Purpose : This paper concentrate on how emotional intelligence is related to three primary leadership styles, which are transformational leadership, democratic leadership, and autocratic leadership among middle management at the private hospitals. The central issue is to acquire the role of emotional intelligence in the adoption of leadership style and the effect of it on the team dynamics, conflict management and performance of the organization within the healthcare sector.

Methodology

A cross-sectional study of 270 middle-level managers in the private healthcare sector was utilized in the study. The standardized questionnaires were used to collect data covering five dimensions of emotional intelligence, namely, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation, and social skills. Three styles were used to measure the leadership styles, and these are, transformational, democratic and autocratic. There were also descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis to establish the relationships and predictive impact of EI on leadership styles.

Findings

The findings were that hospital managers possess moderate or high emotional intelligence. Transformational leadership was the most embraced leadership style among the managers with democratic leadership coming close followed by autocratic leadership. Emotional intelligence and transformational (r = 0.56, p < 0.01) and democratic leadership styles had significant positive relationships. Autocratic leadership was also negatively related with emotional intelligence (r = -0.33, p < 0.05). Multiple regressions have verified that emotional intelligence in a significant manner predicted the application of transformational (b = 0.52, p < 0.01) and democratic leadership styles (b = 0.40, p < 0.01) among the managers. This research highlights how emotional intelligence growth among health managers can make them effective leaders, establish teamwork working environments, and better results within the organization in the case of privately owned hospitals. Other literature studies the long-term effects of the building of emotional intelligence on the leadership skills and patient care outcomes of health personnel.