Date of Award

Summer 2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Organizational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Jenny Carter

Second Advisor

Dr. Thomas J. Gollery

Third Advisor

Dr. Jeremy W. Chambers

Abstract

Over the past two decades, churches have expanded their pastoral staff to include executive pastors (XP) to support lead pastors (LP) by mitigating stress and enhancing effectiveness (Krenz-Muller, 2022; Tidwell, 2020) in finances, facilities, and governmental entities, and staff oversight and development. This study involved an examination of the relationship between the emotional intelligence (EI) levels of XPs, using the TEIQue-SF (Cooper & Petrides, 2010), and their perceived ministerial effectiveness (ME) as assessed by LPs on the Ministerial Effectiveness Survey (MES; Dobrotka & Frisinger, 2024). The aim of the study was to identify any significant correlation between XPs and ministerial ME ratings provided by LPs and explore the impact of the variables of age, length of ministry, and education level. Data were collected from 30 LPs and their XPs (60 participants) across the United States. The findings revealed that all XP participants self-assessed as having extremely high EI, and LPs rated their XPs equally high in ME. However, no significant correlation between XP EI levels and ME was found due to a lack of variability. This study contributes to the literature by confirming that XPs self-rate highly in EI and supports the assertion that successful leaders possess high EI (Goleman, 2005; Goleman & Boyatzis, 2017). Despite the inability to correlate EI and ME significantly, the dynamic relationship between LPs and XPs concerning EI and ME warrants further investigation.

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