Emotion in leadership

Abstract

This article contributes to an emergent literature of empirical studies on how emotion impacts leadership. The purpose of the study was to examine how secondary school administrators derived meaning from critical incidents of significant emotional events retrospectively, and how the understanding impacted leadership. A conceptual framework of emotion as a critical element of leadership, and emotion as an element of authentic leadership, was used for sensitivity in examining and analyzing the data from a multi-case study with nine practicing USA secondary school administrators. Four themes relating to emotion in leadership were found, and a model was conceptualized. The article concludes with recommendations for further research.

Keywords

Emotion in leadership authentic leadership secondary school administrators United States

Introduction

Secondary school leaders face situations provoking emotion in everyday administration, leading through challenges, and interpreting emotion following critical incidents (CIs). Self-reflection can help leaders to know themselves, improve communication, and avoid misunderstandings. The present study explored how secondary school leaders in the USA made meaning after a CI that provoked emotion. The research was innovative empirical research creating a model of the processing of emotion in leadership for school administrators. The model reveals how secondary school leaders integrated emotion into their leadership through story to self and story to others. Participants were invited to select a leadership incident provoking emotion, either positive or negative, and all participants voluntarily chose negative incidents. Therefore, the model is based entirely on incidents of emotion in leadership, which administrators felt warranted the processing of emotion, and underscores the salience for administrators.

Leading a school or organization has become a matter of sustainability, with how emotion is processed a critical and under-researched issue (Bush, 2010; Crawford, 2007, 2009; Hochschild, 1979, 1990). With some USA researchers recognizing that educating is ‘inextricably connected to emotions’ (Knight-Diop and Oesterreich, 2009: 2679), acknowledgment of the centrality of emotion to educational leadership is emerging. The importance of emotion in the workplace has been widely discussed in business (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005; Goleman, 1995, 1998; Goleman et al., 2002) and in some school settings (Beatty, 2000a, 2005b, 2006, 2007; Crawford, 2009; Harris, 2004; Leithwood and Beatty, 2008). However, much of the extant research pertaining to emotion in school leadership was conducted outside the USA. Furthermore, Harris (2007) warned that Goleman’s (1995) model of emotional intelligence (EI) may not promote the collaborative, social interaction needed to identify weaknesses, hone strengths, and discover untapped leadership capacity.

Emotion in educational leadership preparation

Even with some attention by researchers to emotion in leadership, several widely used American texts in educational administration neglect emotion in theory, research, and practice. The texts Educational Administration: Theory, Research, and Practice (Hoy and Miskel, 2008) and School Leadership and Administration: Important Concepts, Case Studies, & Simulations (Gorton and Alston, 2012) include thousands of indexed keywords with the exception of the word emotion.

The Journal of Cases, published by the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), a leading USA journal, includes articles dealing with situations in schools that might engender emotion in leaders. Yet, in articles revealing a crisis, and where words such as ‘anger’ were used, emotion was a missing concept. Barron Ausbrooks (2010: 26–29) described a school incident involving rival gangs. The school police officer and campus security officer were attacked by ‘angry teenagers’ and one of the students was shot by the officer. The students became silent after the wounded student fell to the ground. Amidst the confusion, administrators had not informed teachers of the incident before they left work. The case study, hypothetical for analysis in a course preparing school principals, emphasized the idea of administrators maintaining control and following protocol during and after a CI. It failed to address aspects of school leaders’ acknowledgment of their own emotion.

In another case study about a teenage male student subjected to physical abuse and bullying at school for displaying transgender characteristics, the researcher (Boske, 2011) noted feelings of pain and isolation associated with transgender individuals. The real incident case study emphasized creating a safe learning environment and addressing emotional needs of transgender students, but did not address school leaders’ acknowledgment of their own emotion. Another hypothetical case study (Karpinski, 2008: 92) depicted a novice female assistant principal of a USA middle school, working with an ‘unremarkable’ male leader. The assistant principal, eager to lead, wanted to achieve her expected levels of accountability. She developed a plan for improvement and could not wait to show it to the principal. After he saw her proposal, he bellowed, ‘This is MY school, NOT YOURS’. The assistant principal was ‘deeply shaken’ by his comment. The case study stressed the importance of new leaders’ abilities to develop realistic expectations. However, the article did not prompt discussion on processing of emotion while learning to lead.

