Job Satisfaction Is Influenced by the Leader’s Emotional Intelligence

It is in any organization’s best interests to have employees that are satisfied with their jobs. Individual job satisfaction has been linked to increased performance and higher organizational loyalty, amongst other positive implications. Researchers found that individual job satisfaction and trait emotional intelligence (or one’s emotional self-awareness) are linked. The ability to identify and regulate one’s emotions has positive effects on job satisfaction.  

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND LEADERSHIP

As organizational structure is becoming more and more group-focused, this study (Zampetakis & Moustakis, 2011) raises the possibility that the trait emotional intelligence of a leader could play a role in group job satisfaction. If such a relationship is found, organizations could use this information to place those employees with high trait emotional intelligence in leadership roles, potentially boosting group job satisfaction and benefiting the organization as a whole.

Supporting the notion that groups tend to develop shared judgments and evaluations over time, the researchers found that the groups they studied developed unitary evaluations of their leaders’ emotional intelligence. 

Furthermore, these group evaluations were found to play a role in determining group job satisfaction, which refers to members‘ feelings towards the work they perform and their work environment at large. This is important because it further emphasizes the effects that group members have on one another, as well as the shared effects that a leader’s actions could have on all members of a group.

ORGANIZATIONAL IMPLICATIONS

In the future, organizations might find it beneficial to recruit group leaders with high trait emotional intelligence, as these individuals could potentially impact group satisfaction and therefore provide a better working experience for group members. Group job satisfaction is not only beneficial to the individuals in the groups themselves, but to organizations on the whole, as satisfied employees could have positive implications in the workplace. Overall, this study highlights the need to emphasize not only individual interactions, but those on the group level, as well.

 

Zampetakis, L. A., & Moustakis, V. (2011). Managers’ Trait Emotional Intelligence and Group Outcomes: The Case of Group Job Satisfaction. Small Group Research, 42(1), 77-102.