Relationship Between Supervisor’s Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership in Hotel Organizations Tryfon Vasilagos, Panagiotis Polychroniou and Leonidas Maroudas Theoretical Background Researchers have developed measures of emotional intelligence (e.g. Salovey and Mayer 1994; Bar-On 1997; Bar-On and Parker 2000; Mayer et al. 2002; Boyatzis and Goleman 2001; Law et al. 2004; Rahim et al. 2006). Gardner’s(1983, 1999) concepts of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences provided basis for the conceptualization of emotional intelligence. Whereas intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to understand one’s own emotions, interpersonal intelligence is one’s ability to understand the emotions of others (Polychroniou 2009). Emotional intelligence relates to a number of noncognitive skills, abilities, or competencies that influence a manager’s capacity to deal with environmental demands and pressures (Goleman 1995). Emotional intelligence competencies enhance supervi- sors to understand subordinates’ feelings and provide emotional support to team members in order to attain common goals. Following Burns (1978) and Bass (1985, 1990) transformational leadership is associated with distinct dimensions of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Polychroniou 2009). Transformational leaders have the capacity to motivate inspirationally hotel employees in order to develop engagement. Hospitality organizations should invest in developing extrovert supervisors who exhibit transformational leadership behaviors using emotional intelligence competencies (Zopiatis and Constanti 2012). Transformational leadership influences team and departmental performance through organizational commitment (Patiar and Wang 2016). In addition, hotel supervisors that utilize transformational leadership could help their employees to obtain the creative skills required by increasing their experiences of engaging in creative T. Vasilagos ( ✉ ) ⋅ P. Polychroniou ⋅ L. Maroudas Department of Business Administration, University of Patras, Patras, Greece e-mail: tvasilagos@gmail.com © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 A. Kavoura et al. (eds.), Strategic Innovative Marketing, Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56288-9_14 91