Leaders and subordinates’ subjective well-being: importance of emotional intelligence and social support?

Abstract

Introduction. Subjective well-being refers to low levels of negative affectivity, levels of positive affectivity and high overall lifesatisfaction (Lambert, Passmore, Holder, 2015). Higher subjective well-being relates to better physical, mental health and survival(Pressman, Cohen, 2006). Perceived social support and emotional intelligence are related with subjective well-being (Gallagher, Vella-Brodrick, 2008), but also there‘s data showing that high levels of emotional intelligence predict subjective well-being without takingaccount of high social support (Gallagher, Vella-Brodrick, 2008) and it may be assumed that leaders and subordinates may differ byperceived of social support and emotional intelligence.Material and methods. From 230 employees (120 females and 110 males) which entered the study, there were 121 leaders (61 females and60 males) and 109 (60 females and 49 males) were subordinates. Respondents were Lithuanian employees in different professional areas.Leaders Mean age of leaders and subordinates was 35.47 ± 7.00 and 33.18 ± 7.46, respectively. Emotional intelligence and their aspectswere assessed by emotional intelligence scale (Schutte and others., 1998). Subjective well-being was assessed by Satisfaction with lifescale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, Griffin, 1985) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule – expanded form (Watson, Clarck, 1999).Perceived social support was assessed by the Social Support Scale (Sherbourne, Stewart, 1991).Results. Results revealed that leader’s life satisfaction was predicted only by informational social support ( = .238, p=0.026), subordinate’slife satisfaction was predicted by emotion selfcontrol ( = .413, p=0.0001) and by use of emotion ( = -.228, p=0.007).[...]