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J. Indian Assoc. Child Adolesc. Ment. Health 2014; 10(1):9-30
Original Article
Role of Parental Emotional Intelligence and
Perceived Parental Leadership Behaviour on Satisfaction with Parent
Dr. Deepika Dabke
Address for correspondence: Dr. Deepika Dabke, Faculty, IBS Business School,
Department: HR and Soft Skills, Hiranandani Knowledge Park, Opp. Hiranandani
Hospital, Off. Technology Street, Hiranandani Gardens, Powai, Mumbai-400076, Email:
________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
Background: Parental handling is an important element in promotion of positive mental
health in adolescents. The Emotional Intelligence of parents and their parenting style are
critical elements governing the nature of parent-child dyadic relationships.
Aim: This study examined the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) of parents and
Perceived Parental Leadership Behaviour on adolescents’ degree of satisfaction with
parents.
Method: Data was collected from 200 working parent and their adolescent off-springs
wherein, parents completed the Mayer, Salovey and Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
(MSCEIT) and the adolescents were administered the Multifactor Leadership
Questionnaire (MLQ), and Adolescent Family life Satisfaction Index; Parent subscale.
Results: Overall EI of parents showed a significant positive correlation (r=0.19, p<0.01)
with adolescents’ satisfaction scores. A significant positive correlation was seen
10
between Satisfactions scores and all the Transformational aspects (r score ranging from
0.46 to 0.35, p<0.01) as well as Contingency Reward (r= 0.35, p<.01). Multiple
regressions analysis results led to emergence of Intellectual Stimulation (β = .21, ΔR2=
0.21, p<.01), Individualized Consideration (β = .18, ΔR2= 0.28, p<.01) and Idealized
Influence (β = .16, ΔR2= 0.29, p<.01) as a positive predictors of parental satisfaction.
Laissez- Faire Leadership (β = -.15, ΔR2= 0.25, p<.01) and Management by Exception-
Passive (β = -.14, ΔR2= 0.31, p<.01) emerged as negative predictors. Emotional
Intelligence failed to emerge as a predictor of satisfaction scores.
Conclusion: While EI has been upheld as an important trait that boosts interpersonal
relationships, Parental Leadership style seem to have a greater impact on adolescent’s
satisfaction with parents. The findings hold significant implications for Parental Skills
enhancement endeavours.
Key words: Emotional Intelligence, Transformational Leadership, Contingent Reward,
Laissez-Faire Leadership, Parental Satisfaction
Introduction
Emotions have always intrigued people. They are an important medium to examine since
they influence and can help or harm an individual’s perceptions, thought processes and
behaviours 1, 2. Emotions and an individual’s ability to intelligently deal with emotions
in self and others have been systematically studied and subsumed under
11
the term Emotional Intelligence (EI) for almost two decades. The present study aims at
exploring the role of EI in the parental context.
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Mayer and Salovey define EI as, ―the capacity to reason about emotions and of
emotions to enhance thinking 3. The importance and influence of EI in professional
roles has been empirically proved 4,5,6,7.
Another critical role wherein EI can play a significant part is the parental role. The fact
that family well-being depends immensely on parental handling is undisputed. Research
studies have shown a positive relationship between parental emotional management and
family and child well-being 8, 9.
Emotional Intelligence can be examined using the Mixed model or Ability model. The
Ability model of EI as developed by Mayer and Salovey 10 enjoys a greater statistical
superiority as well predictive value. However there is a paucity of studies using the
Ability tool especially performance based tools. In the present study, EI was studied
using the Ability model.
Parental Leadership Model
Parental role is a very critical component in the upbringing of an adolescent. Adolescents
present parents with numerous unique challenges associated with this life stage. As
adolescents progress through this developmental period, they show increased
dissatisfaction with family life 11 and tend to report lower levels of family cohesion
12
12, 13. On the other hand maintaining connectedness with parents during this period
has been identified as being equally important 14, 15. Thus Parental style becomes a
critical factor in influencing adolescents. Baumrind’s 16 seminal work on parenting
styles has been prominent in influencing research on parenting and its effects on children.
Whilst leadership is understood to have greater application in work, political or societal
scenarios, its role in the family systems is also imperative. A parent was looked at as a ―
family leader for the first time by Freud. A parental leadership role can facilitate
appropriate value inculcation and behavioural shaping.
