Browsing by Author "Kuokkanen, Emma"

The aim of the study. The importance of emotional intelligence in the 21st century has grown considerably, when it comes to the world of work, and has created an emergence of research literature around the topic in the past decades. Especially, when talking about leadership, there is an increasing emphasis on emotional, communication and interpersonal skills that are needed for leaders to navigate in the ever-changing work environment and to tackle different, multidimensional challenges. The current world situation and changes in it has also placed new demands on both employees and managers as well as probably permanently altered the way we do work and have understood it previously. Today, leadership ability is often studied through competences, as they provide an easily understandable and measurable approach to a demanding and complex subject. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which emotional intelligence and its different scales are associated with leadership competences and differentiate the most relevant applications these findings have in real life. The impact of gender and job level was also examined. Methods. The data consisted of 482 individuals who took part in competence assessments, as part of recruitment processes, conducted by a private talent management consultancy between 2020 and 2023. Their emotional intelligence was assessed by the EIP3 questionnaire, which measures the overall emotional intelligence and additionally, the 16 subscales of emotional intelligence. Furthermore, the respondents also completed the PAPI3+ questionnaire, which was used to assess their ability in three different leadership competences: ’Coaching and developing’, ’Motivating and engaging’, and ’Resilience’. The relationship between emotional intelligence, gender and job level, and the three leadership competences was examined using regression models. Results. The results of the study showed a statistically significant association between emotional intelligence and leadership competence. When looking at each of the three leadership competences, statistically significant associations were found across a number of different emotional intelligence subscales, indicating that emotional intelligence is indeed an important key factor underlying leadership ability. Conclusions. The findings in this study highlights emotional intelligence as a crucial factor when predicting leadership performance and competence. Future research efforts should focus on understanding this connection in more depth and studying the effect of emotional intelligence on other leadership competences as well.