Authentic leadership is a relatively new construct that has recently gained increasing attention resulting from challenges faced by organisations relating to ethical meltdowns, corruption and fraud.
This study seeks to explore the relationship between components of emotional intelligence and authentic leadership.
Several authors called for more empirical investigations into the antecedents of authentic leadership. Despite the important role that emotions play in leadership, empirical studies were lacking about the influence of different components of emotional intelligence to authentic leadership.
Data were collected, using questionnaires obtained from 341 full-time employed applicants to MBA and leadership programmes in a South African Business School. Relationships between variables were analysed, using Pearson product-moment correlations and stepwise multiple regression.
The results indicated that emotional intelligence has positive statistically significant associations with authentic leadership. Specifically, those who scored high on all the emotional intelligence components also scored high on authentic leadership. In addition, the emotional intelligence component of empathy was a statistically significant predictor of authentic leadership.
Initial findings suggest the potential value of recognising and developing the emotional intelligence of leaders to enable them to lead their organisations authentically to desired, successful outcomes. As empathy has been shown to be the most important emotional intelligence predictor of authentic leadership, leaders need to understand when subordinates perceive a leader as displaying empathic emotion.
This study contributes to the literature and empirical research on the antecedents of authentic leadership.
The challenges faced by public, private and even non-profit organisations relating to ethical meltdowns, corruption, accounting fraud, and IP infringement (Price Waterhouse Coopers,
Authenticity is seen ‘as a broad psychological construct, reflecting one’s general tendencies to view oneself within one’s social environment and to conduct one’s life according to one’s deeply-held values’ (Ilies, Morgeson & Nahrgang,
those who are deeply aware of how they think and behave and are perceived by others as being aware of their own and others’ values/moral perspectives, knowledge, and strengths; aware of the context in which they operate; and who are confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, and of high moral character. (p. 4)
As first referenced in management and organisational literature, authenticity ‘viewed the authentic capacity of a leader as a litmus test of executive quality’ (Emuwa,
Authentic leadership has been associated with the following:
promoting ‘positive outcomes, such as’ extra effort, increased trust, positive emotions, organisational commitment, and organisational citizenship behaviours (Dasborough, Todorova & Qu,
employee creativity and innovativeness (Müceldili, Turan & Erdil,
new venture performance (Hmieleski, Cole & Baron,
follower empowerment, commitment to and satisfaction with supervisors (Emuwa,
eudaemonic well-being (Ilies
Research has also indicated ‘that authentic leadership may be particularly beneficial when shared among team members’ within leadership teams (Hmieleski
Because of the impact of everyday emotions on organisational life and the obvious demands for emotional labour inherent to the leadership role (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans & May,
although role demands of the leadership position and situational factors may create chronic needs for leaders to regulate emotions, acute events at work have the most immediate impact on a leader’s emotions. (p. 469)
Subsequently, the role that positive emotions and trust may play in the authentic leadership process has been proposed by several researchers (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans & May,
Given this fundamental role of emotions in leadership (Walter
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Research relating EI and authentic leadership specifically is basically non-existent (Gardner, Cogliser, Davis & Dickens,
In light of the above context, the purpose of the present research is to determine the influence of the various components of EI on authentic leadership.
