Leadership Styles and Emotional Intelligence of Romanian Public Managers. Evidences from an Exploratory Pilot Study

Research regarding the relationship between emotional intelligence, leadership styles and leadership effectiveness has reached high levels of interest in recent years, focusing on the framework of transformational/ transactional leadership proposed by Bass & Avolio. 101 Romanian Public Managers enrolled in the YPS (Young Professionals Scheme) program were assessed in view of exploring the relationship between leadership styles and emotional intelligence using MLQ (5x-Revised Form) and Bar-On’s EQ-i. On the investigated sample, transformational leadership was the dominant self-reported style, significant positive correlations being obtained between transformational leadership and emotional intelligence and between leadership effectiveness and emotional intelligence. Transactional leadership correlated with general EI score, and with the Adaptability and Interpersonal scale of EQ-i, negative significant correlation being obtained between Passive/Avoidant leadership, general EQ-i score and all the EQ-i subscales. The interaction between the Interpersonal, Stress Management and General Mood scales of EQ-i predicted 47.5% of the total variance of transformational leadership and the interaction between Interpersonal and Stress Management scales of EQ-i predicted 38.2% of the total variance of leadership effectiveness. The results offer a clearer perspective on the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership styles, the practical implications of the research consisting in the possibility to conceive organizational selection and training programs of transformational leaders based on emotional intelligence abilities.