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Emotional Intelligence and Leadership
Introduction
Emotional Intelligence (EI) as a term used to describe "a set of abilities that refer in part to how effectively one deals with emotions both within oneself and others" (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, as cited in Palmer, Walls, Burgess & Stough, 2001).
A link between emotional intelligence and leadership has been proposed some time ago, and since then many came to agree with this hypothesis. Furthermore, quite a few articles have been written about the subject.
An article about the subject
One of these articles is called "Emotional Intelligence and Effective Leadership" and was written by 4 researchers from the neuropsychology laboratory in Swinburne University of Technology's organizational psychology research unit in Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia.
The article proclaims that in the past decade, interpersonal skills have been made more integral to effective leadership, as in today's more service-oriented industries, leadership roles also need to motivate, inspire, foster positive attitudes in the workplace and create a sense of contribution and importance among employees (Goleman, 1998a; Hogan et al., 1994, as cited in Palmer, Walls, Burgess & Stough, 2001).
Two leadership styles
It is said in the article that out of two leadership types (transformational and transactional), the former is considered to be more effective because it is more emotion-based compared to the transactional one. It is therefore predicted that there will be a stronger connection between EI and transformational leadership than with the transactional one.
To determine if that is true, the sample used in the study comprised 43 participants (10 of which were female) with a mean age of 47.5 years who were past and present students in the university. 33% of them help higher management positions, 30% were middle level managers and 27% held lower manager positions. Participants filled a questionnaire that assessed their leadership style.
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