"Do emotionally perceptive leaders motivate higher employee performance? The moderating role of task interdependence and power distance" by Vidyarthi, Anand, and Liden The Leadership Quarterly 25, 2014, 232-244

Special thanks to Deb Elbaum, MD, CPCC, ACC for translating this article.

How important is it that business leaders have high emotional intelligence? How does a leader's emotional intelligence affect an employee's performance? Researchers Vidyarthi, Anand, and Liden examined these questions. Integrating emotional intelligence research with social exchange theory, they explored the relationship between a leader's emotion perception and employee job performance.

Emotion perception is defined as the ability to identify emotions in oneself and in others. People demonstrating high emotion perception express emotions appropriately, empathize well, and communicate with others in an emotionally appropriate way.

In the study, the authors gathered data using surveys from 391 male assembly-line workers and their 88 male managers in a multinational manufacturing organization. The managers were surveyed about their own emotion perception, their perception of the power distance in the organization (the extent to which individuals accept an unequal power distribution in an organization), and their employees' performance. The employees were surveyed about their perception of task interdependence (the degree to which individuals receive direct support from others to accomplish their work).

The authors hypothesized that higher emotion perception in leaders would correlate with better employee job performance. Further, they believed that this relationship would be affected by certain variables and be stronger when task interdependence is present and when leaders have a low power distance (the organization has a more egalitarian structure).

As hypothesized, the results did show that leaders' emotion perception was correlated with employee job performance. The higher the emotion perception in the leader, the higher the employee job performance. Managers' emotion perception accounted for about 24% of the variance in employee job performance. In addition, this relationship was stronger when communication was more frequent, power distance was lower, and the work structure was more interdependent.

This study underlines the importance of emotional intelligence in leaders in organizations for the bottom line of the company. The authors suggest that companies pay attention to this trait when hiring and invest in growing their leaders' emotional intelligence through training. As coaches, we can also have a positive impact by helping our clients who are leaders and managers build and strengthen their emotional intelligence.