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Leadership Styles : Transformational Leadership Style

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Emotional intelligence is made up of several key components. Those components include self-awareness, empathy, the ability to recognize and moderate one’s emotions, self-motivation, and social savvy (Sadri, 2012). Several studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between effective leadership and a higher level of emotional intelligence. Management theory tends to differentiate between two distinct leadership styles – transformational and transactional. It is the former that theorists link to a higher levels of emotional intelligence in the managers, as well as higher levels of performance in their subordinates.
A transformational leadership style differs from a transactional style in that the latter tends to focus on the use of rewards and punishments in order to extract desired behaviors from subordinates (Sunindijo, 2012). When enacted, a transformational leadership style focuses more heavily on employee autonomy, team relations, team cohesiveness, and individual employee development (Sunindijo, 2012). A higher level of emotional intelligence is what predisposes a manager to enact a transformational leadership style. While the majority of leaders find that they must also utilize some aspects of transactional leadership in order to be effective, transformational leadership is advantageous when it comes to an organization’s long-term success.
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What is Emotional Intelligence? Emotional intelligence is the intuitive counterpart to

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