A variety of approaches and interpretations representing a developing framework within which to understand the concept of authenticity and authentic leadership is evident from the literature (Eagly,
The above authors propose that authentic leadership consists of four distinct but related substantive components: self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalised moral perspective. In this model of authentic leadership, s
refers to showing an understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses and the multifaceted nature of the self, which includes gaining insight into the self through exposure to others, and being cognisant of one’s impact on other people. (Walumbwa
‘
Although authentic leadership shows some overlap with, and can incorporate different modern perspectives on, leadership, such as transformational, charismatic, servant, and spiritual leadership (Avolio & Gardner,
believe the key distinction is that authentic leaders are anchored by their own deep sense of self; they know where they stand on important issues, values, and beliefs. With that base, they stay their course and convey to others, oftentimes through actions … just words, what they represent in terms of principles, values, and ethics. (p. 329)
The various models of EI are divided into three distinct categories (Ashkanasy & Daus,
The second category also draws on Salovey and Mayer’s definition, but rather than employing ability-based tests, it uses self-assessments or reports by others of emotional intelligent behaviour (Ashkanasy & Daus,
Similar to the Bar-On model, Goleman’s (
‘self-awareness – the ability to recognize one’s own feelings, abilities, and limitations’
‘relationship management – the ability to influence others, manage conflict, and inspire others’
‘social awareness – the ability to read the emotions of others (this also involves empathy)’
‘self-management – the ability to control one’s own negative emotions and to be trustworthy’ (Muyia,
The trait EI perspective has been criticised, firstly, for using self-reports which, critics contend, scarcely ‘reflect self-perceptions and therefore constitute unreliable assessments of objective competencies’. Secondly, it has been criticised for correlating with existing personality traits too closely to be useful (Mikolajczak,
In support of this argument, Davies, Lane, Devonport and Scott (
In order to execute the research, the current study followed a cross-sectional design with a survey data collection technique.
A total of 341 aspiring Business School students in full-time employment who had applied for MBA and leadership programmes participated in the study. Males (
25.5% from 31–35 years (the majority age group)
22.9% from 26–30 years
22.0% from 36–40 years
15.0% from 41–45 years
8.8% from 46–50 years
4.7% from 21–25 years
1.2% were older than 50 years.
Additional information regarding the sample can be found in
Additional biographical information of sample.
Variable | Sub-dimensions | Frequency | % |
---|---|---|---|
Language | Afrikaans | 105 | 31 |
SeSotho | 102 | 30 | |
SeTswana | 43 | 12 | |
Other language group (including English, IsiXhosa, IsiZulu, Sepedi, Tsonga, etc.) | 91 | 27 | |
Tertiary Qualification | Diploma | 135 | 40 |
B-degree | 90 | 26 | |
Postgraduate diploma | 24 | 7 | |
Other qualification | 92 | 27 | |
Employment Sector | Public | 120 | 35 |
Private | 182 | 53 | |
Other | 39 | 12 |
Authentic Leadership: AL was measured using the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) (Walumbwa
EI was measured using the Rahim Emotional Quotient Index (REQI). It is a multidimensional measure of trait EI, and was developed using the dimensions of EI proposed by Goleman (
The ‘instrument uses a 7–point Likert scale (7 = Strongly Agree … 1 = Strongly Disagree …) for ranking each item, a higher score’ indicates a greater dimension of Emotional intelligence. Examples of statements included in the survey are: ‘I keep my distressing emotions in check’ and ‘I understand the link between employees’ emotions and what they do’ (Abas,
The study employed LISREL 8.80 (Jöreskog & Sörbom,
The results section consists of five tables encompassing the statistical outcomes from the collected data, followed by a short report.
Goodness-of-fit statistics.
Fit index | Emotional intelligence | Authentic leadership |
---|---|---|
S-B X2 | 566.07 | 265.14 |
df | 395 | 98 |
RMSEA | 0.036† | 0.071‡ |
CFI | 0.99 | 0.95 |
SRMR | 0.037 | 0.082 |
†, (0.029; 0.042); ‡, 0.061; 0.081.
Reliability estimates.
Variable | Number of items | Cronbach’s alpha |
---|---|---|
Transparency (Authentic Leadership) | 5 | 0.60 |
Moral/Ethical (Authentic Leadership) | 4 | 0.78 |
Balanced Processing (Authentic Leadership) | 3 | 0.43 |
Self-Awareness (Authentic Leadership) | 4 | 0.76 |
Self-Awareness (Emotional Intelligence) | 6 | 0.91 |
Self-Regulation (Emotional Intelligence) | 6 | 0.91 |
Motivation (Emotional Intelligence) | 6 | 0.93 |
Empathy (Emotional Intelligence) | 6 | 0.90 |
Social Skills (Emotional Intelligence) | 6 | 0.91 |
Correlations between components of emotional intelligence and authentic leadership.
