The status of emotionally intelligent leadership in hospitality business after the COVID19 -pandemic : within Helsinki and Turku areas, Finland

Abstract

Softer values and leadership styles have become more important in the modern business life. The agrarian or industrial revolution leadership styles are not any more valued as the best approach to manage human capita in modern organizations especially after the COVID-19 -pandemic that shook the whole industry of hospitality for almost three years in total after the first wave. This development line towards the soft skills in leadership though has evolved also after more and more women have entered the high managerial or leadership positions in various industries and organizations during the past few decades. The 21st century states for individualism and equality, thus so forth embraces leadership through higher emotional intelligence and soft leadership skills. This thesis is meant to share light upon the managers’ and leaders’ emotional intelligence skills status in hospitality management within the areas of Turku and Helsinki, Finland. The scope lies with emotional intelligence strategies, methods and tools plus tries to sort out the main soft skills tools of a leader, perceived important, in this line of field. As a fairly new line of study the soft skills of a modern leader is essential knowledge for organizations to learn how they can nurture the best and most effective human capita leadership strategies that relate straight to effective business management. Especially important the study is for hospitality businesses that create their revenues from intangible aspects, like high quality service thus creating amiable customer experiences worth visiting again. The relativeness of the emotional intelligence leadership style with the customer satisfaction has also been studied but only used as reference in this thesis as the aim is to provide more understanding for the current status of emotionally intelligent driven leadership, how commonly these emotional intelligence methods are used and how in Turku and Helsinki area hospitality business managers and employees perceive the worth of these modern methods in their organizations.