Enhancing Employee Engagement through Emotionally Intelligent Leaders

Abstract

In today’s competitive environment survival is the biggest challenge. Leaders are facing too many challenges in facilitating organization’s performance. In such a challenging situation employee engagement practices can make a huge difference in the organizations. Leaders look for productivity such engagement can bring, where on the other hand employees are increasingly desiring for fulfilling work. Employee engagement is more than only job satisfaction. While satisfied employees might do just well enough, they are not likely to put the extra, discretionary effort that is seen when they’ are really engaged in their work. Emotional intelligence is one strategy that leaders can use for increasing engagement and develops their employees. Organizations with emotional climate can effectively engage employees when they have leaders who have empathy, teamwork skills, ability to coach and mentor, and inspirational leadership competencies Empathetic leaders who can better understand unspoken emotions can influence employee commitment and enhance organizational performance. Employees will support their co-worker, use their creativity at work, and advocate for their employer when they feel that their leaders really care about them. This research paper aims to analyze the influence of a leader’s emotional intelligence in enhancing employee engagement for increased organizational performance. Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation was used to analyze the relationship between emotional intelligence of leaders and the level of employee engagement of their direct reports. The results of the study indicate that there is a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and the dimensions of employee engagement.

Keywords

• emotional intelligence
• employee engagement