Emotional Intelligence and Job Performance: A Study among Malaysian Teachers

Educational systems around the world have rapidly experiencing changes and reforms, impacting to teachers’ job performance. Despite these changes, discussion on how to predict teachers’ performance is complex and remains difficult to evaluate. This study addresses the gap in the literature by investigating the role of emotional intelligence in teachers’ job performance. This study analyses the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) which consists four dimensions: self-regulations, self-awareness, self-motivation and social skill (relationship management) and job performance. Respondents were 212 teachers in 6 secondary schools in Kedah. Data was collected through questionnaire survey and a significant correlation emerges from the data between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. Overall, this research contributes to the emotional intelligence literatures by providing meaningful management implications to the school administrators and Malaysian higher education system.