Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership: A Review of Empirical Studies

There is an ongoing debate between the proponents and skeptics of emotional intelligence (EI) with regard to its contribution to leadership effectiveness in organizational settings. Not aiming to address all the leadership styles exhaustively, this research looked into the relationship between EI and transformational leadership (TL) by reviewing the accumulated research assets in the existing literature. After the staged review, 20 empirical studies covering five different continents were chosen for an in-depth analysis. The results show that most studies provide empirical support of the relationship, with variances in identifying subfactors of EI and TL that further explicate the EI-TL relationship. At the same time, the remaining studies are found to be skeptical, not fundamentally denying the relationship, but commonly pointing out the problem with EI measures and emphasizing the need for more valid and reliable assessment tools. Building on these findings, the present research suggests implications for practice and research in the human resource development (HRD) field.