Team Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Behavior And Team Effectiveness Research

More attention had been paid to emotional intelligence and team (or group) in the existing research. Although many researchers contributed to give a better understanding of emotional intelligence and the links to performance in work settings, the majority of work focused on individual emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence in the context of team effectiveness has received much less attention. Data was collected from a diverse sample of 877 respondents representing more than 100 teams in Chinese companies, and was subjected to content analysis to identify the construct of group emotional intelligence in Chinese workplace. This research examined the relationship among leadership in the context of team (such as transformational leadership, transactional leadership and leader's emotional intelligence), group emotional intelligence, and group effectiveness.Results revealed 5 factors of group emotional intelligence. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on data consisting of 303 respondents showed that group emotional intelligence was a five-dimension construct in China, which included interpersonal understanding, confronting members who break the norms, emotional regulation, working with attitude and organizational understanding. Two cluster factors emerged when the all five norms were clustered, namely individual and group level. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) of data consisting of 574 respondents further confirmed the group emotional intelligence's construct validity. Internal consistency analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) showed that it had high reliability and validity.The influence of the two clusters of group emotional intelligence on team effectiveness differed. ANOVA examined the difference between two clusters. Results showed group emotional intelligence on individual-level contributed to group effectiveness more than group-level.Group emotional intelligence served as a mediator. Transformational leadership and transactional leadership correlated with group emotional intelligence significantly. Both transformational leadership and transactional leadership had a positive impact on group emotional intelligence. Transformational leadership and transactional leadership had direct effects on team effectiveness mediated by group emotional intelligence. Leader's emotional intelligence correlated with group emotional intelligence significantly. Leader's emotional intelligence had direct effects on team effectiveness mediated by group emotional intelligence.