Emotional Intelligence and Perceived Leadership Behaviour Effectiveness in Organizations

This study investigated the impact of emotional intelligence on the perceived effectiveness of leaders in organisations. Emotional intelligence is seen as an individual’s capacity to appropriately regulate his/her emotions, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and action. Most managers would rather steer away from dealing with emotional issues, whereas emotions that are properly managed can have successful outcomes. Carefully managed emotions can drive trust, loyalty and commitment as well as increase productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in the individual, team and organizations. Information was gathered from a sample of 232 respondents, using two instruments. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was used to determine leadership style within the organisation, while the Emotional Competency Profiler was used to determine the emotional intelligence of the leaders. Two hypotheses were tested and the results showed that there was a significant relationship between emotional literacy and transactional leadership (r = .791, N=232, P <0.5). Also, the multiple regression findings revealed that there was a joint effect of all the variables of transformational leadership on emotional intelligence. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that emotional intelligence tests should be designed to measure competencies associated with the understanding, and management of leaders.