Table 1.

An overview of studies’ characteristics, aims and main findings

Authors (Year of Publication)	Title Type of Research -Number of participants)	Country	Aim	Results
Spano-Szekely, Griffin, Clavelle, Fitzpatrick, (2016) [17]	Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership (TL) in Nurse Managers (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 148 nurse managers)	USA	To determine the relationship between EI and TL in frontline acute care NMs.	EI was significantly positively correlated with TL and outcome measures of extra-effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction and significantly negatively correlated with laissez-faire leadership
Tyczkowski et al., (2015) [18]	Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Nursing Leadership Styles Among Nurse Managers (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 142 nurse managers)	USA	To examine the relationships among education, leadership experience, emotional intelligence and transformational leadership of nurse managers.	Statistically significant positive relationships were noted between EI and transformational leadership and the outcomes of leadership (extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction). No statistically significant relationships were noted between EI and transactional or laissez-faire leadership styles.
Leggat & Balding, (2013) [22]	Achieving organizational competence for clinical leadership: The role of high performance work systems (Qualitative, 28 clinicians and clinician managers)	Australia	To present the results of a qualitative study with clinicians and clinician managers to gather opinions on the appropriate content of an educational initiative being planned to improve clinical leadership in quality and safety among medical, nursing and allied health professionals working in primary, community and secondary care.	Only four individual factors, comprising emotional intelligence, resilience, self-awareness and understanding of other clinical disciplines, were identified as being important for clinical leaders.
Lucas, Spence- Laschinger & Wong, (2008) [23]	The impact of emotional intelligent leadership on staff nurse empowerment: the moderating effect of span of control (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 230 nurses)	Canada	To test a model linking nurses perceptions of their nurse manager s emotionally intelligent leadership style and nurses structural empowerment, and the impact of nurse manager span of control (number of direct reports) on the emotional intelligence/empowerment relations	Span of control was a significant moderator of the relationship between nurses’ perceptions of their managers’ emotionally intelligent behavior and feelings of workplace empowerment.
Moss, Ritossa, & Ngu, (2006) [19]	The effect of follower regulatory focus and extraversion on leadership behavior: The role of emotional intelligence. (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 66 pairs of nurses and their supervisors)	USA	Emotional intelligence should enhance the capacity of managers to adapt their leadership style.	Emotional intelligence might enhance the capacity of managers to adapt their leadership style appropriately, but only in some contexts
Spagnuolo et al., (2014) [21]	Emotional Leadership: a survey on the emotional skills expressed by nursing management (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 130 managers, head nurses and nurses)	Italy	This study investigates knowledge about the emotional leadership and emotional competence in nursing management.	It is essential for managerial roles, be aware and able to manage their own and others' emotions to generate wellbeing at work.
Ohlson & Anderson, (2014) [13]	Ability emotional intelligence of nurse managers in the Midwestern United States (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 87 nurse managers)	USA	To describe the emotional intelligence (EI) and examine the corresponding demographic characteristics of front-line Nurse Managers in acute care settings	What is interesting is the significant difference in EI between nurses who are certified in any specialty versus those who are not certified at all.
Echevarria, Patterson & Krouse, (2016) [14]	Predictors of transformational leadership of nurse managers (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 148 nurse managers)	USA	To examine the relationships among education, leadership experience, emotional intelligence and transformational leadership of nurse managers.	Statistically significant relationship was found between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership (r = 0.59, P < 0.001) explaining 34% variance in transformational leadership.
Erkutlu &Chafra, (2012) [20]	The impact of team empowerment on proactivity The moderating roles of leader’s emotional intelligence and proactive personality (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 910 certified nurses in 82 teams from 12 university hospitals)	Turkey	To investigate the relationship between team empowerment and team proactivity and the moderating roles of a team leader’s emotional intelligence (EI) and a team member’s proactive personality	Proactivity is positively associated with team empowerment. In addition, team leader’s EI and team members’ proactive personality influence the relationship between team empowerment and team proactivity. Specifically, teams exhibit the highest proactivity when team leaders’ EI and team members’ proactive personality are high.
Prufeta, (2017) [15]	Emotional Intelligence of Nurse Managers (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 38 nurse managers)	USA	To determine the level of emotional intelligence (EI) among nurse managers (NMs) in an academic medical center and determine the relationship of EI and demographic variables.	Mean EI scores among NMs were average. Nurse managers with less than 2 years of experience had statistically significant lower busing emotions branch score and strategic EI. Nurse managers with a master’s_ degree in nursing scored significantly higher in using emotions branch score than did those with a master’s degree in a related field.
Munro, (2011) [16]	Nurse Manager Emotional Intelligence as a Predictor to Registered Nurse Job Satisfaction and RN Perceptions of the Practice Environment and the Relationship to Patient, Nursing and Hospital Outcomes (Cross-sectional, quantitative, 38 nurse managers & 659 RNs)	USA	To investigate if the level of Nurse Manager (NM) emotional intelligence (EI) predicted registered nurse (RN) job satisfaction and RN perceptions of the practice environment.	NM EI was significantly correlate and patient satisfaction with nursing care.