As a company with decades of experience assessing, training, and studying emotional intelligence, we know the impact emotional intelligence has on leadership. We’ve seen in real time the effect EQ training has on leaders, the people they lead, and the organizations they work for. But we also know that evidence from scholarly research is an essential resource for leaders seeking to incorporate emotional intelligence into their organizations.

To that end, we’ve collected here some of the most recent impactful studies on the numerous connections between emotional intelligence and leadership skills.

Across comprehensive reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and workplace studies, emotional intelligence is consistently associated with stronger leadership behaviors, more effective teams, improved employee experiences, and meaningful development opportunities.

Much of the research identifies relationships rather than proving direct causation, and measurement approaches vary widely. But for organizations deciding where to invest in leader development, the research offers a clear direction: emotional intelligence should be treated as a practical, measurable, and developable leadership capability.

We invite you to continue reading for a comprehensive overview of the most recent key scholarly research on emotional intelligence and leadership. We hope this resource will help ground your leadership development efforts in scientific evidence by connecting academic research with practical workplace applications.

We also invite you to stay in touch with us to continue learning about emotional intelligence for leaders. Discoveries from TalentSmartEQ’s applied research and the larger body of EQ research are available on our website to encourage continued conversations and insights. To access more research on the impact of EQ in the workplace, please visit www.talentsmarteq.com/research-insights.

1. Emotional Intelligence and Leader Outcomes: A Comprehensive Review and Roadmap for Future Inquiry
Gerhardt, K., Bauwens, R., & van Woerkom, M.
Human
Resource Development Review, 2025.

Read the article

What the study examined
This comprehensive review analyzed 101 empirical studies on leaders’ emotional intelligence and associated leadership outcomes. Rather than focusing on a single leadership behavior or workplace outcome, the authors reviewed the field as a whole, including leadership style, employee relationships, leader well-being, performance, trust, and development.

Key findings
The review found that emotional intelligence is generally associated with positive leader outcomes. Among the clearest findings:

• Transformational leadership (a leadership style that focuses on creating intrinsic motivation in employees by developing, inspiring, encouraging, and empowering them rather than simply managing task completion or productivity) was the most frequently studied leadership behavior associated with EQ.
• 23 of 29 studies examining transformational leadership reported a positive relationship with emotional intelligence.
• 23 of 27 studies examining performance-related outcomes reported positive relationships with leader EQ.
• Empathy was positively associated with trust and coaching relationship quality.
• Emotional intelligence was also associated with leader well-being and relational outcomes.

The review also identified important limitations. Most studies used cross-sectional designs, meaning they measured relationships at a single point in time. Many also relied on self-reported EQ rather than feedback from employees or peers.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
This is currently one of the most useful scholarly reviews for organizations evaluating the role of EQ in leadership. Its findings support including emotional intelligence in leadership development strategy, while also reinforcing that development should focus on behavior and external feedback rather than self-perception alone.
For HR and L&D teams, the practical takeaway is twofold:

• EQ is relevant to leadership effectiveness, particularly in the relational and performance-facing parts of leadership.
• Assessment and development should incorporate observable behavior, coaching, and multisource feedback wherever possible.

TalentSmartEQ’s multi-rater and 360-degree assessments provide a reliable measure of EQ using multisource feedback, and our framework of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management provides a practical structure for translating these findings into day-to-day leadership behavior.

2. Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership, and Team Effectiveness: A Systematic Review and Correlational Meta-Analysis
Paredes-Saavedra et al.

Administrative Sciences, 2026.

Read the article

What the study examined
This 2026 study examined three connected workplace variables: emotional intelligence, transformational leadership, and team effectiveness. The researchers used a systematic review process and meta-analytic synthesis to evaluate how these factors relate across previous empirical studies.

Key findings
The meta-analysis found positive, statistically significant relationships between emotional intelligence and team effectiveness, transformational leadership and team effectiveness, and emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. The paper reinforces the idea that EQ is not only relevant to the leader as an individual but is also connected to how teams work together and how leadership behavior affects collective performance.

The researchers emphasized that the evidence base remains methodologically varied. Studies use different EQ instruments, different leadership measures, and different definitions of team effectiveness. Many studies also come from particular sectors or geographic regions, limiting how broadly any single finding should be generalized.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
This research expands the business case for leadership EQ beyond individual leader performance. It suggests that organizations should consider the effect emotionally intelligent leadership may have on team functioning, especially in environments where communication, adaptability, trust, and collaboration are essential.

For development programs, these results imply that EQ training for leaders should include support in creating emotionally intelligent team practices, such as:

• Constructive conflict management
• Clear communication under pressure
• Team awareness of emotional climate
• Healthy feedback norms
• Relationship repair after setbacks

For additional practical strategies, explore our resources for enhancing team EQ.

