Elahe Bandali, Aboulfazl Dehnavi, Maryam Mansouri and Afsaneh Nami
The current study investigates the relationship between leadership style (LS) and emotional intelligence (EI) among coaches of selected individual sports in universities of Tehran (Iran). An applied descriptive-correlational research method is used. Statistical population includes all male and female coaches in sports chosen from badminton and table tennis in universities of Tehran during the 2011-2012 academic year (n=52). Whole subjects are selected as the sample. The personality, Syber Yashring's emotional intelligence, and leadership scale for sports (LSS) questionnaires are applied to collect data. Research reliability is calculated by Cronbach's alpha test for intelligence emotional (α = 0.824) and LSS (α = 0.718) questionnaires. Data analysis is carried out through Kolmogorov– Smirnoff (K-S) test in order to determine whether data is normally distributed. Further, Pearson's correlation coefficient test is applied to measure research hypotheses. The Pearson correlation test shows that there is a moderate positive relationship between leadership style of "positive feedback" and emotional intelligence of coaches in chosen individual sports from universities of Tehran (r=0.46, p=0.037), and that there is a low positive correlation between leadership style of "training and instruction" and coaching emotional intelligence in chosen individual sports from universities of Tehran (r=0.198, p=0.020). However, there is no significant relationship between other leadership styles and emotional intelligence (p> 0.05). Due to the significant relationship between some subscales of emotional intelligence and leadership styles, it is recommended to consider the skills of emotional intelligence with other coaching skills in order to select coaches for individual sports. Since this form of intelligence can be intentionally learned, improving the emotional intelligence among coaches requires holding teaching courses.
