THE RELATIONSHIPS OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS, AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STYLES IN PRELICENSURE NURSING STUDENTS

Abstract

Emotional intelligence has been linked to positive outcomes with leadership behaviors and effective conflict management styles in many disciplines including nursing. Yet, a review of the literature suggests that nursing education programs do not adequately prepare nursing students to have emotional intelligence demonstrating leadership behaviors to work with difficult situations, such as conflict. Also, the literature presents that nursing students do not have sufficient preparation to face interpersonal conflict in clinical settings, instead, they have a high tendency to utilize an avoidance style when handling conflict and were reported to have low emotional intelligence scores when facing conflict. Additionally, there is a gap in the literature regarding nursing students and the relationships among emotional intelligence, leadership behaviors, and conflict management styles. Therefore, to gain a better understanding of these three variables with nursing students, the following research study was conducted. The purposes of this study were to explore emotional intelligence and its relationship with leadership behaviors and conflict management style in prelicensure nursing students, and whether emotional intelligence had a mediator role in these relationships. Mayer and Salovey’s Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence guided the study to conceptualize the emotional intelligence of nursing students. The study was conducted as a descriptive cross-sectional, multivariate correlational design. A sample of convenience was used (N = 147), including all levels of prelicensure nursing students from three universities located in the MidAtlantic region of the United States. Self-report was used with an online survey that included three measurement instruments and a demographic questionnaire. Descriptive, inferential, and multivariate statistics, including structural equation modeling, were conducted to analyze data and answer the research questions. A positive and weak relationship among emotional intelligence, leadership behaviors, and conflict management styles was found. Additionally, emotional intelligence did not mediate the relationship between leadership behaviors and conflict management styles. The findings of this study have implications to nursing science and research as it addresses the gaps in the existing literature by providing an understanding about emotional intelligence and its relationship with leadership behaviors and conflict management styles among prelicensure nursing students. Also, this study contributes to nursing education with a rationale for integrating concepts of emotional intelligence into the nursing curricula. Finally, this study is significant to nursing practice with its potential contribution toward preparing new graduates to practice efficiently in a workplace environment.