Background: Emotional intelligence (EI) has become a global phenomenon due to its
far reaching implications for individuals, groups, society as a whole and it is critical to
becoming a successful leader. In addition to effective leadership plays an important
role in the growth and better performance of the organization. The aim: of the present
study was to assess the relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership
styles of the head nurses at governmental hospitals in Port-Said. The research design:
was a correlational descriptive design. The subjects of this study consisted of two
groups; Head nurses group (31) and staff nurses group (216), two tools were used for
data collection as the followings: emotional intelligence questionnaire which used to
assess emotional intelligence level of head nurses and leadership styles questionnaire
which used to assess leadership styles used by head nurses from staff nurse‘s point of
view. The results: revealed that self-awareness of head nurses scores reported the
highest mean percentage compared to self-regulation in personal competence whereas
social skills scored the highest mean percentage in social competence and all
competence of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership scored the
highest mean percentage than transactional leadership in advanced styles and all
styles from staff nurse‘s point of view. The study concluded: that there was no
statistically significant correlation between emotional intelligence and leadership
styles. However, two skills of transformational styles inspirational motivation and
individual consideration had a negative statistically significant correlation with social
competence of EI, in addition to, personal competence and total EI was founded for
inspirational motivation only. The study recommended: that there are an obvious
needs for educate the new head nurses about emotional intelligence competence and
how to improve their emotional intelligence orientation with leadership styles by their
organization