The Overlap Between Emotional Intelligence and Post-Industrial Leadership Capacity: A Construct Validity Analysis

A sample of 276 students enrolled in campus leadership programs completed the Emotional Competence Inventory-University Edition (ECI-U) and the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (SRLS) as a means to determine the relatedness in college students of emotional intelligence (EI) to the practice of post-industrial leadership skills. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported current use of subscales within the SRLS and showed that EI and post-industrial leadership skills represent distinct, yet related, constructs. Results also suggest the ECI-U may better represent one overall concept of Emotional Competence rather than four distinct areas of EI. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.