Emotional Intelligence and Leadership in a South African Financial Services Institution

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness among senior leaders in a South African financial services organisation. The sample consisted of 973 participants. A convenience sample was used because the leaders were part of a strategic organisational initiative that included the completion of the measurement instruments used for the current study. The participants completed the Bar-On EQ-i, a measure of emotional intelligence, and the leadership effectiveness data were obtained from an organisation specific Multi-rater that accessed self-ratings, peer and subordinate ratings, as well as manager ratings in terms of leadership behaviours linked to organisational worldviews of leadership effectiveness. Partially due to the large sample size, the results showed that there were statistically significant correlations between emotional intelligence and the leadership variables as measured for the leaders, but the prediction value between these variables was not practically significant.