Exploring the emotional intelligence of leaders in governance of non-profit sports organizations: A voluntary vs. non-voluntary comparison

Abstract

Research and practice have overlooked the emotional intelligence (EI) of senior leaders in non-profit organizations. Our research aims to explore and compare the EI capacity of two groups of such leaders; voluntary (i.e., presidents of sport federations) and remunerated (i.e., provincial directors of sports), in the sport governance system of Turkey. The results of a small-scale census revealed that voluntary leaders were older, had more years of sporting experience, and achieved significantly higher EI scores than their paid counterparts. A regression analysis to examine whether age and sporting experience predicted the EI scores returned positive results for age only. A priori and post hoc power analyses assured that results had sufficient power for practically meaningful implications (.95 and .85, respectively). These results suggest that sports-governing non-profit organizations can benefit from some EI training for the development of their leaders, including those younger and with limited sporting experience. We discuss the implications of our findings within the metamorphosis of sports governing bodies from a non-profit organization to a more business-like entity.