The Impact of the Line Managers Emotional Intelligence on Employee Motivation with Special Reference to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

The major objectives of this paper were to understand the impact of Line Managers’ Emotional Intelligence on their employee motivation and to understand the importance of Emotional Intelligence in the professional life of employees of SMEs. In this paper, Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence model was introduced and same has been comprehensively used in the questionnaire. Over 30 studies were reviewed to support the research gap identified. Relevant primary data were obtained by using questionnaire and secondary data were collected from books, journals, magazines, and other published sources. The analysis revealed that respondents overall perceived the emotional intelligence of their respective leaders in all the parameters above average. Their perceived behaviour in sharing information and assigning value to their respective leaders was the highest, on the contrary it was the lowest while recognizing the situations that trigger their own emotions and expression of feelings. This might be due to the leaders’ contextual behaviour at workplace. One of the interesting findings revealed that there was no significant difference between the average importance level to the variable, as suggested by the respondents, for all the emotional intelligence components. This can be due to the gender difference in the communication pattern at workplace since this research was carried out for SME’s where the gender biasness is more prevalent. There is good scope in conducting further research on the topic by identifying different sectors and zones. *