberts, 2012).

Transformational leaders help shape values, but the implementation of the vision is shared with the people through the various types of delegation strategies mentioned above. As a complement to more active forms of organizational leadership implementation strategies, the application of creative and innovative ideas to overcome various problems that arise is a necessity because this leadership style is believed to encourage creativity and innovation. (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2003).

According to Greenstein (2009), public communication, organizational capacity, political skills, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence are the six criteria that individuals use to assess the effectiveness of the president. Greenstein further notes that without effective public communication, all other criteria can be rendered useless, suggesting that rhetoric plays an important role in the evaluation of a candidate's leadership suitability. In this context, sometimes, public communication is also used to cover up scandals. However, in the era of information disclosure, scandals can reduce leadership performance.

This research proposes two recommendations of visionary leaders and by motivating staff to be creative, innovative, build a learning culture, and be able to show commitment and listen to the aspirations of the majority. As a multicultural country, the president of Indonesia must be able to demonstrate values and convey ideas and ideas in a heterogeneous culture. From the perspective of the sense-making theory, value congruence between the leader and group members plays a strong role as a mediation mechanism. Furthermore, combined with the features in crises, the emotional control of the leader and the quality of the leader-member exchange are two important factors that play a moderating role in the relationship between transformational leadership and value appropriateness between leader and members (Zhang et al., 2012).

Second, the leader must convince the people of his/her commitment and maintain the performance of the government in developing pro to weak. The narrative often used by opposition groups is the weakness of the government in enforcing the law and fighting against corruption, collusion and nepotism, and the government's side of foreign interests. Attempts to face opposition repressively must be avoided because it is an action that can threaten democracy. Oppress the opposition on a side and neglect of law enforcement on the other side lead to an injustice atmosphere. For this reason, building effective communication with all parties, especially the opposition and law enforcement, must be prioritized. For this reason, leadership characteristics that help followers to rethink situations rationally and encourage followers to be creative should take precedence. Leaders must be able to explain the situation faced by society through policies and the implementation of pro-community development.