Leadership styles: The role of emotional intelligence in Indian IT companies

Abstract

Purpose. The present research aims to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership styles — transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and laissez-faire leadership. Design. The sample was taken from IT professionals of the NCR region of India, and standardized instruments used for data collection include “The assessing emotions scale” and “Multifactor leadership questionnaire”. The collected data was analyzed using SmartPLS 2.0 and SPSS 23. Findings. Findings revealed that there exists a relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership. The results indicated that all the three leadership styles: transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and laissez-faire leadership, are affected by emotional intelligence. The most substantial relationship of emotional intelligence was discovered with transformational leadership and the weakest with transactional leadership. Practical implication. This study suggests that the organizations should recruit managers with high emotional intelligence level to improve performance and provide training to improve the emotional intelligence level of employees. Originality and value of results. There is previous research focusing on a leader’s emotional intelligence and leadership styles on organizational performance. However, the current area of interest is the role of emotional intelligence in leadership styles.