Impact of Training Intervention on Emotional Intelligence in Health Care Administrators and Physician Leaders

Health care leaders have taken on new and stressful roles to achieve successful outcomes between the years 1980 and 2010. Health care leaders must be able to address challenges and conflicts effectively. Successful leadership involves using interpersonal skills to make effective decisions and build collaborative partnerships. Training programs to enhance interpersonal skills in the health care industry are rare and underutilized. Health care leaders may benefit from an individualized emotional intelligence training program designed to explain the effects of a lack of interpersonal skills and how this deficit affects health care operations and collaboration. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to assess the effect of an emotional intelligence concept training intervention and its influence on health care administrators and physician leaders. Gaining a better understanding of emotional intelligence and how training one's own emotions to better perceive, identify, understand, and use emotions affects collaborative efforts and might enhance relations in health care administrator and physician leaders. The results revealed no statistically significant difference exists on (a) the four subscale scores before and after the intervention, (b) perceiving emotion and facilitating thought with emotion at posttest by gender after the intervention, and (c) the four subscale scores by number of years in the field after the intervention, but (d) significant findings do exist on both understanding and managing emotions at posttest by gender after the intervention. Further research is suggested to include exploring additional demographic variables, use of an individualized training program for participants, and conducting a similar comparison study between the two groups of participants. The data might be used to improve leadership capabilities and interactions among health care leaders.