| This study looks at leadership practices and emotional intelligence competencies in educational leaders in a special services school district in a mid-Atlantic state. Five administrative supervisors of different educational programs completed both the Leadership Practices Inventory (Kouzes & Posner, 1995) and the Emotional Competence Inventory---ECI (Boyatzis & Goleman, 2001), rating themselves on these constructs. The professional staff of teachers who work for each supervisor also completed both of these instruments, rating their administrator on leadership practices and emotional intelligence competencies. In addition, the two directors who supervise the five administrators also completed both assessments and rated each of the five supervisors on leadership practices and emotional intelligence competencies. All five school leaders demonstrated fairly high levels of emotional intelligence as measured by the ECI. There was a modest positive relationship between emotional intelligence and the practice of leadership. In general, the subscales on both assessments were more highly correlated with themselves than with one another. The emotional intelligence competency of Relationship Management was found to be the best predictor of leadership practices and accounted for approximately 26% of the variability. Discussions of these results and recommendations for future research are explored. |