3. How Leadership Emotional Intelligence Promotes Team Innovation: Parallel Mediating Roles of Psychological Safety and Knowledge Sharing
Xing et al.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2026.

Read the article

What the study examined
This 2026 study investigated how a leader’s emotional intelligence may influence team innovation through two potential pathways: psychological safety and knowledge sharing.

Using data from 65 leaders and 391 team members, the researchers examined whether emotionally intelligent leaders were associated with teams that felt safer contributing ideas, shared knowledge more readily, and demonstrated stronger innovative behavior.

Key findings
Leadership emotional intelligence was positively associated with:

• Team innovation behavior
• Psychological safety
• Knowledge sharing

Both psychological safety and knowledge sharing helped explain the relationship between leader EQ and team innovation. However, psychological safety was the substantially stronger pathway.

The researchers found that:

• The indirect effect through psychological safety accounted for 39.78% of the total relationship between leadership EQ and team innovation.
• The indirect effect through knowledge sharing accounted for 6.52%.
• Leadership emotional intelligence also maintained a significant direct relationship with team innovation after both mediators were considered.

In other words, emotionally intelligent leaders may support innovation not only by encouraging the exchange of information, but more significantly by creating an environment where employees feel safe offering ideas, challenging assumptions, acknowledging mistakes, and taking interpersonal risks.

Because the study was cross-sectional and included teams distributed unevenly across industries, the findings should be understood as evidence of meaningful association rather than proof that leader EQ directly causes greater innovation in every organizational context.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
This study adds an especially relevant outcome to the leadership EQ evidence base: innovation.

Organizations often invest in innovation processes, knowledge-sharing systems, or collaboration tools without fostering the emotional conditions that allow employees to contribute confidently. This research suggests that these systems and tools may be more effective when leaders first build the psychological safety employees need to share ideas and take creative risks.

The findings support development programs that help leaders:

• Respond constructively to ideas, questions, and dissent
• Manage their own reactions when employees challenge assumptions
• Create team norms that make learning from mistakes acceptable
• Encourage knowledge sharing through trust rather than pressure alone
• Recognize that innovative performance depends partly on emotional climate

The practical implication is that emotionally intelligent leadership may help teams innovate because it strengthens the conditions employees need to contribute their best thinking.

4. A Systematic Literature Review on the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership: A Critical Approach
Korakis, G., & Poulaki, I.

Businesses, 2025.

Read the article

What the study examined
This systematic literature review focused specifically on the relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership. The researchers reviewed studies published since 2000 in highly ranked business, management, and accounting journals.

Transformational leadership is especially relevant to EQ research because it involves motivating employees, building commitment, supporting development, communicating purpose, and managing relationships effectively.

Key findings
The researchers identified:

• 16 studies supporting a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership
• 9 studies questioning or complicating that relationship

The majority of studies supported a positive connection, but not all did. The authors caution that findings may appear stronger when leaders rate their own emotional intelligence or leadership behavior, reinforcing the value of employee feedback and multisource assessment in leadership development.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
This review offers a valuable corrective to overly broad claims about EQ and leadership. Emotional intelligence appears to support transformational leadership behavior, but it should not be treated as the sole factor that makes someone an effective or inspiring leader.

Organizations should use EQ development to support specific leadership behaviors, such as:

• Communicating vision in a way employees can connect with
• Understanding what motivates different team members
• Maintaining credibility and composure during change
• Building trust while holding people accountable

In practice, leader development is strongest when EQ is combined with business judgment, role-specific capability, ethical leadership, and clear performance expectations.

5. Training Emotional Competencies at the Workplace: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Mehler et al.

BMC Psychology, 2024.

Read the article

What the study examined
One of the most important questions for L&D leaders is whether emotional intelligence can actually be developed. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined workplace training interventions designed to improve emotional intelligence, empathy, and emotion regulation. The authors included 50 workplace studies in their pre-post meta-analysis and examined 27 controlled trials to evaluate intervention effectiveness more rigorously.

Key findings
The researchers found moderate effects for workplace training designed to develop emotional competencies. Importantly, the analysis focused on the workplace rather than general educational or clinical settings, making it especially relevant to organizational learning leaders.

The review also found that only a limited number of studies included follow-up assessments. This reinforces an important point: improvement measured immediately after a program does not automatically demonstrate long-term behavior change.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
Emotional intelligence is not simply a fixed characteristic leaders either possess or lack. Workplace interventions can strengthen emotional competencies.

However, effective EQ development should move beyond one-time training events. Strong programs should include:

• Initial assessment
• Focused development goals
• Application to real leadership situations
• Practice and reflection
• Feedback from others
• Reinforcement over time

The strongest question for L&D teams is not whether EQ can be developed but whether a development experience gives leaders enough practice and feedback to convert insight into sustained leadership behavior.

