Correlate of Emotional Intelligence and Academic Staff Job Performance of Federal Universites in The South East, Nigeria

Abstract

There is an ever increasing problem of creating a fit between work-life balances, managing individual emotions and meeting the demands of job requirements in achieving operational ascendency in organization. This problem necessitated the need for organizations to continue to look out for individual workers with high emotional intelligence that can effectively manage their emotions and responds to work for the desired performance. It is the complexity inherent in balancing the aforementioned while achieving the goal of the organization gave vent to this study. The study investigated the effect of emotional intelligence on academic staff job performance of Federal Universities in the South East, Nigeria. The specific objectives are: to determine the extent to which self-awareness relates to academic staff lob performance, to ascertain the extent to which self-management relates to academic staff job performance, and to establish the extent to which social awareness relate to academic staff job performance of federal universities in the south East, Nigeria. Correlation research design shall be employed because the study seeks to establish the degree or extent of the relationships among the studied variables and the data shall be gotten through structured questionnaire designed in 5-point likert scale. The data collected was analyzed with Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The result indicated that there is positive and significant relationship between self-awareness and academic staff job performance (r=0.65, p<0.005, n=496), that there is a positive and significant correlation between self-management and academic staff job performance (r=0.59, p<0.005, n=496) and that there is a positive and significant relationship between social awareness and academic job performance (r=0.45, p<0.005, n=496). The implication is that a holistic understanding of the dimensions of emotional intelligence would not only enable the individual workers to effectively manage their emotions but help the workers to overcome challenges and defuse conflict in pursuance to the attainment of goal.