A Model of Social Intelligence and Creativity: A Cross-cultural Study

This study was designed to test the relationship between social intelligence (SI) and creative behavior of leaders. Social intelligence is defined as the ability to be aware of relevant social contexts (situational awareness); to deal with social contexts or challenges effectively (situational response); to understand others' concerns, feelings, and emotional states (cognitive empathy); and to build and maintain positive relationships and to act wisely and ethically in human relations (social competence). A field study was conducted in nine countries (U.S., U.K., Scotland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, Egypt, India, and Pakistan) to investigate the main effect of situational awareness on situational response and (b) the mediating effects of cognitive empathy and social competence on the relationship between situational response and creative leader behavior. Data on SI and creative behavior were collected with questionnaires at an interval of one week from employed MBA students at the universities in these countries (N = 2,359). The assessment instruments required the respondents to indicate to what extent their supervisors displayed social intelligence and creative behaviors. Data analysis with structural equations in the U.S. provided overall support to the three study hypotheses. There were similarities and differences in the results between the U.S. and other countries.The implications of the study are that supervisors need to acquire and use three of the four components of SI (situational awareness, situational response, and cognitive empathy) to enhance their own creative behavior. Therefore, the challenge for a contemporary organization is to enhance social intelligence of their managers. Appropriate interventions may be needed to enhance their social intelligence competencies that would involve education and specific job-related training. Managers should also be encouraged to enhance their abilities through continuous self-learning. Organizations should provide positive reinforcements for learning and improving managers' essential social intelligence competencies needed for specific jobs.Even though education and training are useful for improving supervisors' SI, organizations may have to adapt the policy of recruiting managers with vision and charisma who are likely to be high on SI. This comment is based on the assumption that education and training may not be able to significantly change one’s level of social intelligence that may have a positive influence on creative leader behavior.