High Level of Emotional Intelligence of Management Leads to More Creativity by Workers?

In a new paper titled, Supervisor Emotionally Intelligent Behavior and Employee Creativity, published in the Journal of Creative Behavior, Zorana Ivcevic, Julia Moeller, Jochen Menges and Marc Brackett, find a relationship between essentially the level of supervisor emotional intelligence and factors associated with creative behavior.  Basically, emotionally intelligent supervisors may impact the creativity of their employees in positive ways.  Based on their findings, the authors state: 

First, supervisors who aim to encourage and enable creativity in their employees should acknowledge that creativity is refilled with emotion, from the anxiety when facing an open-ended problem and associated uncertainty or risk, to frustration of obstacles, to excitement of initial idea generation, and pride of final achievement. Supervisors who acknowledge that emotions matter in the creative process will be more likely to be mindful of employee emotions and create an environment in which employees experience opportunities to grow and develop their skills. Second, organizations should acknowledge the important role of supervisor EIB for employee creativity and innovation. 

Interestingly, I was reading a book on management about five years ago (Of course, I can’t remember the title right now.), but one of the main points of the book was that Chinese men raised in China make better leaders in business than men raised in the West.  The main reason for the author’s assertion was that being raised in Chinese culture led to a higher level of emotional intelligence than in the West.  Notably, emotionally intelligence can be taught to some extent.  Moreover, this may have strong implications for creativity in the workplace.