Social and Emotional Competence among Managers

Abstract: Social and emotional competence is a vital part of leadership, it is therefore important to understand how variables such as gender, age and education can influence a manager’s social and emotional competence. This study analyse self-rating, other-rating and predicted-rating of managers belonging to different social groups using multi source feedback assessment, where both the managers and their subordinates answer a survey rating the managers social and emotional competence. Findings suggest that managers in general tend to underestimate the ratings from their subordinates. In addition, male and female managers rate themselves similar but the subordinates rate the female leaders higher. Education was also investigated but the sample was too small to draw any conclusions. The findings also suggest that all three ratings decrease in relation to the age of the manager. Further discussions about the implications of the findings as well as possibilities for future studies are presented in the end.