An Examination of the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Servant Leadership Practices of Elementary Public School Principals in Washington State

This study investigated whether there was a correlation between principal's emotional intelligence and servant leadership behaviors, as perceived by the teachers in their schools. The teachers ratings their principals' emotional intelligence and servant leadership behaviors were also compared with and the principals' self-ratings on the same measures. Many elementary principals are overwhelmed with their jobs and the level of stress sometimes reaches the point of exhaustion. This quantitative study used the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale to measure the elementary principals' rating of the independent variable emotional intelligence and the WLEIS-observer to measure the teacher ratings of the principals. Research has shown that the leadership style of a principal is important to the success of a school. Servant leadership combined with emotional intelligence were identified in this study as strongly correlated in the leadership of elementary school principals; 97% of the constructs (34 out of 35) correlated significantly in the teachers' ratings of SL and EI, and 74% of the constructs (26 out of 35) correlated significantly in the principals' ratings of SL and EI. The hope is that this study will serve as a guide to refine the investigation of the correlation of servant leadership and emotional intelligence. The findings of this study may help the elementary principals in public schools gain an understanding of the significance that servant leadership and emotional intelligence may have in their role as a school principal. The findings might also help to create a better training process to prepare elementary principals for the stressful job of prinicipalship.;Keywords: Wong and Law's Emotional Intelligence Scale, emotional intelligence, principals, and servant leadership.