TalentSmartEQ’s foundational Mastering EQ program is built with long-term growth in mind. Our comprehensive sustainment suite extends the initial learning experience with continued practice and application of skills, including new 1-hour EQ sustainment labs that provide structured opportunities for leaders to apply EQ strategies in real workplace situations.

6. Transformational Leadership and Emotional Intelligence: Allies in the Development of Organizational Affective Commitment From a Multilevel Perspective and Time-Lagged Data
Pulido-Martos et al.

Review of Managerial Science, 2024.

Read the article

What the study examined
This study investigated how transformational leadership and workgroup emotional intelligence contribute to affective organizational commitment: employees’ emotional connection to and identification with their organization.

The researchers studied 63 work teams from different organizations and sectors in Spain, involving 233 employees, and collected data at two points in time.

Key findings
At the individual level, supervisors’ transformational leadership influenced employees’ affective organizational commitment both directly and indirectly through workgroup emotional intelligence.

At the team level, workgroup emotional intelligence also helped explain affective organizational commitment; however, the study did not find a direct team-level relationship between transformational leadership and affective commitment. Ultimately, the study’s findings suggest that emotionally intelligent team conditions can help explain how leadership behavior translates to employee commitment.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
This study matters because it shows that an organization can develop emotionally intelligent leaders, but those leaders must also build emotionally intelligent team environments.

For HR and L&D teams focused on engagement or retention, this suggests that leadership EQ development should include team-level behaviors, such as:

• Creating shared norms for handling conflict.
• Encouraging productive discussion of challenges.
• Building trust through consistency and follow-through.
• Strengthening relationships during periods of stress or change.

Leader EQ matters because it can shape the emotional quality of employees’ everyday working experience on both an individual and a team level.

7. The Impact of Perceived Leadership Effectiveness and Emotional Intelligence on Employee Satisfaction in the Workplace
Rodrigues, R., Teixeira, N., & Costa, B.

Merits, 2024.

Read the article

What the study examined
This study examined the relationship between perceived leadership effectiveness, perceived emotional intelligence, and employee satisfaction in the workplace.

The focus on employee perception is useful. Leadership EQ matters in practice only when it becomes visible to the people being led.

Key findings
Employees who perceived their leaders as more emotionally intelligent and effective reported higher levels of workplace satisfaction. Perceived leadership effectiveness had the stronger relationship with employee satisfaction (β = 0.657, p < 0.001), while perceived leader emotional intelligence also significantly predicted satisfaction (β = 0.246, p < 0.001).

This does not mean emotional intelligence alone causes employee satisfaction. Workplace satisfaction is influenced by many factors, including compensation, workload, opportunity, fairness, organizational stability, and culture. The study does indicate that employees’ perception of leader effectiveness and EQ is strongly connected to how they experience work.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
Organizations cannot separate employee experience from leader behavior. Leaders affect whether employees feel heard, supported, clearly directed, fairly treated, and confident in their ability to address challenges.

This research supports development in the leadership moments employees experience most directly:

• One-on-one conversations
• Performance feedback
• Recognition
• Conflict resolution
• Communication during uncertainty
• Coaching and development

For HR leaders working on engagement, culture, or retention, leader EQ is not a peripheral skill. It is part of the employee experience infrastructure. To help leaders build these EQ capabilities in the real moments that matter, our EQ in Action suite provides practical tools and learning experiences for conversations, feedback, recognition, conflict, and change. 

8. The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis
Lv, H., Han, C., & Wang, D.

Advances in Psychological Science, 2018.

Read the article

What the study examined
Although this meta-analysis is older than the other articles on the list, it provides a large pooled analysis of the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness.

The authors analyzed:

• 98 papers
• 110 effect sizes
• 27,330 participants

Key findings
The meta-analysis found a moderate positive correlation between leader emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness: r = 0.39.

This is one of the most useful figures for HR and L&D leaders evaluating the case for EQ. It indicates a meaningful relationship without suggesting that emotional intelligence explains every dimension of effective leadership.

The researchers also found that the relationship differed depending on how emotional intelligence was measured, with mixed-model measures showing stronger associations than ability-only measures.

What this means for HR and L&D leaders
This article provides the foundation for a practical organizational conclusion: emotional intelligence is meaningfully related to leadership effectiveness and warrants attention in leadership assessment and development.

At the same time, organizations should avoid using EQ as a stand-alone label for leadership potential. The most effective approach is to combine EQ development with:

• Business and strategic capability
• Technical expertise
• Judgment and decision-making
• Ethical leadership
• Feedback from employees and peers
• Clear measures of leadership behavior and impact

Additional Recent Scholarly Research on Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
For readers interested in exploring more scholarly articles on emotional intelligence in leadership, the studies below offer additional insight into how EQ and leadership affect employee performance, engagement, conflict management, team functioning, and psychological safety.

