EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE OF MANAGERS AS A KEY FACTOR IN PREVENTING BURNOUT AND PROMOTING STAFF WELL-BEING IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study on the role of emotional intelligence of managerial staff in preventing professional burnout among employees. The relevance of the study is обусловлена the growing emotional exhaustion of employees in Ukraine resulting from working under wartime conditions, chronic stress, staff shortages, and the influence of toxic leadership styles, which negatively affect mental health, productivity, and team interaction. The generalization of the research results allows us to assert that managers’ emotional intelligence is transforming from a desirable managerial skill into a fundamental factor in preserving human capital, ensuring organizational resilience, and maintaining stable development. The article substantiates the need to rethink and transform leadership styles in Ukrainian organizations toward emotionally supportive leadership aimed at early identification of burnout symptoms, maintaining productivity, and ensuring employees’ psychological safety. It is proven that under conditions of constant threats to life, high levels of tension, and limited resources, the development of managers’ soft skills - particularly their capacity for self-regulation and empathy – is a key condition for providing timely support to employees. The article identifies the limitations of existing well-being programs, which fail to deliver the expected outcomes due to their formal and fragmented nature, insufficient funding, managerial indifference and emotional immaturity, as well as employees’ lack of time, overwork, and chronic stress. The article proposes the implementation of a professional burnout prevention program based on the PERMA+V model adapted to the current conditions of Ukraine (Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment/Achievement, Vitality). The scientific novelty of this article lies in substantiating a program for transforming leadership styles through the development of emotional intelligence and soft skills, positioning managers as leaders-ambassadors of psychological safety, as well as in proposing an adapted PERMA+V well-being model in accordance with the “whole-life” concept, with an emphasis on emotional regulators of group dynamics.