The crippling effect of diversity of emotional intelligence on team performance and the moderating role of a leader in managing emotions

Abstract

Many researchers assert the importance of emotional intelligence on team performance, without actually hinting at the effect of diversity of emotional intelligence on team performance. We develop a theoretical model which asserts that diversity of emotional intelligence within a team can have crippling effect on its performance, and a team leader can moderate this effect. Results of a laboratory experiment support the hypothesized effect of diversity of emotional intelligence on team performance, such that homogeneous teams perform better than diverse teams, when there is no team leader. However, in presence of a team leader, the performance of the diverse teams increase, but there is no significant difference between homogeneous and diverse teams.