Out of the numerous leadership models, Transformational leadership 17 model has been
the most extensively researched model. Transformational leadership is a process that
changes and transforms individuals. Bass proposed a full range leadership model
comprising of three leadership Behaviours: Transformational Leadership, Transactional
Leadership and Laissez- Faire Leadership. Past research has adequately proved the
predictive value of this model with respect to a number of business and behavioural
outcomes.
Figure 1 highlights the basic definition and essence of each construct in the full scale
model. Popper and Mayseless 18, while drawing a theoretical similarity between
Transformation leadership and parental role, have propounded that what good parents
13
do and how they behave with their children, closely corresponds with what
Transformational leaders do and how they behave with their followers.
Figure 1
Both are sensitive and responsive, showing individual consideration for their protégées’.
Both reinforce the protégé’s’ autonomy in a supportive, non-judgmental way and by
actively providing developmental opportunities. While this model holds great predictive
power, very few studies have made an attempt to apply and empirical study this
leadership Behaviour in the parental context 19.
This study aims to assess the role of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Bass’s Full
Leadership Model in determining the quality of Parent child relationship.
14
Hypotheses
1. There is a significant positive correlation between overall EI and Satisfaction with
parents as perceived by adolescents
2. There is a significant positive correlation between Transformational Leadership
Behaviour, Contingency Reward and Satisfaction with parents as perceived by
adolescents
3. There is a significant negative correlation between Management–by-exception as
well as Laissez faire Leadership and Satisfaction with parents as perceived by
adolescents
4. Transformational Leadership will evolve as positive predictor of Parental
Satisfaction perceptions of adolescents
5. Emotional Intelligence of parents will emerge as positive predictor of Parental
Satisfaction perceptions of adolescents
The proposed relationship between the various constructs and satisfaction scores
is summarized in Figure 2.
Figure 2
15
Methodology
Sample
200 parent and adolescent dyads were selected for the study. Parents’ ages ranged from
35 to 58 years, with the average age of 46.74 years (SD = 4.14). Adolescent age ranged
from 12 years to 19 years with an average age of 15. 97 years (SD = 1.89). 81.5 % of
parents were males and 18.5 % were females. All the parents approached for this study
were working in a full time capacity.
Measures
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
EI of participants was measured by the MSCEIT V.2 test 20. The MSCEIT is a 141
item scale which yields a Total score, two Area scores and four Branch scores. For the
current study the Overall EI score, Strategic EQ score and the Experiential EQ score were
considered. The MSCEIT has reported full-scale reliability of .91, with Area reliabilities
16
of .90 (experiential Emotional Intelligence) and .85 (strategic Emotional Intelligence).
The Cronbach’s alpha value of the current sample was found to be 0.72.
Transformational Leadership Style
Transformational leadership style was measured using the MLQ 5X scale 21 which
provides scores on three types of Leadership Behaviours:
Transformational Behaviour comprising of five aspects namely: Idealized
Influence Attributes (IDA), Idealized Influence Behaviour (IDB), Inspirational
Motivation (IM), Intellectual Stimulation (IS) and Individual Consideration (IC).
Transactional Behaviour comprising of three aspects: Contingency Reward (CR)
Management by exception-Active (MBEA), Management by exception- Passive
(MBEP)
Laissez faire (LZ) Leadership
There were generally adequate reliabilities (Cronbach alpha), for the MLQ5X, ranging
from α = .63 to α = .92.
Adolescent Satisfaction with the parent
It is the adolescent’s satisfaction with parents as measured by the parental subscale of
Adolescent family life satisfaction index 22. The 13 item scale consists of parental
subscale and sibling subscale where in the adolescents had to rate items on a scale of 1
(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). For this study, only the 7 item parental sub-
17
scale was used. The internal consistency reliability coefficient (Cronbach Alpha) for
family life satisfaction was 0.93.
Procedure
Developing Local Scoring for MSCEIT
EI tests cannot be considered as completely culture fair, given their propensity to cultural
factors. The test authors of MSCEIT have provided an option to researchers to develop
their own scoring pattern using either general consensus or expert scoring method. In the
current study a general consensus method was followed. The procedural steps as
recommended in the “Developing Local Norms’ sub-section of the “About the Mayer -
Salovey – Caruso Emotional Intelligence Tests (MSCEIT’s)” section on the web site
http://www.unh.edu/Emotional-Intelligence/index were adhered to in order to be able to
score each participant according to the consensus method.
Results
The statistical analysis of the data was undertaken using the SPSS package. A Pearson’s
Product Moment Correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between
the EQ scores and Satisfaction scores obtained from adolescents. A Step-wise multiple
regressions analysis was conducted to identify predictors of Satisfaction scores of
adolescents.
