An Exploratory Study of Executive Transformational Leadership, Wisdom, and Emotional Intelligence in Management Process Turnaround Situations. (Paperback)

This mixed methods study explored the concept of executive transformational leadership, wisdom, and emotional intelligence in the context of turnaround situations. Here, a turnaround situation is a positive, substantial, and sustained change in the performance of the business. Eight executives were selected based on their transformational leadership scores on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ); additionally, each executive had direct experience with a management process turnaround situation. The remaining quantitative data for this study were collected using a demographic worksheet, the Social Paradigm Belief Inventory (SPBI), and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). The qualitative data were collected through interviews, which were transcribed and coded based on a transformative framework of the MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 2004), SPBI (Kramer, Kahlbaugh, & Goldston, 1992), and MSCEIT (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). The findings of this research suggested that executives involved in turnarounds demonstrated 8 dominant traits across the 3 constructs: transformational leadership, wisdom, and emotional intelligence. These executives also exhibited 2 transformational leadership traits related to charisma (idealized influence) which included the ability to (a) act in ways that build others' respect for them, and (b) talk about their most important values and beliefs. In addition, these leaders exhibited the trait of individualized consideration: the understanding that each individual has differing needs, abilities, and aspirations. Regarding the concept of wisdom, these executives demonstrated the dialectical trait of systemic interrelated awareness: the capacity to recognize that a change in one area impacts the entire organization. Furthermore, these executives applied the following relativistic traits: the ability to recognize the uniqueness of individuals and situations and the capacity to make pragmatic decisions. Finally, these executives were skilled at accurately identifying and expressing their emotions (emotional perception trait) as well as (a) engaging in and detaching from their own emotions and (b) monitoring and managing their own emotions and those of and others (emotional management traits).