Interest in Emotional Intelligence and leadership continues to grow. The number of requests for information and the number of studies in this area have been increasing steadily over the last few years. An interesting study in this area was recently published in the Journal of Industrial Psychology by Anita Stuart and Andrea Paquet from Rand Africaans University in South Africa1.
The study focused on emerging leaders in an organization. The goal of the study was to answer the question “is it possible to predict who will be the leaders of tomorrow?” Specifically, Stuart and Paquet looked at whether there were differences in EI in employees who were identified as potential leaders through the MLQ – Multi Factor Leadership Questionnaire.
They evaluated 220 employees from lower hierarchical levels of a large bank in Johannesburg through their immediate supervisors’ ratings using the MLQ. From this pool of employees, 31 were selected as leaders, and another 31 were selected as non-leaders. These 62 employees were all administered the EQ-i®.
Significant differences were found between the groups on optimism and self-actualization scales. Optimism is not an unexpected differentiator. According to Seligman, optimists consistently exceed aptitude test predictions, their health is usually better, they age well, and they may even live longer.
The authors describe the significance of self-actualization for these future leaders as the following. For them, striving for influence through leadership may be one way of meeting their self-actualization needs. The authors report that this self-actualization drive can involve creating order and predictability in an environment in order to work out an intelligent response to it. Leaders also may see themselves as having greater control over their surrounding environment.
Another interesting finding was that the non-leaders had a significantly higher positive impression scores than the leaders. It may be that the need to please or impress others may be part of having an external locus of control. The non-leaders, who may not be driven by the courage of their convictions, prefer to conform to the accepted organizational norms.
1Stuart, A. and Paquet, A, (2001). Emotional Intelligence as a determinant of leadership potential. Journal of Industrial Psychology, 27(3), 30-34.
