The Impact of Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence on Transformational Leadership: A Study in an Apparel Sector Company in Gampaha District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to assess the impact of emotional intelligence on transformational leadership of executives in an apparel sector company in Gampaha district. There is a limited number of researches done on testing the relationship between these two variables and no research has been done on investigating the impact of emotional intelligence on transformational leadership of executives considering apparel sector in Sri Lanka. This study was a quantitative and cross-sectional study. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire. Simple random sampling technique was applied to select the sample, and the final sample consisted of 70 executives in an apparel sector company in Gampaha district. The findings revealed that there is a significant positive impact of emotional intelligence on transformational leadership of executive employees in an apparel sector company in Gampaha district. According to the regression analysis, 36% variation in transformational leadership is explained by emotional intelligence alone. According to the output of dimensional analysis, only use of emotion (p = 0.00) is significant (p < 0.05) dimensions in emotional intelligence but Self-Emotion Appraisal (p=.276), Others Emotion Appraisal (p=.365) and Regulation of Emotion (p=.27) are insignificant (p > 0.05) dimensions in emotional intelligence of executive level employees in selected context. Thus, this study can propose that emotional intelligence as a powerful determinant for selecting potential employees for organizations and emotional intelligence programme should be developed as an intervention technique to ensure the transformational leadership in this sector.