Organizations not only want, but they expect their leaders to have core skills and competencies to improve organizational effectiveness (Charan & Drotter, & Noel, 2010). Emotional intelligence has been identified as an essential skill for effective leaders (Bar-On, 1997; Boyatzis, 2008; Goleman, 1998b).
The concept has also been identified as a personal capability with the potential to “significantly inform leadership capacity” (Brown & Moshavi, 2005, p. 868) especially in terms of behavioral outcomes aligned directly with three of the four major components of transformational leadership including individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, and inspirational motivation. Extensive academic research suggests a significant relationship exists between emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness. It also supports that the emotional intelligence competencies of an organization’s leader correlate with the quality of the leader’s relationship with subordinates. Leaders with higher emotional intelligence competencies seem to foster more positive working relationships with employees and followers.
Campbell (2012) identified a statistically significant relationship between all five empirically derived factors of transformational leadership style and emotional intelligence in police leaders. Pallas (2016) extended Campbell’s research work and studied police supervisors in three agencies at the rank of sergeant and above, using a multi-source 360-degree rater Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i 2.0, Bar-On). The findings suggested emotional intelligence is related to transformational leadership—a style also identified as related to leader effectiveness. Consequently, in these police populations, leaders with high emotional intelligence scores and transformational skills would be expected to positively influence individuals, teams, and organizations.
Research in emotional intelligence is still growing and some believe there may be a gap in understanding the relationship between leadership and emotional intelligence, empirical evidence has improved in support of a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and leadership styles of managers experiencing change in organizations. Salovey and Mayer (1990) advocated emotional intelligence as the capability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion in thought, and understand emotion management and laid a foundation for further studies related to these dimensions. Positive relationships between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership have been identified as theoretical in that emotionally intelligent individuals were able to motivate and stimulate followers with an intellectual focus.