Examining the Relationship Between Transactional Leadership Style and Leader’s Emotional Intelligence Within the Palestinian ICT Sector

Organizations today face many challenges and obstacles, as a result of the accelerating technological and knowledge progress. These organizations have been forced to enhance employees at the workplace. Hence, they need a leadership capable of facing those challenges. Leaders with greater emotional intelligence foster better work environments and have higher employee commitment. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationships between transactional leadership and emotional intelligence. Specifically, this study aims to find the causal effect of transactional leadership and emotional intelligence within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry. Data were collected using the questionnaire. Survey data from 384 employees in the Palestinian ICT industry were used to empirically evaluate the proposed research model. The data were analyzed using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with IBM SPSS AMOS. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between transactional leadership style and a leader’s emotional intelligence. Thus, managers who exhibited a transactional leadership style displayed higher levels of emotional intelligence than those who did not. The findings suggest that the transactional leadership style can be beneficial for leaders in terms of increasing their emotional intelligence.