In plain language
Why do some highly intelligent, experienced executives still struggle to lead well? This study asked whether emotional intelligence (EI) — the ability to perceive, understand and manage emotions — helps explain leadership effectiveness beyond what IQ and personality can tell us. Unlike most earlier work, it looked at real workplace performance rather than just perceptions of leadership style.
Forty-one senior executives from a large public service organisation completed an ability-based test of emotional intelligence (the MSCEIT), a personality inventory (16PF5) and an IQ test (the WASI). Their leadership effectiveness was assessed using the organisation’s objective performance-management ratings and 360-degree feedback from their subordinates and direct managers (149 raters in all).
Executives with higher emotional intelligence — especially the ability to perceive and understand emotions — received better ratings on how they achieved results and were seen as more effective leaders by the people around them. Critically, EI predicted leadership effectiveness over and above both personality and IQ. The findings suggest that while a high IQ may help people reach executive ranks, emotional intelligence helps distinguish who actually leads well once they get there — with practical implications for how organisations select and develop leaders.
Key findings
- Total emotional intelligence correlated significantly with performance ratings of how executives achieved results (r = .38), though not with what outputs they delivered.
- The ability to perceive emotions was the strongest predictor of leadership effectiveness, and in hierarchical regression it predicted “how” performance over and above the Big Five personality factors and IQ (R² change = .10).
- EI branch scores, particularly perceiving and understanding emotions, correlated with multiple core leadership behaviours in 360-degree feedback from subordinates and direct managers.
- Total EI did not correlate significantly with any of the 16 personality factors, supporting the view that ability-based EI is distinct from personality.
- EI correlated modestly with verbal, performance and full-scale IQ (r = .34 to .43), consistent with EI being a genuine cognitive ability — yet IQ itself did not distinguish better from worse performing executives in this high-IQ sample.
- The EI–leadership correlations (up to about .45) are comparable to or larger than those of widely used selection tools such as assessment centres.
How to cite
APA
Rosete, D., & Ciarrochi, J. (2005). Emotional intelligence and its relationship to workplace performance outcomes of leadership effectiveness. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 26(5), 388–399. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730510607871
BibTeX
@article{rosete2005emotional,
author = {Rosete, David and Ciarrochi, Joseph},
title = {Emotional intelligence and its relationship to workplace performance outcomes of leadership effectiveness},
journal = {Leadership \& Organization Development Journal},
year = {2005},
volume = {26},
number = {5},
pages = {388--399},
doi = {10.1108/01437730510607871}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.