18
Hypothesis 1
As seen in Table I, all the facets of EI showed a significant positive correlation with
satisfaction scores. Strategic EI (r = 0.22, p<0.01) showed a stronger association with
satisfactions score than either the overall EI (r = 0.19, p<0.01) or the Experiential EI (r =
0.13, p<0.05). Thus the ability of the parent to manage emotions in self and others as well
as their ability to understand emotional information and use it strategically for planning
seems to be very crucial in the parent adolescent relationship. Hence the first hypothesis
that there is a significant positive correlation between overall EI and satisfaction with
parents’ as perceived by adolescents was fully supported.
Table 1
Hypothesis 2
Table II specifies the correlation coefficient scores between Satisfaction scores and Full
range Leadership. As indicated in Table II, significant positive correlation was seen
between all aspects of Transformational leadership (r score ranging from 0.46 to 0.35,
19
p<.01) as well as Contingent reward (r = 0.35, p<0.01) and Satisfaction with Parent.
Strongest correlation was seen between the Inspirational Motivation (r = 0.46, p<.01)
and Satisfaction, implying that better the ability of parents to motivate the children, more
satisfied they are with their respective parents. On the whole, hypothesis 2 stating that
there is a significant positive correlation between Transformational Leadership
Behaviour and Contingency Reward with Satisfaction with parents as perceived by
adolescents was fully supported.
Table 2
Hypothesis 3
As denoted in Table II, Laissez faire leadership showed a significant negative correlation
(r =- 0.37, p<0.01) with Satisfaction scores. Similarly Management-by-exception-
Passive also showed a significant negative correlation (r = -0.27, p<0.01). While the
direction of correlation between Management-by-exception (Active) and Satisfaction was
20
negative, the coefficient failed to reach a significance level (r = -0.01, ns). To summarize
hypothesis 3 stating that there is a significant negative correlation between Management-
by-exception as well as Laissez faire (LZ) Leadership Behaviour and Satisfaction with
parents’ as perceived by adolescents was partially supported.
Hypothesis 4
A step-wise multiple regressions analysis was conducted to identify the predictors of
Satisfaction scores. As indicated in table III, Intellectual Stimulation (IS) (β = .21, Δ R2 =
.21, p<.01), Individualized Consideration (IC) (β = .18, Δ R2 = .28, p<.01) and Idealized
Influence- Attribute (IDA) (β = .16, Δ R2 = .29, p<.01) emerged as positive predictors of
satisfaction scores. Together the three aspects explained a variance of 27 % as far as
Satisfaction is concerned. Thus hypothesis 4 stating that Transformational Leadership
will evolve as positive predictor of Parental satisfaction perceptions of adolescents was
supported to a great extent.
Table 3
Hypothesis 5
21
Hypothesis 5 postulated that EI will emerge as a positive predictor of satisfaction scores.
However the result of the multiple regressions analysis indicated that all the three aspects
of EI were excluded from the model, thus failing to emerge as significant predictors of
Satisfaction with parents. On the whole, hypothesis 5 stating that Emotional Intelligence
of parents will emerge as positive predictor of Parental Satisfaction perceptions of
adolescents was rejected.
The findings of the current study have been summarized in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Discussion
The findings of the current throw light on the role of Emotional Intelligence of the
parents and their Behavioural style on satisfaction perceptions of their adolescent off-
springs.
Emotional Intelligence and Satisfaction
22
The positive correlations between Emotional intelligence and Satisfaction scores reiterate
the significance of EI in interpersonal relationship. On an interpersonal level, people with
higher EI are more adept at reading the body language and emotional cues of others.
Through an empathic understanding, they are better able to strike a rapport with others
and manage their emotional reactions well. Schutte et al 23 have conducted seven
experiments to study the link between EI and interpersonal relationships. Results
indicated that higher scores for EI were related to higher scores for empathic perspective
taking, higher self monitoring, greater co-operative demeanor, and greater satisfaction in
relationships. The findings of the current study are in line with these findings.
These results can also be understood in the light of Implicit Leadership theory applied in
the family context. Implicit Leadership traits are personal attributes and characteristics
that followers expect their leaders to possess. Adolescents expect their parents to be
genuinely interested in them and give appropriate levels of attention. At the same time,
they want parents to love and accept them unconditionally. Parents with a high EI stand a
greater chance of providing such nurturance and warmth in spite of conflicts that
characterize the relationship in this phase. At the same time they may provide adequate
privacy and space that an adolescent yearn for. They may be in a better position to be
behavior-focused and issue-based while dealing with the children.
