Critical Thinking (emotional Intelligence and Leadership Effectiveness)

The review of the presented literature delivers vast insights from various authors advocating Emotional Intelligence (EI) as an important factor for leadership effectiveness (LE). However does positive correlation of ratings on IE always lead to actual LE, are there factors that negate this claim? As EI is the capacity to comprehend others within the social context, it represents an extremely important competency for LE in organization today. However there could be factors like bias which the research did not consider. As such it can be noted that there is implicit nuance of IE equates actual LE.

The theoretical perspectives have been brought in to produce hypothesis for this studies. Through social exchange theory, it can be noted that followers will tend to perceive leaders of having higher EI through reciprocation when leaders have better interpersonal interactions with them. Also, as self-ratings are more prone to biasness, studies have found empirical evidence that peer ratings are more reliable to determine a leader’s actual performance. The greater the similarity between self and peer ratings, the greater the actual result of LE. This is because better self-awareness in leaders provides more accurate and consistent self-assessment that coincides with their peers. Based on self-concept-theory, followers also tend to follow leaders who have the same beliefs to align their identity to. By reciprocating to their leaders, it will result in peer ratings of perceived LE being positively correlated to actual LE. Since it was found that there was no congruence in perceived LE with actual LE ratings assessed by superiors, there is a tension between this and the hypothesis that uses the concept of self-awareness.

It is widely debatable that EI is significant for EL. Researchers have found that EI contributes to manage stress, work effectively in teams and even lead others (Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter & Buckley 2003). This aligns the study where regression analysis indicated EI predicts performance effectiveness of leaders. However Antonakis (2003) mentioned that leaders with high EI will be derailed by individual’s negative emotions and thus distract them from their task, thus lower LE.

It was found that leaders were generally not good at judging themselves and may result in inaccuracy of their EI report. However other researchers show that lack of self-awareness may not be the only reason for such irregularity. Respondents are more motivated to distort self-reports when the report measures are used for important organizational decision making (Sungwon, Kluemper & Sauley 2011).

As mentioned, higher congruity between other and self-ratings was associated with better performance in leaders. According to self-concept-based theory, followers tend to follow leaders who have the same beliefs to align their identity to. Therefore, peer ratings might be bias as they subconsciously believe that their leaders are capable. Biasness can also be seen in a research result by Ashkanasy & Dasborough (2003) where low EI individual tends to provide positive response to sincere leader.

If so, the assumption that observer ratings would eliminate biasness and overcome limitations of self-report measures like faking is untrue since researcher did not take into account the value of honesty and simulated a population of raters in a perfect world where every rater are bound to be obliged to truthfulness. Evidently, raters may choose to inflate their ratings as they fear retaliation from their leaders (Atwater, Brett & Charles 2007).