The leaders’ emotional intelligence

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent to which leaders’ emotional intelligence (EI) predict the voluntary work behaviors (i.e. organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB)) of employees in the Ghanaian banking sector. Design/methodology/approach - Quantitative approach was adopted to collect data from 234 respondents working in both high- and low-performing banks in Ghana. Both purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used for the selection of the respondents. Findings - The findings of the study revealed that the leaders’ EI positively predicted the OCB of employees while a negative relationship was found between leaders’ EI and its prediction of employees’ CWB. Thus, emotionally intelligent leaders are able to evoke citizenship behaviors while mitigating CWBs of employees in the Ghanaian banking sector. Research limitations/implications - The research addresses the gap in literature on how leaders’ EI influence employees’ tendency to exhibit either OCB or CWB specifically in the Ghanaian context. Practical implications - The findings suggest that organizational leaders especially in the Ghanaian banking sector should be trained to be emotionally intelligent in their relationship with employees as such skills boost positive voluntary behaviors and have the tendency to alleviate the negative behaviors by employees. Originality/value - The study provides an in-depth account on how the leaders’ EI influence both employees’ OCB and CWB and how to appropriately evoke or alleviate them, respectively.