The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Activities of Management and its Influence on Job Performance

Background. Emotional Intelligence can play a key role for many individuals and can help them in their social and professional lives. However, in many companies management is used to relying on hard skills, and does not pay enough attention to soft ones, which includes Emotional Intelligence as well. Gap. This topic requires investigation, because there are not enough studies in the management field on the topic of Emotional Intelligence, and its influence on Job Performance is not studied deeply. It is necessary to understand what exactly in Emotional Intelligence can benefit management and whether its development is important. The aim of study. Our aim was to find the positive relationship between four dimensions of managers’ Emotional Intelligence, which are Emotional Perception, Facilitating Cognition, Emotional Understanding and Emotional Management, and the effectiveness of these managers’ activities which can influence the overall company’s performance. Method. Our empirical analysis is based on a survey of 274 managers from Russian firms. Cross sectional regression analysis was used in order to identify the strength of relationship between four dimensions of managers’ Emotional Intelligence and their performance in the companies. Results. We found that only two EI dimensions significantly influence job performance of managers. They are Facilitating Cognition and Emotional Management. However, Emotional Perception and Emotional Understanding do not have a significant effect on managers’ job performance. Interpretation. Our results would seem to indicate that better Facilitating Cognition and Emotional Management lead to better Job Performance of managers and the attention should be paid to its development. Key words: emotional intelligence, job performance, emotional perception, facilitating cognition, emotional understanding, emotional management.