emotional intelligence. These themes provided an opportunity to examine how they may
be structurally configured and synthesized into patterns, which is the next section’s focus.
Aligning the Themes into Patterns
The six themes discussed above surfaced from reflecting the voice of participants
and associating those voices with analytic codes. Reflection on the themes indicated that
they were not mutually exclusive. This presented an opportunity to decide how to
reconfigure the themes into synthesized patterns representing this study’s overarching
findings. Based on the researcher’s recursively reflective process, five of the six themes
were realigned into three patterns, to represent the quintessential combination of
experiences of effective Federal government leaders in developing their emotional
intelligence. The construction of patterns resulting from previously established themes
are annotated in Table 4. 1 1, below.
Table 4. 11
Patterns
Theme Pattern
- EI experiences manifest in different ways.
- EI experiences are integrated with other aspects of workplace and
personal life.
DIVERSE
FACTORS
AFFECT EXPERIENCES
- EI experiences are socially constructed.
- Culture influences EI experiences.
SOCIAL AND
CULTURAL
- Developing EI is dependent on experiences. EXPERIENTIAL
DEVELOPMENT
Theme 4 – EI experiences are inherent for effective leadership – is an overarching theme
resonating across all others. As such, it is a stand-alone theme and further configuration
into a pattern was unnecessary.