Analysis of the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership behaviors in different sports branches

This research aims to examine the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership behaviors of athletes in different sports branches. 520 athletes from 12 different branches including 5 team sports and 7 individual sports participated in the study. Likert type "Bar-On EQ-i Emotional Intelligence Scale" developed by Bar-On and rearranged by Acar (2001), "Leadership Orientation Scale" developed by Bolman and Terrence (1991) and translated into Turkish by Dereli (2002). "Personal Information Form" was applied. The obtained data were transferred to SPSS 24 program and frequency, percentage analysis, arithmetic mean, standard deviation were analyzed in descriptive statistics. In the study, the Mann-Whitney U test was used when comparing the means of two groups, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was used in comparing three or more groups. Tukey Post Host statistics were used to find significant differences found between three or more groups. It was determined that there was a moderately positive relationship between the emotional intelligence perception of the participants and its sub-factors, and a weakly positive relationship between the perception of leadership and its sub-factors. As a result of the study, significant differences were found between the emotional intelligence perception of the participants and the sports branch variable, and it was observed that the emotional intelligence levels of the athletes engaged in team sports were higher than the athletes engaged in individual sports. As for the leadership perception results, it is seen that the leadership style scores for people are higher in the athletes engaged in individual sports; Transformational leadership style scores were found to be higher in individuals dealing with team sports. It was determined that between the sports branch level of emotional intelligence perception of the participants and the stress management dimension, the scores of professional athletes were significantly higher than the scores of amateur athletes. According to the one-way regression model established; It has been determined that emotional intelligence has a significant relationship on leadership. Keywords: Amateur, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Professional, Sports Branch