K-12 Public School Superintendent Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Practices

OBJECTIVE
Leadership is complex and demanding. The role of a public-school superintendent includes
overseeing multiple district operations, working with a variety of stakeholders, and is viewed as
the instructional leader of the school district. Given the importance of relationship development
for superintendents with stakeholders, the current educator retention rate, and turnover rate for
superintendents, there was a need to study the relationship between 28 superintendents’
emotional intelligence in the workplace and its relationship to Kouzes and Posner's (2017)
leadership practices. This study sought to do just this and examined the relationship between
emotional intelligence in the workplace and leadership practices in Indiana public school
superintendents.

METHODOLOGY
This quantitative study utilized a survey design to collect data from 61 Indiana K-12 public
school superintendents to identify their use of Palmer and Stough’s emotional intelligence (EI)
factors (Palmer et al., 2009) and frequency of use of Kouzes and Posner’s (2017) leadership
practices in the workplace (LPI Self). Participants provided their age and years of experience as a
superintendent and rated their use of emotional intelligence and leadership practices in the
workplace. The four EI factors with the highest whole group mean were emotional self-control,
emotional reasoning, emotional self-awareness, and emotional awareness of others.

KEY FINDINGS
The top two leadership practices used by Indiana K-12 public school superintendents were
enable others to act with a mean of 53.90 (SD = 3.96) and model the way with a mean of 52.84
(SD = 3.96). Research questions were answered using a simultaneous multiple regression
analysis. There was no statistically significant relationship between age and years of experience
as a superintendent with either EI or use of leadership practices in the workplace. The linear
combination of Palmer and Stough’s seven factors of EI was a statistically significant predictor
(p < 0.001) of the composite score of Kouzes and Posner’s leadership practices, with emotional
reasoning being a significant predictor (t = 3.40, p = 0.001). The results of this study reinforce
the relationship between the use of EI and leadership practices in the workplace and add to the
body of research regarding EI and leadership practices in education.