Study on Effect of Emotional Intelligence on Conflict Resolution Style

Abstract

Objective: To study the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) of people and corresponding conflict resolution style and to understand if age, gender, occupation etc. have a bearing on these attributes . Methods/Analysis: Both primary and secondary data was collected. Primary data was collected through questionnaire which consisted of 46 items. Questionnaire source are well-established tools. Questionnaire was shared through the online mode only. Respondents, who are employed professional, were picked by random convenience sampling . Sample consisted of 110 respondents. For analysis data of 99 respondents was used because respondents who showed multiple conflict resolution styles were not considered. Analysis tools - SPSS and Excel. Findings: Avoiding style of conflict resolution was observed to be widely adopted by respondents with high emotional intelligence score. Accommodating and avoiding styles were adopted by people with lesser amount of industry experience and people having more than 10 years of experience used competing as a conflict resolution style. The research shows that women have higher emotional intelligence and thus are able to use varied conflict resolution styles. On the other hand men seemed to adopt avoiding as their conflict resolution style. EI of women being higher than men is in consensus with other studies conducted in this area. Emotional intelligence score increases with age but it was observed that after 35 years of age the emotional intelligence score reduces. Few studies conducted in this area state that EI increases with age. Conclusion/Application: Better understanding of EI of teams and how they resolve conflicts can enable effective and refined recruitment/selection, team formations etc. and further lead to individual wellbeing at workplace and higher team performance.