Executive Report and Roundtable Presentation
Modassir, A., & Singh, T. (2008). Relationship of Emotional Intelligence with Transformational Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. International Journal of Leadership Studies, 3-21.
This study examines the relationship of emotional intelligence (EI) with transformational leadership (TL) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of the followers using a sample of 57 dyads of managers and their supervisors (i.e., 114 respondents) participated in this study (Modassir & Singh, 2008). Transformational leadership is one of the most popular leadership models in the literature and the authors are trying to further to develop this model by exploring correlations with EI and OCB. The authors further argue that the transformational leadership model is dependent factors that are closely related to the components that are commonly defined within this model and their similarity to those defined within emotional intelligence and the organizational citizenship model. That is, if a transformational leader has high levels of emotional intelligence and is working in an organization that has a cooperative culture will be more likely to be effective leaders.
The authors first provide a literature review that defines and introduces the models that are relevant to the study. Kent, Crotts, and Aziz (2001), as cited in Modassir & Singh (2008), defined TL as a process by which change or transformation is introduced to individuals and/or organizations and the article further provided a background on the traits, dimensions, and the influences on the organization that are associated with the TL model. The traits generally associated with this form of leadership are geared towards the motivation of the employees that is above or beyond what would be typically required of them or what their contractual obligations are to the organization. The transformational leader is thus associated with inspirational or charismatic traits that enable their subordinates in such a manner that they are willing and able to put forth their best performances in the effort to collectively meet organizational objectives.
There are four components or dimensions that are also associated with this model. The first is referred to as idealized influence which refers to the leader's ability to fill a perception of what an ideal leader would act by serving as an effective role model; such as showing a high level of dedication, a sense of purpose, as well as resolution to succeed. Transformational leaders also provide inspirational motivation which is related to the ability set the vision or inspire employees. Next, intellectual stimulation refers to the ability to encourage the organizational member to think creatively. Finally, individualized consideration considers the personal attention given to individual employees to coach and motivate them.
The authors also cited a definition of EI that refers to the ability of an individual to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth. OCB is also defined as is closely related to the inspirational concepts that are inherent in the TL model which state that employees go beyond their basic set of duties. Using three existing questionnaires to collect data about TL, EI, and OCB the researchers ran various statistical tests to determine the reliability and the correlations between the factors. Interestingly, the researchers did not find support for a relationship between TL and EQ, nor did they find that TL predicted OCB or that EI mediated the relationship between TL and OCB (Modassir & Singh, 2008). However, despite the lack of support for any of the hypotheses, they were able to find many interesting correlations between individual factors included in the three models such as that the EI of managers had a positive correlation with employee conscientiousness.
Article 2
Harms, P., & Crede, M. (2010). Emotional Intelligence and Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis. Leadership Institute Faculty Publications, 5-17.
Similar to the first article in this review, this article also sets out to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and transformational leadership (TL). It is easy to understand why many researchers have made bold claims about the perceived relationships between these models. Noted experts in the field of EI argue that elements of EI such as empathy, self-confidence, and self-awareness are the core underpinnings of visionary or transformational leadership, others have made claims that "emotional intelligence is synonymous with good leadership," and others that "for those in leadership positions, emotional intelligence skills account for close to 90% of what distinguishes outstanding leaders from those judged as average" (Harms & Crede, 2010)....
However, despite how intuitive the relationships between these two concepts may seem, no previous research has indicated that EI has a relationship with positive leadership outcomes. Therefore, the aims of this study was to use a meta-analytic approach to establish whether or not EI is related to transformational and transactional leadership behaviors and under what circumstances (Harms & Crede, 2010).
One interesting difference between the definition of transformational leadership in this study and the previous one is that this study includes five dimensions of transformational leadership (as opposed to four) which are idealized influence (attributed), idealized influence (behavioral), individual consideration, inspirational motivation, and intellectual stimulation (Harms & Crede, 2010). The primary difference between these two different accounts of dimensions is that this definition separates idealized influence into an attributed category that refers to the socialized charisma of the leader and a behavioral aspect which refers to charismatic actions by the leader that are based on values, beliefs, or ideals (Harms & Crede, 2010). The authors further note that while many studies have found links between TL and personality traits such as the one's found on the Big Five group, that a meta-analysis found that the corrected correlation between these constructs ranged from a low of .09 for Openness to a high of .23 for Extraversion (Harms & Crede, 2010). Therefore, as a result of the weak statistical support between these factors, the authors seek to test whether EI might be a better predictor of TL than personality traits.
After providing a literature review related to EI, the study hypothesizes that EI will be positively related to transformational leadership, will also be positively related to contingent reward behaviors, and EI be negatively related to management-by-exception (passive) and laissez-faire leadership behaviors (Harms & Crede, 2010). The study conducted a meta-analysis by 62 independent samples, representing data from 7,145 leaders. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and the Leadership Practices Inventory questionnaires were the only two leadership data collection tools used to collect data about TL in these studies, however a large variety of inventories were used to assess EI in the sample. Furthermore, the questionnaires could either be self-reported or reported by a different member of the organization. The study found a moderate relationship between EI and transformational leadership behaviors, but also note that the results were largely mixed and did not provide strong or compelling evidence that EI is necessarily liked to TL. The results indicate that EI is likely not the basis for TL.
Article 3
Weinberger, L. (2003). An Examination of the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Style and Percieved Leadership Effectiveness. Human Resource Development Research Center, 1-219.
The third article in this review was dated in 2003 and was conducted many years prior to the first two articles. However, the themes in this article are definitely closely related to those found in the previous two studies reviewed. Despite the familiarity of the topic, this article was published by a human resources organization as opposed to an article in a journal and as such is not in a condensed form. Furthermore, since this predated the previous two, it focused on a broader research question. The intention of this study is to broaden the knowledge base of HRD through the investigation of emotional intelligence, leadership style and the effectiveness of that leadership and to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence, leadership style and leadership effectiveness (Weinberger, 2003). The researcher notes that, at the time of writing, there was a widely held belief that EI was positively linked to effective leadership however there was a considerably limited amount of research that could support this position.
The development of effective leaders is recognized as a high priority for business organizations and researchers such as Goleman (1995) had made the case through his many writings that the key to a leader's effectiveness and success in an organization is their level or ability to maintain an emotional intelligence (Weinberger, 2003). These claims prompted many attempts to verify these relationships and test whether these ideas were suitable for use in leadership development programs, and staffing within their organizations. Therefore, to investigate these claims, the researcher selected a single international manufacturing organization headquartered in the Midwest which was labelled as "CSW" to preserve the company's privacy. The company is currently making many changes to its operations such as a culture change and a performance-based pay system among others. Given the size of the organization and the current process of organizational change, CSW is ideally positioned to investigate EI and leadership effectiveness. In this study, there…
