The roles of emotional intelligence, interpersonal skill, and transformational leadership on improving construction safety performance

Due to the characteristics of the construction industry, human skills are essential for working with and through others in managing safety. Previous research has shown that emotional intelligence, interpersonal skill, and transformational leadership are human skill components that generate superior performance in today’s workplace. The aim of this research is to investigate the influence of project management personnel’s human skills (in terms of emotional intelligence, interpersonal skill and transformational leadership) on the implementation of safety management tasks and development of safety climate in construction projects. The structural equation modelling (SEM) method was applied to analyse the quantitative data collected via surveys and to establish interrelationship among the research variables. The results indicate that emotional intelligence is a key factor for developing interpersonal skill and transformational leadership, and for implementing safety management tasks which leads to the development of safety climate. This research also found that interpersonal skill is needed for becoming transformational leaders who contribute to the development of safety climate.