Description
The manufacturing sector in Nairobi County in Kenya, and Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city being the hub of industrial activity, faces challenges such as high operational costs, labor disputes and stiff competition. As a business management student, such challenges call for leadership approaches that are both visionary and emotionally intelligent in inspiring and motivating workers to work towards organizational goals. Evidence, however, indicates that most leaders in the field lack the emotional intelligence needed to apply transformational leadership styles, which could potentially impair organizational success. Therefore, this study's main goal investigated how a leader's emotional intelligence affected the transformational leadership style of a few chosen manufacturing companies in Nairobi County, Kenya. Affective Events Theory served as the study's compass, while positivism approach and an explanatory research design were applied. Using the Yamane (1967), the sample size of 360 participants was determined from a target population of 3500 employees. Simple random sampling techniques were utilized to pick study respondents. The questionnaires were collected using a cross-sectional survey method. Data was entered into the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20 software and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Pearson correlation data suggested a moderate association between leader's emotional intelligence and transformational leadership (r=0.433, p <0.01). This implied that when a leader's emotional intelligence improves, so does their transformational leadership style. The study demonstrated a strong association between leaders' emotional intelligence and transformational leadership style (β=.414, p<.05). According to the study findings, emotionally intelligent leaders are more likely to engage in transformational behaviors, such as inspiring, motivating, and leading their employees to work towards a shared vision in order to reach organizational goals. The study's findings suggest that the selected manufacturing firms in Nairobi County should prioritize the development of emotional intelligence in their leadership development programmes and policies. Based on the study's conclusions, future research should focus on the level of emotional intelligence of leaders and their transformational leadership.
