Assessing the Relationship among Emotional Intelligence, Creativity and Empowering Leadership: An Empirical Study

The study is conducted to unveil the rela tionship among emotional intelligence of supervisors, creativity, and empowering lead ership competencies perceived by the subordinates. Emotional intellig ence was measured by the Em otional Quotient Index (Rahim et al., 2002) while creativity was measured by the Creativity Scale (Zhou & George, 2001). Additionally, empowering leadership was measur ed by Ahearne, Mathieu, and Rapps’ (2005) scale. The data for the study were collect ed from 142 subordinates (who rated their supervisors’ emotional intelligence, crea tivity, and empowering leadership capability) working at different organizations in Chittagong with the help of a structured printed survey instrument. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive st atistics, bivariate correlation, and regression analysis. The results demonstrated a positive correlation between emotional intelligence and creativity (r=0.73) . Strong relationship was also found between emotional intelligence and empowering leadership (r=0.75). An important implication of the study is that modern organizations should focus on improving emo tional intelligence competencies of those managers who feel en couraged to transfer responsibilities and to support employees to be creative. The limitati ons and further research directions are also discussed.