Emotional intelligence and servant leadership: A meta‐analytic review

Abstract

AbstractServant leadership is an effective leadership style that focuses on ethics and morality. Emotional intelligence (EI) is also associated with effective leadership and ethical behavior; thus, there has been a surge in studies that assessed the link between EI and servant leadership. Nevertheless, the empirical landscape of this relationship is mixed and fragmented. We undertook a meta‐analysis to clarify this literature and found that (a) EI has a significant positive relationship with servant leadership (ρ̅̂ = .57); (b) the relationship between EI and servant leadership is stronger in studies having a lower percentage of well‐educated subjects, in low power distance cultures, and in high institutional collectivism cultures; and (c) We were unable to find sufficient evidence to support moderating effects of the relationship between EI and servant leadership for gender (male‐dominated and female‐dominated studies), age (between young and old subjects), for self‐report versus follower‐report of servant leadership, and across different scales of servant leadership.