Literature that ignores or neglects emotion in leadership reveals only a partial image of leadership practice and theorizing. Evidence of emotion, self-awareness, or self-reflection on the part of school administrators is undeveloped in the literature. Our research suggests emotion is an essential construct for analyzing and informing theory and practice in educational leadership. New or seasoned administrators cannot be expected to realize their potential as leaders if emotion is a taboo topic. How can theory in educational administration be worthy of its scientific stature if it neglects the human dimension of emotion in leadership? A theory that neglects the role of emotion in leadership is under-theorized and not informed by practice.

Emotional labor

For administrators, emotional labor is demanded of them in their everyday work. However, the literature on emotion has tended to be dominated by measures of emotional competence (ECi) (Goleman, 1998) and the emotional quotient inventory (Bar-On, 2001). In contrast to ECi, emotional labor is defined as the work that occurs within the person and between the person and other people to exhibit socially or professionally prescribed or expected emotional displays even when what the person feels does not align with that expected or prescribed expression of emotion (Beatty, 2000a, 2000b; Fineman, 2000). Hochschild (1983: 7) suggested ‘this labor requires one to induce or suppress feelings in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind to others’.

Normal adults tend to adjust their moods appropriately to different situations, demonstrating a capacity to manage emotion. Hochschild (1979) claimed normal individuals are able to assess the ‘appropriateness’ of a feeling by comparing a situation to their expected role. The work associated with emotion or ‘emotion work’ is different from the act of suppressing or controlling emotion. Speaking to educational administration, Duignan (2001: 35) noted, ‘Emotional labor has an emotional price attached’. People who provide services, such as nurses and teachers, are expected to manage their emotions and give of themselves for the good of the organization. Leaders also are not impervious to these working conditions and should expect emotional involvement and commitment to relationships as essential components of authentic leadership.

Emotion in leadership research

A recent empirical study conducted in Hong Kong (Wong et al., 2010: 62) surveyed 3866 teachers and middle-level leaders to determine impact of leaders’ EI. Evidence suggested the majority of teachers believed that EI was important to school leaders’ success. Furthermore, a large sample of teachers indicated that EI of middle-level leaders and teachers positively affected teachers’ job satisfaction.

In a study about primary headteachers in England, Crawford (2007) expounded the importance of emotion in leadership: ‘The fact that primary headteachers are emotional beings is not always readily apparent in the educational leadership literature’ (p.532). Crawford found little discussion in the literature pertaining to leaders as emotional beings. She surmised, ‘Without emotion and feeling, the task of leadership would become almost undoable, because the leader’s emotional involvement with the life world of the school is crucial’ (p.533).

Cliffe’s (2011) empirical study of seven secondary school headteachers in England correlated successful school leadership and characteristics of EI. While participants reported both positive and negative effects that may arise as a result of using emotion in a leadership capacity, positive outcomes were emphasized. However, Cliffe studied only female secondary school headteachers. The author called for further exploration of EI, and studies in general of the ‘use and abuse of emotions in school leadership’ (p.215). Zorn and Boler (2007) also included discussion about how emotion affects power and cultural hierarchy, moving beyond the concept of EI to how emotion plays a role in leadership.

The purpose of the present study was to contribute to educational leadership theory and practice by examining meanings USA secondary public school administrators derived from significant emotional events, referred to as CIs. Public schools in this context were state taxpayer-supported schools. CIs, following Knight-Diop and Oesterreich (2009), were defined as situations where individuals felt tension or conflict that interfered with their work or lives. Participants in the study were invited to discuss positive or negative incidents provoking emotion that affected their leadership and all chose negative incidents. We also explored how processing of emotion impacted their view of themselves as leaders.

