The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership and Organizational Culture
The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership and Organizational Culture
The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership and Organizational Culture
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Rashad Yazdanifard 2
Center of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)
Of Help College of Arts and Technology,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Email: [email protected]
Abstract
recent years. The effectiveness of an organization has been brought into another
leaders are the main figure in organizations, the leadership styles and the level of
emotional intelligence will surely influence the organizations, especially in the area
intelligence would be an added advantage for the organizations to pave the way for
this issue and presents a comprehensive literature review in order to solidify and
Culture
1. Introduction
In the business world, many organizations view their people as the greatest
asset. Organizations recognize that technology or tools alone will not enable them to
progress, but it is the employees’ ability and performance that can make a large
impact (Butler & Chinowsky, 2006). In recent years, many workplaces have stressed
authors indicate that emotional skills are needed for the utility of organizations, for
instance, sensitivity towards others, empathy, and emotional regulation (Goleman,
1998; Gabriel and Griffiths, 2002). Leaders’ emotional skills are important due to the
fact that leaders are the main pillars in the organizations that play the role in
communicating the company’s vision to their subordinates and make sure that the
vision is being fulfilled (Alon & Higgins, 2005). This means that the characteristics
of the leaders are important in order to shape a culture that promotes realization of a
company’s goals and objectives. Although there are many leadership theories
available, the transformational leadership theory was chosen in this study because
many researches on the topic have been conducted in the past 20 years (Bass, 1985).
Besides that, extensive research has also shown that transformational leaders who
and develop by responding to their individual needs, empowering them and aligning
the objectives and goals of the individual, the leader, the group and the larger
2000). Many suggest that emotional Intelligence could be one of the factors that
influence a leader’s behavior and impact the rest of the organization, including the
organizational culture (Harrison & Clough, 2006). Thus, this article explores the
relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership and their
2. Methodology
and studied. The method used to conduct this research is descriptive-analytic method.
The research strategy is literature review by using secondary data. To collect the
literature of this research, library and databases was utilized. International journals
Science Direct, Proquest, Ebsco, Springerlink and JSTOR. Besides that, books that
were related to the topic were reviewed. Papers were collected over a two week
period and the topic was discussed with the supervisor in charge in order to
3. Emotional Intelligence
intelligence that related to the ability to assess emotions of inner self and others, in
order to differentiate between them, and use the knowledge to direct one’s thinking
and actions (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Mayer and Salovey, 1993). Since then, there
were three alternative models were proposed such as the ability model ( Mayer and
model (Goleman,2000).
associated with the processing of emotional information. The four branches are: “the
ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access
and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand
emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote
14). This model was generally known as an emotional and social intelligence
model (Bar-On, 2006). Bar-On (2006) proposed the five specific dimensional of
effectively.
The components of this model develop overtime, transform all the way through
life, can be enhanced through training and development programs, and it relates to
the underlying potential of the performance rather than the performance itself
intelligence that has been designed specifically for workplace applications (Goleman,
and resources.
groups accurately.
desirable responses.
competency to identify and regulate the feelings, both in one’s inner self and others’
4. Transformational Leadership
transactional leadership styles when he studied political leaders. In 1985, Bass then
leadership that has feature behaviors such as encouraging and inspiring followers
central to head for shared organizational goals. Bass & Riggio (2006) proposed that
participate intellectually.
follower and listens to the follower's concerns and needs by providing socio-
them.
Leadership
found that there was a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and the
inspirational motivation had the highest correlation in this study (Barling, Slater &
Kelloway, 2000).
a customized edition of the Trait Meta Mood Scale to measure emotional intelligence.
The correlations found in this study defined two effective leadership competencies:
the capability to assess emotions of inner self and others, and the capability to handle
emotions.
