Workplace Emotional Intelligence and Return on Investment in the Nigerian Banking Industry

Abstract

Emotional intelligence is a widely misunderstood, highly misinterpreted but very vital concept in every workplace. It is viewed as the ability to be aware of, and the management of one’s emotions. It is also regarded as the ability to relate to others in effective ways both personally and professionally in a wide range of contexts and roles. This study investigated the relationship between workplace emotional intelligence and return on investment in the Nigerian banking industry. The study adopted a survey method and the sample for the study consisted of two hundred and ten bank managers in South-South area of Nigeria. Data were collected mainly in the cities where there are high concentrations of banks through in-depth interviews and questionnaire instruments found to be reliable with cronbach Alpha values of 0.7 and above. Four hypotheses were formulated and tested using the spearman rank correlation coefficient with the aid of statistical package for social science. The results of our analysis at .05 level of significance showed that three competencies of emotional intelligence out of the four; namely self awareness, self management and relationship management were significantly related to return on investment. Our interview results also supported our findings. Based on the results, we conclude that workplace emotional intelligence influences return on investment. We therefore recommended that Organizations train their employees to acquire the competencies of work place emotional intelligence for greater performance.

Keywords: work place emotional intelligence, returns on investment, self awareness, self management, relationship management