Impact of Emotional Intelligence of Leadership Effectiveness on Job Satisfaction of Sri Lanka Army

Abstract

This study is aimed to findout how emotional intelligence can be applied to enhance the leadership effectiveness and job satisfaction of military personnel in Sri Lanka Army. Within the course of this study, it has been discovered that emotional intelligence has an effect on empathy, communication skills and influential ability of the leaders resulted by building stronger and better relationships, which enhances their leadership effectiveness ultimately resulting a higher level of job satisfaction among the subordinates. The instrument used for testing is a questionnaire designed to reflect all the characteristics and behaviour patterns of the variables and mode of research is the survey research method. The sample consists of 320 military personnel who have completed the questionnaire, producing a response rate of 100 per cent. Data analysis revealed that the factors of emotional intelligence are significantly associated with leadership effectiveness which ultimately results to improve the level of job satisfaction. Hence a positive relationship exists between the emotional intelligence and the leadership effectiveness as well as between the leadership effectiveness and the job satisfaction. These results largely support the hypothesized associations between variables found in research studies derived mainly from samples of Western theoretical scenario. However, contrary to previous studies, the findings suggest that aspirations to work in a military post are associated with high job satisfaction. The main implications for military training, education and practice are that military administrators should work collaboratively to reduce the gap between theory and practice, specifically to improve the quality of military personnel experience. Positive military placement experience is related to high job satisfaction, and so, potentially, to an improved retention rate. Further these results have implications for top management and policy makers in demonstrating that they should use emotional intelligence to select, train and develop effective leaders