Effective personnel management creates a ripple effect of employee satisfaction or dissatisfaction from the top tiers of leadership through the levels of management, reaching to staff and finally to the client. If staff enjoy their work, colleagues, expectations, experiences and tasks and they have the tools and support needed from their managers and leaders to perform their tasks, they will wish to retain their employment and will also pass on positive attitudes to their clients.

The purpose of this study was to determine the Emotional Quotient of a group of nursing managers at Entity X and to compare the results with an Employee Opinion Survey. The Emotional Quotient survey consisted of a nurse manager self evaluation, and a multi-rater evaluation performed by randomly selected direct report nursing staff.

Emotional Quotient is a concept which is used to describe the ability of an individual to be aware of their feelings, moods and emotions, and to be able to manage them in a positive way. It also includes the ability to be aware of the feelings and emotions of others, and the ability to provide empathy, and skill in managing relationships and building foundations for rapport and communication. The tool used for the survey categorized the Emotional Quotient Competencies into the following groupings: Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness and Relationship Management.

The study showed that the nurse managers at Entity X evaluated themselves at a similar level as each other, with Self Management being the Emotional Quotient competency of most variation. Results from the rater portion of the survey indicated that the direct report staff were in agreement with the nurse manager results and they too reported a wide variation in the Self Management competency. The results from the Employee Opinion survey comparison indicated that the nurse managers were rated with low scores in the following sections: Encourage Involvement, Staff Recognition and Caring scores.

The study identified that nurse managers at Entity X showed deficiencies in the Emotional Quotient competency of Relationship management. It also identified that in most circumstances, nurse managers effectively exhibit Self Awareness, Self Management and Social Awareness.