Variable | Authentic leadership (Total) |
---|---|
Self-Awareness | 0.23† |
Self-Regulation | 0.22† |
Motivation | 0.15† |
Empathy | 0.24† |
Social Skills | 0.23† |
†, Correlation is significant at the 0.001 level.
From
The majority of the variables have acceptable reliability estimates – see
It is evident from
To determine whether or not any of the EI components are significant predictors of authentic leadership, the results of the stepwise multiple regression need to be consulted (see
Stepwise multiple regression.
Variable | β | Standard error | Cumulative |
Tolerance | VIF | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Empathy | 0.36 | 0.11 | 3.33 | 0.00 | 0.06 | 0.22 | 4.57 |
Motivation | -0.37 | 0.11 | -3.29 | 0.00 | 0.08 | 0.10 | 5.53 |
Social Skills | 0.25 | 0.11 | 2.36 | 0.01 | 0.09 | 0.22 | 4.67 |
Stepwise multiple-regression (revised).
Variable | β | Standard error | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Empathy | 0.24 | 0.05 | -3.65 | 0.00 |
From
The purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of the various components of EI on authentic leadership. Broadly speaking, the results showed that trait EI was positively linked to authentic leadership. Six percent of the variance in authentic leadership could be explained by one of the EI components, namely, empathy.
Empathy showed the strongest relationship to authentic leadership and also contributed the most to authentic leadership. This finding supports both theoretical arguments (Butler & Chinowsky,
In light of the above, it makes sense that leaders with high empathy are more able to recognise when different relations behaviours are relevant (Mahsud
EI social skills also showed a significant relationship with self-perceived authentic leadership. Social skills, as measured in this study, include refraining from one’s own negative feelings towards another individual in order not to inhibit collaboration, and to handle conflict with tact and diplomacy. This finding does not come as a surprise as several researchers have emphasised the relational nature of authentic leadership (Avolio & Gardner,
The role of self-awareness, and self-regulation in authentic leadership was also evident. Several researchers (Avolio & Gardner,
Since EI empathy has been shown to be the most important EI predictor of authentic leadership, leaders need to understand when subordinates perceive a leader as displaying empathic emotion. Therefore, in order to develop authentic leaders, it may be meaningful to identify how empathy manifests in the workplace, as no detailed descriptions of empathy behaviour in the workplace exist. This research also suggests that emotional and social skills are both related to authentic leadership, therefore, we suggest that, at a more practical level, emotional and social skills can be targeted for assessment and development, and can be an important component of an authentic leadership development programme. Executive coaching can be used to improve interpersonal skills, such as empathy, whilst multisource feedback programmes, including role modelling and leadership training interventions, can be used to increase self-awareness and assist leaders to obtain a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and improve ‘relations behaviours’.
The results presented in this article should be understood within the context of the limitations of the study. Firstly, EI was measured by means of self-reporting which can be subjected to biases. ‘However, since this study was largely concerned with self-perceptions, the use of such self-reports is not unreasonable’ (Schmitt,
Little empirical work exists on the antecedents of authentic leadership. This study contributes much-needed empirical evidence in support of various components of EI and its relationship to authentic behaviour. These results support theoretical arguments that authentic leaders are more sensitive interpersonally and, therefore, measure higher on empathy and social skills. It also supports the empirical and theoretical proposals that self-awareness and self-regulation may very well differentiate leaders’ performance in authentic leadership behaviour. This study has provided the first empirical evidence on the components of EI as antecedents of authentic leadership which is particularly important since ‘knowledge about the antecedents of authentic leadership provides a foundation for authentic leadership development’ (Peus
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
M.K. (University of the Free State) was responsible for the conceptualisation, literature review, data-gathering, and discussion of the results. P.N. (University of the Free State) executed the research design, statistical analysis, and also wrote that section of the article.