Theoretical framework

The research perspective was interpretive, qualitative research (Marshall and Rossman, 2010; Merriam, 2009; Merriam and Associates, 2002; Polkinghorne, 1989). From this perspective, the research sought to understand school leaders’ perspectives from the meanings they have constructed. The study utilized a theoretical framework of emotion as a critical aspect of leading (Beatty, 2000a, 2005, 2007; Boler, 1999; Crawford, 2009; Harris, 2004; Leithwood and Beatty, 2000b), and emotion as an element for authentic school leadership (Woods, 2007). Authentic leadership was defined as leadership that brings the leader’s whole life and self, including critical examination of emotion and connecting with others in order to lead. Authentic leadership can have repercussions for the leader and does not always mean administrative success in all organizations will follow, but the leader leads in a way consistent with their own core values.

Fostered by discussions of present-day leadership and practices in distributed leadership, leaders are under pressure to enhance their relationships with others by bringing their authentic selves to the workplace (Woods, 2007). Woods proposed the notion of authenticity, holistically framed as leadership that reflects three dimensions: (1) the individual or self; (2) the leader’s relationship with others; and (3) the leader’s view of the larger world, and how we might remain authentic to these sometimes conflicting demands of leadership. For literature on authentic leadership see Lyman et al. (2005), Palmer (2000), Shields (2003), Terry (1993), and Wilson (2004), amongst others.

The perspective offered in this paper is that school leaders, female and male, experience emotion while engaging in leadership, can learn from themselves, and mentor each other in leadership, thus opening up new discourses in leadership (Gardiner et al., 2000). We found secondary school principals had given little thought to the role of emotion in leadership and how it informed their leadership narrative. Through the research process, participants came to understand and process the emotion they had denied. This is a significant issue because if leaders are ignoring or downplaying emotion as weak and to be controlled, this is a fallacy. Emotion has a role to play in decision-making. Acknowledging emotion, we can look at it critically and ascertain whether logic or emotion should help with the decision-making. Every decision should not be based on logic. Emotion can be a powerful tool, just as logic and rationality can be. Emotion can be viewed differently by men and women and in different cultural contexts. Administrators can become more effective by being more self-aware, recognizing and valuing their own, and others’ use of emotion in leadership. The leader’s ability to acknowledge, understand, and apply their emotion is an element for authentic leadership.

Emotion in leadership is also an issue because of the connection with the wholeness of the individual leader and subsequently the entire organization she/he is leading. The emotion of the leader affects the emotion of the staff and the emotion of the staff affects the emotional well-being of students and indeed the entire organization. Beatty (2002) described the unwillingness to acknowledge emotion as a culturally accepted ‘silence’ and a barrier to leadership. The act of naming the silence allows for an opportunity for the leader to work toward wholeness. Meaning-making occurs through naming, story-telling, and the principle of working in the ‘zone of proximal development’, wherein the administrator is pushed to the limits of what is comfortable, but not beyond the point where learning ceases (Beatty and Brew, 2004). To define the meaning of wholeness, we used Palmer’s (1998: 167) explanation of a divided life: ‘Many of us know from personal experience how it feels to live a divided life. Inwardly, we experience one imperative for our lives but outwardly we respond to quite another. This is the human condition, of course – our inner and outer worlds are never in perfect harmony’. Our premise is that if leaders are not willing to acknowledge emotion, they are underutilizing a critical element of leadership; both emotion and logic inform leadership practice.

Research context

Theory, which guides our thinking regarding established beliefs in educational administration and what might be possible, has neglected the emotion dimensions of leadership. Traditionally, educational administration has been dominated by scientific rationality and accountability-related leadership to achieve organizational ends. In recent years, a shift has occurred, with some consideration given to emotion in leadership. Burns’ (1978) transactional leadership was further refined by transformational leadership (Bass, 1985). Bass indicated transformational leadership meant exceptional leaders knew not just how to establish relationships, but how to inspire and motivate people on the basis of their personal values. Bass’s (1985) focus on shared values and goals encouraged educators to make a greater commitment, and the result would be improved achievement for students and staff. The leader’s role of recognizing and acting upon the emotional needs of individuals was stressed as a way to facilitate shared values and common goals. However, Bass failed to consider how leaders recognize and manage their own emotional needs.

