The Mediating Role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence Dimensions and Leadership Effectiveness
This quantitative study of 455 banking employees in Ethiopia demonstrates that emotional intelligence dimensions significantly enhance leadership effectiveness, both directly and indirectly through the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior, with the model explaining 70.1% of the variance in leadership outcomes.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine leadership in a bank not as a captain shouting orders from a bridge, but as a conductor leading an orchestra. For a long time, people thought the conductor just needed to know the sheet music (technical skills). But this study, conducted in the commercial banks of Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, suggests that the real magic happens when the conductor understands the feelings of the musicians.
The researchers, Aschalew Mulugeta Atnafu and Dr. Jaladi Ravi, set out to see if a leader's "Emotional Intelligence" (EI) actually makes them better at their job. They didn't just look at EI as one big blob; they broke it down into four distinct tools in a leader's toolkit: Self-Awareness (knowing your own feelings), Self-Management (keeping your cool), Social Awareness (sensing how others feel), and Relationship Management (getting along with the crew).
Here is the big discovery: The study found that these emotional tools don't just make a leader look good; they make the whole team want to do extra work. The researchers call this extra work Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). Think of OCB as the musicians staying late to tune their own instruments, helping a neighbor with a broken string, or humming a tune to keep the rhythm going, even though it's not written in their official job description.
The study measured 455 people (a mix of managers and staff) and used a sophisticated statistical method called PLS-SEM to crunch the numbers. The results were surprisingly clear. They found that all four emotional tools positively predict both OCB and Leadership Effectiveness. In fact, the study showed that Self-Management was the most influential emotional tool for getting people to do that extra OCB.
But here is the most important part of the story: The study argues that emotional intelligence doesn't just directly make a leader effective. Instead, it works like a relay race. A leader uses their emotional skills to inspire the team to do those extra "citizen" behaviors (OCB), and that is what actually boosts the leader's effectiveness.
The data backs this up with a very strong number. The study found that Organizational Citizenship Behavior is the single best predictor of leadership effectiveness, with a massive connection strength (a beta coefficient of 0.706). When you put all the pieces together—the four emotional skills plus the extra team effort—the model explains 70.1% of what makes a leader effective in these banks. That is a huge chunk of the puzzle.
The researchers also looked at how much of this "extra effort" (OCB) was actually responsible for the success. They found that OCB acts as a "partial mediator." This means that while emotional skills help a leader directly, a huge portion of that success (between 49% and 65% of the effect, depending on the skill) flows through the team's willingness to go the extra mile.
So, what does this mean for the banks in Dire Dawa? The paper suggests that you can't just hire a leader who is good at math or regulations. You need someone who can manage their own emotions and read the room. When a leader does this, the team feels safe and valued, and they naturally start doing more than just their minimum requirements. This "extra mile" behavior is the secret sauce that turns a good manager into a great one.
The study doesn't claim this is a magic wand that solves every problem, nor does it say that technical skills don't matter. It simply proves that in the high-pressure world of banking, emotional smarts are the spark that gets the whole team to run faster, and that spark is measured, not just guessed. The authors are confident in these numbers because they were derived from real data collected from 455 respondents, analyzed with rigorous statistical tools, and they explicitly ruled out the idea that these results were just a fluke or caused by bad survey design.
In short: Leaders who master their own feelings and understand others create a culture where people want to help out. And when people want to help out, the leader becomes a star. It's a recipe for success that the authors believe is essential for banks in developing economies to survive and thrive.
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