• The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Managers and Its Impact on Employee Performance Amid Turbulent Times — Administrative Sciences, 2025. This study found positive relationships between managers’ emotional intelligence dimensions and employee performance during prolonged uncertainty, with self-regulation and empathy emerging as especially important factors.
• Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Its Role in Fostering Employee Engagement in Palestine’s ICT Sector — Problems and Perspectives in Management, 2024. This study reported a positive relationship between leadership emotional intelligence and employee engagement, reinforcing the role leaders play in shaping employees’ day-to-day experience of work.
• The Role of Emotional Intelligence and Conflict Management in Job Satisfaction and Teamwork: A Systematic Review — Public Health Challenges, 2025. This review examined how emotional intelligence and conflict management relate to teamwork and job satisfaction, offering additional support for developing leaders’ ability to navigate disagreement constructively.
• Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, and Work Teams: A Hybrid Literature Review — Heliyon, 2023. Reviewing 104 peer-reviewed articles and reviews, this paper provides broader context on how emotional intelligence has been studied across leadership, team dynamics, and workplace performance.
• The Role of Leadership in Shaping Psychological Safety: A Qualitative Study From Slovakia — Scientific Reports, 2026. Although this study does not specifically measure emotional intelligence, it offers relevant insight into how leader behaviors influence psychological safety and employees’ willingness to speak up.

What the Research Says Overall
Let’s synthesize the scholarly research on leadership skills and emotional intelligence into a few key takeaways:

1. Emotional intelligence is associated with leadership effectiveness.
Meta-analytic and comprehensive review evidence consistently identifies a positive relationship between leader EQ and leadership outcomes.

2. EQ is especially relevant to relational leadership behavior.
The research most strongly connects EQ with transformational leadership, empathy, trust, coaching relationships, team climate, and employee experience.

3. Leadership EQ can extend to team outcomes.
Recent studies suggest that emotionally intelligent leadership influences not only individual leader effectiveness, but also team effectiveness and organizational commitment.

4. Emotional competencies can be developed.
Workplace training research supports the development of emotional intelligence, empathy, and emotion-regulation skills through structured intervention.

5. Measurement matters.
The field still relies heavily on self-assessment and cross-sectional study designs. For organizations, EQ development is most credible when it focuses on behavior, feedback, application, and measurable leadership impact.

How HR and L&D Leaders Can Apply the Research
We know that while scholarly research is important on its own, its value for you lies in how these findings impact the way you evaluate, develop, and equip your leaders. So here is a list of actionable steps your organization can take to apply the evidence:

• Including emotional intelligence in manager and executive development.
• Defining EQ through observable behaviors rather than broad personality labels.
• Using feedback-based assessment in addition to self-evaluation.
• Connecting EQ development to real leadership situations, including feedback, conflict, coaching, trust-building, and change communication.
• Developing team emotional intelligence alongside individual leader EQ.

TalentSmartEQ defines emotional intelligence through four practical skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. These are the skills leaders use to recognize their own emotional patterns, remain effective under pressure, understand employees accurately, and build relationships that support performance.

Explore our range of EQ assessments, trainings, and learning experiences to find out how you can help leaders build and apply the emotional intelligence skills supported by today’s leadership research.

Frequently Asked Questions
What is the strongest current research on emotional intelligence in leadership?
The most comprehensive current scholarly article on EQ in leadership is Gerhardt, Bauwens, and van Woerkom’s review of 101 empirical studies on emotional intelligence and leader outcomes. It provides the broadest synthesis of leadership behaviors, performance, well-being, trust, and research limitations.

Does emotional intelligence make leaders more effective?
Research shows that emotional intelligence is positively associated with leadership effectiveness. A meta-analysis of 98 papers and 27,330 participants reported a moderate positive relationship between leader EQ and leadership effectiveness. EQ is an important capability, but not the only factor in effective leadership.

How is emotional intelligence connected to transformational leadership?
Systematic reviews generally find a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership, although findings are not unanimous. Emotional intelligence appears to support behaviors such as understanding employees, managing relationships, maintaining composure, and building commitment.

Can leaders develop emotional intelligence through training?
Yes. A 2024 workplace meta-analysis found moderate effects for training designed to strengthen emotional intelligence, empathy, and emotion-regulation skills. Effective programs should include practice, feedback, and application over time.

Why should HR and L&D leaders care about EQ research?
Leadership EQ is associated with outcomes HR and L&D leaders are responsible for improving: manager effectiveness, team functioning, employee satisfaction, organizational commitment, trust, and development readiness. The research supports making emotional intelligence a practical component of leadership-development strategy.