Principles associated with learning organization theory (Senge, 1990) and servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977) indicated personal mastery and leadership development was an on-going, educative process. Both the servant leader and the leader of a learning organization are committed to bringing about higher levels of organizational growth by encouraging growth in themselves, and others. Learning organization theory replaced top-down leadership styles with more participative, distributive styles of leadership. Such empowering styles of leadership were comparable to transformational leadership styles. Transformational leadership ‘is often considered a type of shared or distributed leadership’ (Hallinger, 2003: 338). Feminist research, likewise, conceptualized school leadership as organic and dependent on situational context, based on an ethic of care, with relationships we value, and people at the center of participative decision-making (Henry, 1996). However, considering the bureaucratized nature of schools, Harris (2003: 319) expressed uncertainty as to whether distributed leadership could flourish in a top-down or transactional system because it would require ‘those in formal leadership positions to relinquish power to others’.

New developments in understanding how leadership works in practice, gave rise to contingency theory, situational leadership, learning organizations, servant leadership, and distributed leadership (Leithwood and Beatty, 2008). Work on authenticity and moral leadership, which included value-added leadership (Sergiovanni, 1990), further established the need for leadership theory encompassing the full range of human potential. Wheatley expanded the view of leadership by shedding light on the disconnect between outdated bureaucratic organizations and the human emotions and connectivity essential to human needs and leadership (Wheatley, 1999, 2002; Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers, 1996).

Complexity theory (CT) informed educational leadership through its lens of school leaders’ work as focused on relationships, connexions, and networking, work described as ‘adaptive, participative and enabling (Schreiber and Carley, 2006)’ (as cited by Morrison, 2010: 375). Morrison initially applied CT to leadership (2002), but ultimately concluded (2010) that the theory remained problematic to apply to educational leadership, since it ‘does not expressly discuss emotions. Yet school leadership and management are emotional activities; people are sentient, they have emotions’ (pp.384–385).

Effective leadership practices require a habit of reflection and sharing with trusted colleagues, a willingness to embrace emotions, admit vulnerability, and accept assistance from others (Boyatzis and McKee, 2005; Crawford, 2009; Fineman, 2000, 2007; Leithwood and Beatty, 2008). Crawford (2007), Cliffe (2011), and Woods (2004, 2007) included emotion as an aspect of leadership and decision-making. McWilliam and Hatcher (2007) emphasized passion, caring, and making necessary emotional connexions as factors to achieving excellence. They argued leaders must understand emotion to reach higher levels.

Specific emotions associated with leadership were explored by Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski (2004) who identified isolation, vulnerability, and fear as emotions often associated with leadership. These researchers introduced the concept of how a wound, which can be described as ranging from an uncomfortable situation to a crisis event, provides an opportunity for a school leader to enter into a process of self-reflection and sense-making. Emotion can represent opportunities to cause individuals to rethink what they believe about their careers or their lives, referred to as ‘discovering’ by Kroth and Boverie (2009).

Literature on leadership is predicated on the assumption that leaders have defined who they are as individuals based on principles, and that they recognize and accept their own emotions and values. Emotion and principles are reflected in the day-to-day business of school, in the focus and direction of the organization, and most importantly, in how administrators live their lives (Beatty, 2007; Leithwood and Beatty, 2008; Lennick and Keil, 2008). The study contributes to understanding Woods’ (2007: 295) notion of authenticity in leadership, ‘constituted in relation to three dimensions – to the person or self; to ideals that transcend the individual; and to the social order which helps make us the person we are – and in the “pulls” to be true to these’. Building on this literature, the researchers explored how leaders made sense of an incident provoking emotion.

