Leadership in Virtual Teams: The Case for Emotional Intelligence

As the use of virtual teams has increased in organizations, there has been an increase in research focused on those settings. This study identifies factors associated with effectiveness and satisfaction at both the member and team level. Among other variables leadership characteristics and behaviors have been shown to influence virtual team outputs. However, new research in the leadership area, particularly that related to emotional intelligence (EI) has not been investigated as influencing virtual team success. Through a review of existing literature on virtual teams, leadership and emotional intelligence, we develop a research model that suggests the relationship between emotional intelligence and virtual team effectiveness and satisfaction. We then propose a research methodology to investigate this relationship.