The third study reviewed was conducted to examine the relationship between
leadership and emotional intelligence in 110 senior level managers by using the
The fifth study reviewed was conducted to examine the relationships between
community leaders and 388 staffers as participants in the Midwest of the United
States. The study showed several correlations that strengthen the function of
Overall, the studies indicate that leaders with emotional intelligence are able
requirements (Barling et al. 2000; Gardner, & Stough, 2002). In addition to that,
researchers have discovered that emotional management and empathy are correlated
6. Organizational Culture
which is learned by a group after going through the external adaptation and internal
integration of a problem, where the technique is considered valid and worked good
enough to be taught to new comers in order to perceive, think, and feel the same way
when they encounter those problems (Tolmats and Reino, 2006). Organizational
culture provides basic values, beliefs and principles which function as the foundation
and behaviours that both demonstrate and strengthen those fundamental principles
which determine both individual and group actions, perceptions, thinking and values
(Martins & Coetzee, 2007; Aydogdu & Asikgil, 2011). An organisation’s culture
generally includes the following four major dimensions (Eskildsen & Dahlgaard,
understanding of the vision, mission and values of the organisation and the
3. People - The integration of the employees’ requests and needs with those of
the organisation such as the balancing of work and life, good physical work
specific areas.
Since the people and leadership aspects are considered as the foundations of an
thus the way which an employee prefers to be managed and their experiences of the
main leadership style also leads to the way a culture develops (McMurray, 2003;
Culture
organization has just formed. At that time, leaders are “definers” and “givers” of
culture as they construct and instil the principles, values, and attitudes that they
consider as essential and important for the organization (Jaskyte, 2004). Bass and
Avolio (1993) have argued that an organizational culture can be characterized with
culture as the values that transformational leader adopted will easily be adopted by
the employees (Aydogdu & Asikgil, 2011). Transformational leaders are usually
beliefs that are in line with the leader’s mission and to encourage their followers to
give a higher priority for group and the larger organization than their own interest
and Avolio (1993) also proposed that transformational leaders move their
cultures. In addition to that, Block (2003) found in the situations that that employees
incorporating, and with a comprehensible mission are usually rated their direct
and emotionality which could be used to explain it (Tolmats and Reino, 2006). At
Roberts, 2004).
One such study was conducted by Tolmats and Reino to find the
culture which taken from The Competing Values Framework which conceptualized
by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) in two business sectors in Estonia (Tolmats and
Reino, 2006). The results of the investigation show that participants with a higher
participants with lower emotional intelligence. According to the results of the study,
System and Rational Goal types of organizational culture, thus forming the
develop the organizational culture of the company (Tolmats and Reino, 2006). In
The Human Relations type of organizational culture, leadership and morale are in the
growth, dynamics, imagination, and willingness to transform and the Rational Goal
high performance(Parker & Bradley, 2000; Dastmalchian, Lee & Ng, 2000).
organizational culture show the strongest value. At such the creation of emotional
intelligence could pave the way for the development of organizational culture in the
9. Discussion
many leadership literature that supported the positive relationship between emotional
intelligence and transformational leadership (Barling et al. 2000; Gardner, & Stough,
2002; Barbuto & Burbach, 2006; Butler & Chinowsky, 2006; Corona, 2010). As
Transformational leaders need to have the ability to monitor their own emotions,
cope with the demands of the environmental and problematic situations and deal
with daily stress effectively before they could help their subordinates to grow and
skills so as to communicate and interact with the followers to further attend to the
needs and concerns of the followers and provide socio-emotional support. The social
the followers and the groups accurately and to inspire them to achieve the goals of
the organizations and to provide accurate guidance to let them think creatively about
the situation. Transformational leaders with a high emotional intelligence will surely
and the way the organizational culture develops (McMurray, 2003, Martins &
leader will be easily accepted by the followers. Summed up, organizational culture
bring the organization to the next level by using the competencies and skills they
acquire in order to encourage and motivate the followers to achieve the visions,
10. Conclusion
this will eventually boost the organization capability to change and thus improve the
prospects for the organization to remain competitive. Current leaders should evaluate
who has a high emotional intelligence would create an organizational culture with
point where each and every one of the organization share the common norms and
values, thus enhancing the achievement, endurance and competing power of the
organization.
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