The Relationship Among Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Style And Performance Of SME Entrepreneurs

This study explores the predictive relationship between entrepreneur's emotionalintelligence and leadership style, as well as the contribution of both to subordinates'performance and company's performance. One hundred and twenty-six entrepreneurs andtheir two hundred and fifty-two subordinates in Chinese small and middle privatecompanies participated in the interview and questionnaire survey. The result of studysupported most of the hypotheses. The main conclusions were showed as follows:1. The construct and validity of emotional intelligence measured by SEIS wereexamined. The three-factor of Mayer & Salovey's emotional intelligence theory(1990) fit the data well. The three factors were: appraising and expressingemotions,regulating emotions and using emotions in adaptive ways.2. A significant predictive relationship was found between emotional intelligence andtransformational leadership style, but emotional intelligence had no relationship withtransactional leadership style.3. Entrepreneurs' emotional intelligence had a significant effect on subordinates' jobsatisfaction and organizational commitment through transformational leadership style.Transformational leadership style was the mediator of entrepreneurs' emotionalintelligence and the subordinates' job satisfaction and organizational commitment.4. Both of entrepreneurs' emotional intelligence and entrepreneurs' leadership style hadan influence on the subordinates' job performance.5. Entrepreneurs' transactional leadership style had no relationship with subordinates'job satisfaction and organizational commitments, but the passive management-by-exception factor had a passive effect on subordinates' job performance.6. There were no differences between entrepreneurs' and their subordinates' emotionalintelligences scores; there were no educational experience, industry, age differencesin entrepreneurs' emotional intelligence scores; between entrepreneurs withdifferences entrepreneurial experiences and company scale, the score of regulatingemotions factor and using emotions in adaptive ways factor were different.