Transformational leadership skills
23
In the given study, Transformational leadership was found to be positively associated
with Satisfaction scores. Intellectual Stimulation emerged as a positive predictor of
Satisfaction scores. Intellectual stimulation (IS) means the arousal and change in
followers of problem awareness and problem solving of thought and imagination. In the
parental context this refers to promoting independent thinking, respecting child’s idea and
promoting psychological autonomy 24. Parents aim at helping children achieve self
actualization by coaching, guiding, instructing and more importantly motivating them to
move from short term hedonism to long term goals. Individualized Consideration (IC) on
the other hand is an attempt to understand the specific needs of followers. In the parental
role, it involves focusing on the uniqueness of the children, respecting their individual
strengths and weaknesses and helping them explore avenues to fulfil those rather than
imposing parental agenda on them. Such attempts at identity development would lead to a
generation of satisfaction with parent.
Idealized Influence, which also emerged as a positive predictor, forms a component of
Charismatic leadership. A parental leader would use this style to inculcate appropriate
values and perspectives in the followers. Fostering trust and Role-Modelling would be
the two drivers for better behaviour management and character building. Modelling is
perceived as a major variable in predicting and explaining the influence of
Transformational leadership 25, 26. Such positive modelling may generate a sense of
pride and satisfaction in the eyes of adolescents.
24
Laissez Faire (LZ) parents refrain from intervening in the children’s issues and would
often times be absent and uninvolved in the child rearing process 27. As a result they
would be least connected to their child‘s emotional as well as practical needs in tacking
life issues. Similarly Management-by-exception involves intervention only when
problems become chronic before they can be resolved. Parents indulging in Management-
by-exception-Passive may not be tuned to the child’s frustrations and plea for help and
thereby leave adolescents unsatisfied with parental intervention.
Predictive Power of Transformational Behaviour
While EI was positively associated with satisfaction scores, it failed to emerge as a
significant predictor. This could be attributed at least partly to the participants’
collectivistic cultural bend. Cross-cultural implications are frequently understood using
the five dimensions put forth by Hofstede’s 28. These dimensions are Power Distance,
Masculinity-Feminity, Individualism- Collectivism and Future orientation. India is a
representative of a high power distance and a collectivistic society. Recently, Matsumuto
et al 29 have also endorsed that members of an individualistic culture endorse more
emotional expression, whereas members of collectivistic cultures endorse less of
expression. Thus while emotionality is considered as an important element in
relationships, it does not seem to play a dominant role in deciding domain specific
satisfactions. A similar trend is also observed with respect to general life satisfaction
estimations 30. Thus it can be concluded that parental behavioural in the given role has
a far greater impact on the adolescent than their emotional skills.
25
Limitations of the Study
While Thingujam 31, Sibia and Misra 32 have advocated the use of MSCEIT- the
ability based measure of EI, they have also suggested that the test be revised for the
Indian population rather than using it in its original form. While local norms were created
for the EI test, the use of original version of MSCEIT can be considered as a limitation.
Conclusion
The novel aspect of the current study was the use of a performance based measure of EI
and the Application of Transformational Leadership model to parenting. From the current
study, Emotional Intelligence can be considered as an important element in the parenting
role. However Parental styles seem to play a more prominent role in the quality of parent-
child dyadic relationships.
Performance based EI looks at EI as a trait based component and not a state –based
factor. Needless to say, training can have limited impact on this implicit attribute of
parents. On the other hand Leadership Behaviour is a skill and therefore trainable. Thus
there is a greater possibility of correcting our interaction patterns with the children and
creating more productive grounds for interpersonal interaction. The current study also
offers rich insights to practitioners to pursue systematic training approach for the
utilization the Transformational Leadership skills in parental context.
26
Acknowledgement
The author takes this opportunity to thank Dr. Anuradha Sovani, Reader, UDAP, Mumbai
for her keen insights and guidance at all times during the designing and the conducting of
the study. She is also indebted to Ms. Sulabha Subramaniam for her valuable support
during the data collection phase. She is also grateful to all the participants who
accommodated her in spite of their busy schedule and provided their responses.
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Dr. Deepika Dabke, Faculty, IBS Business School, Department: HR and Soft Skills,
Hiranandani Knowledge Park, Opp. Hiranandani Hospital, Off. Technology Street,
Hiranandani Gardens, Powai, Mumbai-400076