Leadership & Emotional Intelligence

The Leadership Quarterly 24 (2013) 747–762

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Leadership Quarterly

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua

Does emotional intelligence as ability predict transformational

leadership? A multilevel approach☆,☆☆

Hallvard Føllesdal a,b,⁎, Knut Hagtvet b

a

b

Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway

Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:

Received 15 June 2012

Received in revised form 12 July 2013

Accepted 13 July 2013

Available online 16 August 2013

Associate Editor: John Antonakis

Keywords:

Emotional intelligence

MSCEIT

Transformational leadership

a b s t r a c t

This study assesses to what extent emotional intelligence as ability (EI) can predict transformational

leadership. Norwegian executives (N = 104) completed measures of personality (NEO PI-R) and EI

(MSCEIT), and were rated on transformational leadership (MLQ 5X) by subordinates (N = 459).

This study improves upon previous studies in three ways: First, because the validity and reliability of

the scores from MSCEIT has been questioned, an alternative set of scales from MSCEIT were included,

which provide reliable and interpretable scores (Føllesdal & Hagtvet, 2009). Second, in addition to

personality, general mental ability (GMA) was controlled for by utilizing Monte Carlo studies. Third, a

multilevel approach was used to analyze the scores, due to their hierarchical structure. Neither the

four branch scores, nor the Total EI score from MSCEIT predicted transformational leadership. A

suppression effect was found, however, among two subscales from Perceiving Emotions. The validity

of scores from MSCEIT is questioned.

© 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Emotional intelligence (EI) is assumed to be an important characteristic in leadership, particularly in transformational

leadership...