Past research links emotional leadership resources (e.g., emotional intelligence) positively with important working life outcomes, such as health, job satisfaction, job performance, organizational commitment, and leadership effectiveness. However, no study has yet described emotional leadership resources based on traits linked with work motivation and stress resilience. The aim was to describe emotional leadership resources based on traits in a novel fashion (meta-traits, based on structural trait analysis). Our hypothesis was that an emotional leadership meta-resource factor would converge with motivation and stress resilience. Participants (N = 344) were leaders aged between 23 and 65 years (M = 49, SD = 8.6; 58% women) who completed an online questionnaire including measures of common traits (e.g., trait emotional intelligence, Big Six), and coping resources. We estimated work motivation by self-rated work engagement, and stress resilience by the level of perceived stress. We used an exploratory factor analysis approach to describe and structure our data, and structural equation modelling (SEM) to test whether an emotional leadership meta-resource factor would converge with work motivation and stress resilience. Our findings revealed that the investigated traits and resources could be described along four broad emotional leadership resource factors, namely (1) Externalizing, (2) Moral goodness, (3) “Destrudo”, and (4) Rational mastery. As expected, the emotional leadership meta-resource factor showed a strong convergence (~.80) with both work motivation and stress resilience. “Externalizing” and “Rational mastery” were the most important emotional resource factors. The findings are discussed using Hobfoll’s motivational Conservation of Resources (COR) theory. It is concluded that common traits, including personality traits, and coping resources comprise an emotional leadership meta-resource factor, which to a high degree converges with work motivation and stress resilience. The results imply that organizations may strengthen work motivation and reduce stress by recruiting leaders possessing valuable emotional leadership resources.