Leader’s management decision-making style and emotional intelligence of higher education students studying in the speciality “Law Enforcement”

Leadership qualities are a complex set of cognitive properties, personal qualities and behavioural skills. It is relevant to study how the leader's style of decision-making and emotional intelligence abilities are related to future law enforcement officers. The empirical study involved 40 higher education students studying in the senior years of the Military Law Institute of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, specialising in law enforcement. The following psychodiagnostic techniques were used: the questionnaire “Assessment of Management Decision-Making Styles” and the test “Emotional Intelligence”. Statistical processing of the data was carried out using Spearman’s rank correlation and Mann-Whitney U test. Three styles of managerial decision-making were identified in the surveyed cadets: 35 % had a conniving style, 25 % had a marginal style, and 20 % had a situational style. The other participants of the study did not have a leading style of managerial decision-making. It has been found that the highest level of emotional intelligence is in the group of respondents with the style of managerial decision-making “indulgence”, and the lowest level of emotional intelligence is in the group of cadets with the situational style of managerial decision-making. It has also been revealed that a leader with developed emotional intelligence is not focused on emphasising his or her status as a leader, but, on the contrary, provides a certain freedom of action to his or her subordinates. It has been noted that the developed components of emotional intelligence are important, but not decisive, for making managerial decisions by future law enforcement officers. The developed emotional intelligence of a leader contributes to his/her choice of such poles of managerial decision-making as “liberal” and “production of a problem situation (decision-making situation)”. A leader’s developed emotional intelligence is to some extent related to self-confidence, high motivation to achieve, and responsibility for the actions of subordinates. It has been suggested that in the process of psychological training future law enforcement officers should develop such a component of emotional intelligence as understanding of emotions, which increases the likelihood of favourable options for making managerial decisions by leaders.