Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership Among Academic Leaders in Institutions of Higher Learning

Abstract

Academic leaders have a very important role to play in higher educational institutions, and for the development of academic leaders attention has to be paid to their emotional intelligence to ensure transformational leadership and effective decision-making in their institution. There are few issues which are faced by all the academic leaders due to multiple roles, attitude, behaviour and emotions related to job/role. This is because with the passage of time, the roles of academic leaders have also changed. In the present study, the focus is on transformational leadership style of academic leaders as it is more prevalent in the higher education sector. In light of the findings of the empirical studies conducted on the subject, the present study is conducted in higher education sector with the objectives to examine the state of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership among academic leaders, to examine association between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership among the academic leaders under study, to study the association of various demographic factors of faculty members on their perception regarding emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. The present study is exploratory cum descriptive in nature. The data were collected from full-time faculty members working in selected universities of north India and their perception regarding emotional intelligence and transformational leadership of their academic leaders was measured. It was found that there is a significant and direct association between emotional intelligence of leaders and transformational leadership style as perceived by the faculty members. The demographic variables (gender and age) were found to significantly influence the variables under study as perceived by the faculty members about their academic leaders (HODs). Besides having theoretical implications that open pathways for conducting further research, the findings of the study may serve as a reference for service practitioners in designing strategies that will ensure superior performance of academic leaders in higher educational institutions.