Emotional Intelligence and transformational leadership

.....leadership outlines a number of different hypotheses regarding leadership style that have emerged over the years. At the intersection of traits and more progressive views of leadership style is the idea that emotional intelligence is a significant contributor to leadership success. Similarly, it has become leadership orthodoxy that transformational leaders are more successful than transactional ones.

Given that transformational leadership requires the leader to inspire and motivate followers, and that a high degree of emotional intelligence would reasonably be thought to aid in this, the hypothesis can be formed that leaders with emotional intelligence are more likely to be transformational leaders, and more successful ones as well. Several studies have explored the link between emotional intelligence and the transformational leadership style. Quader (2011) notes that emotional leadership can be subdivided into five different areas.

Of these, three are more associated with transactional leadership: self-awareness, self-motivation and emotional mentoring). As such, Quader was unable to derive a specific link between high emotional intelligence and transformational leadership, and indeed found stronger evidence of links with transactional. One reason, perhaps, is that transactional leadership also requires motivation, perhaps more than transformational, because the work normally associated with that leadership style is less inherently inspiring. A transactional leader has to get workers to engage with work that is not actually engaging.

Other studies have also sought to explore the link between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. Leban & Zulauf (2014) found that "emotional intelligence training may be able to address only three of the four "I's of transformational leadership: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, and individualized consideration," while not addressing intellectual stimulation. While the authors conclude there to be a reasonably strong relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership, they do find that it is not a complete alignment.

They admit that "intellectual stimulation may require conventional intelligence not amenable to improvement through training." A key takeaway here is the reminder that their study focused on emotional intelligence training, rather than emotional intelligence itself. It is reasonable to expect that there is a correlation between the two, even if training is an imperfect proxy for actual EI level. Van Genderen (2012) makes a good point that there are cultural variables that might play a role in the link between EI and leadership style.

His study focused on Russian managers, and found them to prefer a participative leadership style. This again calls attention to the defect in the original hypothesis, which is clearly rooted in the American concept of a transactional-transformational leadership dichotomy. Such concepts may not be particularly familiar to managers from other backgrounds. As such, Van Genderen (2012) found no connection between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership, instead finding that Russian managers preferred participative leadership no matter what their level of EI. A contrasting view is provided by Mandell and Pherwani (2003).

They found a "significant predictive relationship" between transformational leadership and intelligence. Indeed, their study was more directional in nature than the later studies. By looking at transformational leaders and probing their level of emotional intelligence, they found a relationship. Other studies looked at people with high EI and what leadership style preference they had, which is the inverse direction. People with high EI might not have a leadership style preference, but it seems that transformational leaders on average have a high EI.

These studies neither prove nor disprove the hypothesis that there is a clear link between high emotional intelligence and the transformational leadership style. Methodological differences between these studies do, however, highlight certain areas for future exploration. One is that if transformational leaders have high EI, while transactional leaders either may or may not. This mostly would imply that those with low EI are probably going to be transactional leaders, but that those with high EI could be either.

The cultural nature of the conception of leadership as transactional or transformational is also noted, particularly in the Van Genderen study. Other studies from around the world would lend weight to the idea these ideas of leadership style are not applicable internationally; or they might prove that Russia is indeed a riddle wrapped in an enigma. In any case, more studies would need to be evaluated in order to gain meaningful insight into the cultural validity of these concepts. All of the above studies also had a gender dimension.

There was conventional wisdom that women would have higher emotional intelligence. Again, this would have implications by conventional wisdom if there was a provable link between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. The most decisive conclusion to come out of these studies is that there is no correlation between gender and emotional intelligence. In conclusion, there is still good reason to explore the links between emotional intelligence and.