Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) has permeated both academic and popular writings for over thirty years. In the contemporary workplace, there is a need to evaluate employee perceptions of existing models of EI and how EI may impact business outcomes. Thus, in this article, we take a mixed methods approach by combining focus group interviews with twenty-four full-time employees and original survey data (n = 12,504) with employees from across the world to explore how employees define EI and the impact of above-average EI on business outcomes (here, employee sentiments around workplace change). Focus group interviews revealed that employees understand EI in ways consistent with Goleman’s definitions. However, they put special emphasis on leader EI in the workplace when it comes to where EI is most vital. Subsequent logistic regression analyses revealed that when they rate leaders high in EI, employees have significantly greater odds of accepting, adapting to, and believing that their organizations embrace change. Ultimately, we find that employees understand leader EI as being especially critical to affecting positive outcomes and that above-average leader EI strongly predicts positive employee sentiments around change acceptance and readiness.