The Relationships Among Education, Leadership Experience, Emotional Intelligence, and Transformational Leadership of Nurse Managers

Healthcare has become increasingly complex.  Such complexity calls for nursing leaders who can effectively transform infrastructures and practice environments that enhance and sustain favorable nursing, patient, and organizational outcomes.  The examination of transformational leadership and its connection to leader effectiveness has been well documented.  While a number of factors have been linked to leader effectiveness, nursing leadership research provides limited evidence for predictors of transformational leadership style, specifically in nurse managers. 

The purpose of this predictive correlational study was to examine the relationships among concepts that were empirically linked to transformational leadership to determine which one produced the most variance in transformational leadership of nurse managers.  Imogene King’s Conceptual System and Theory of Goal Attainment and Bass’s Transformational Leadership theory served as the theoretical underpinning for this study. 

Nurse managers (N= 148) who were members of the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) professional organization and working in varied healthcare settings served as the sample.  Data were collected using the Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory, the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire, and a demographic questionnaire.  Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics for nurse managers and each research variable as well as simple linear and multiple regression analysis to determine relationships between and among the variables. 

Inspection of data revealed a statistically significant relationship between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership (r = .59, p<.001), indicating emotional intelligence explained 34% variance in transformational leadership of nurse managers.

The results of this study have implications for nursing science and research, education, practice, and administration.  Transformational nurse managers are capable of influencing subordinates to achieve optimal outcomes for patients and the organization.  Findings of this study may assist nurse leaders in understanding predictors of transformational leadership in nurse managers.  The results of this study may inform curricula changes in academic leadership preparation and influence hiring, orientation, and continuing education programs in the work setting.