Assessing and training leaders' emotional intelligence, and its influence on their employees.

Zammuner, V., Favaro, T., Gonella, F., & Prandi, K. (2016). Assessing and training leaders' emotional intelligence, and its influence on their employees. ICERI2016 Proceedings,.pp 5153-5162 (9th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, Siviglia (E), 14-16 November, 2016). The importance and role of emotions in the work setting have received in recent years an increasing attention, as regards emotions experienced both by individuals, such as employees at the various organizational levels, and as a function of job or role characteristics, and emotions that are related to work-setting structural and dynamic issues, such as those that employees feel towards their leaders, and vice versa, according to leaders' emotional capabilities, and to leadership style. The study tested whether Self-reported leaders' emotional intelligence (EI) capabilities (LEI), are congruent with Other-reported LEI, and whether a brief self-administered online training program (Tremints) affects Self- and Other-reported LEI assessments at post-training, as well as leaders' and employees' emotion-related aspects of work- and general-well being (e.g., Job involvement, Life satisfaction, Health level, and Positive and Negative felt affect), as well leaders' self-perception of their own emotional abilities, including preferred strategies of emotion regulation, level of adhesion to display rules of emotion, and own job-related and general well being (e.g., Job involvement and satisfaction, Health, Affect). Study design. The study employed an experimental pre-post design, with Time (T1 pre-test, and T2 post-test) as the within-subject factor, and Condition (Experimental vs. Control) as the between-subject factor; 25 leaders and their 77 employees formed the experimental group, 4 leaders and 12 employees formed the control group. Most participants were hospital employees working in various sanitary units. At T1, leaders self-rated various EI measures (e.g., ECI scales of EI), whereas employees rated their leader. Employees and leaders also self-rated aspects of their work-related and general wellbeing. At T2, i.e., after Experimental leaders underwent an EI training, leaders and employees again rated LEI, and evaluated their own well-being. Data were analyzed in terms of response frequencies, mean ratings, t-tests, and by means of correlational and MANOVA analyses comparing Experimental and Control leaders and employees at T1 and T2. The results overall showed that at T1 leaders of both groups overall judged themselves as more emotionally competent than their employees did, and enjoyed somewhat greater work-related well being than employees; leaders' EI self-ratings in either group were unrelated to their employees' well being. At T2, Control leaders self-rated their EI as being higher that an T1, contrary to their employees who rated them less positively than at T1. Experimental employees rated instead their leaders similarly to how they had rated them at T1, but their evalutations of their leaders were at T2 reflected in employees' well being; experimental leaders' EI self-ratings did not generally increase from T1 to T2. In sum, the results showed that most Time 2 measures differed significantly from Time 1 measures, but effects were markedly differed in the experimental and the control group and not easy to interpret. The results led to the hypothesis, to be further tested in future studies, that employees' initial assessment of their leaders' EI skills increases their awareness of LEI, so that their T2 ratings of their leaders are based on a greater attention paid to their leaders' EI and are more accurate.