Abstract:  Previous studies on the relationship between the leaders’ emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness had considerable disagreement. A meta-analysis was conducted to explore the causes of the differences, and clarify the overall relationship between the leaders' emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness and the moderators. A literature research yielded 98 qualified papers with 110 effect sizes and 27330 participants. Results of the meta-analysis showed that 1) there was a moderate positive correlation between emotional intelligence of leaders and leadership effectiveness (r = 0.39), supporting the hypothesis that leaders’ emotional intelligence is a significant correlate of leadership effectiveness. 2) Furthermore, moderating analysis of the factors of organizational context revealed that the impact of senior leaders’ emotional intelligence on leadership effectiveness was significantly higher than that of the middle and grass-roots leaders, the impact of leaders’ emotional intelligence on leadership effectiveness in non-profit organizations was stronger than that in profit organizations, and the impact of emotional intelligence of leaders’ on leadership effectiveness in the oriental culture was stronger than that in the Western culture. 3) In addition, moderating analysis of the methodological factors revealed that the influence of the leaders' emotional intelligence measured by mixed models on leadership effectiveness was higher than that measured by the ability model, the correlation coefficient was greater when the leadership effectiveness was measured by objective indicators as compared to subjective indicators, the influence of the leaders' emotional intelligence on work attitude was weaker than that on job performance, and the influence of the leaders' emotional intelligence on the group level was stronger than that on the individual level. Future studies should examine the moderator of the relationship between leaders’ emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness from aspects of research design and reporting standards.

Key words: emotional intelligence, leadership effectiveness, meta-analysis, moderate effect