Research methods

Utilizing multi-case study as a research process (Merriam, 2009; Yin, 2008) and informed by a phenomenological inquiry style of interviewing (Polkinghorne, 1989), the research was designed to obtain in-depth personal accounts of administrator experiences. A series of three interviews was conducted with secondary school administrators (Yamamoto, 2010). The lead author collected data over the course of a school year in the form of interviews, documents, and observational data, to gather accounts of significant leadership incidents provoking emotion, retrospectively. Interviews contained three major open-ended categories based on Seidman’s (1998) three-interview series: (1) the role of emotion in leadership; (2) the CI with the emotional response affecting leadership; and (3) how school leaders made meaning of CIs, with clarifying questions.

Cases of individuals (Patton, 2002; Yin, 2008) were selected to provide for in-depth study, and to generate the most information-rich cases (Merriam and Associates, 2002; Stake, 1995; Yin, 2008). Sampling followed criterion sampling procedures, ensuring quality of responses with regard to experiencing emotion in leadership. Initial criteria for sampling were: (a) administrators with a minimum of four years of secondary school administrator experience; (b) referred by other administrators as an individual reputed in the district to have experienced a CI; and (c) administrators willing to be reflective about emotion in leadership in interactions with the researcher. US secondary school principals in the suburban region were predominantly male; therefore, the sample was expanded to include assistant principals and all available principals, not just those reputed to have experienced a CI, in order to provide for gender diversity. We acknowledge the issue of the underrepresentation of women in educational leadership (Glass et al., 2000) has repercussions for the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women in educational leadership, which is the focus of numerous studies (Young and McLeod, 2001). The design of the present study was thus modified because of the lack of gender diversity. Participants were purposively selected from female and male administrators willing to participate and talk about a CI they had experienced. Multiple case studies allowed for each account to be unique, yet also allowed for the possibility of common themes across the cases.

Five female and four male public school secondary administrators, a total of nine, were included in the study. Participants were between 39 and 64 years of age and worked in public schools serving 1000–1700 students. Public secondary school administrators in the USA typically administer grades 10–12, with students aged 15–18, in large schools with several administrators, and student bodies of 1000–2000. Principals and assistant principals in secondary suburban and urban schools are typically on an administrative team who work together collaboratively. Therefore, the sample reflects USA secondary organizational structures and administrative arrangements. Pseudonyms were used to provide for confidentiality. Table 1 introduces participants.

Table 1.

Secondary school administrator information.

Ethnicity	Pseudonym	Gender	Age	Degree	Admin	Education	Role	School
Caucasian	Lawson	Female	59	M	14	39	Prin.	Chandler
Caucasian	Marshall	Female	59	EdSp	12	34	Prin.	Cambridge
Caucasian	Sorenson	Female	64	EdSp	20	32	AP	Wakefield
Asian	Unishi	Male	49	M	7	18	Prin.	Unity
Caucasian	Kelle	Male	50	M	21	29	Prin.	West Hills
Caucasian	Kantor	Female	39	M	4.5	13	AP	Larkspur
Caucasian	Johnson	Male	57	M	21	29	Prin.	Olympia
Caucasian	Jacobs	Female	63	PhD	15	42	AP	Greece
Caucasian	Shepherdson	Male	43	M	11	20	Prin.	Providence

Note. M: Master’s; EdSp: Educational Specialist; PhD: Doctor of Philosophy.

Admin = years in administration; Education = total years of teaching and administration; AP = assistant principal; Prin. = principal.

Once Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was granted by the university, and school district permission obtained, interviews were scheduled. Participants were interviewed and observed at their respective schools, since the phenomena could best be understood ‘within the context in which they are studied’ (Guba and Lincoln, 1989; Seidman, 1998; Yin, 2008). Each interview contained three main questions (Seidman, 1998) and a number of ancillary questions to clarify or pursue a more in-depth response. The duration of each of the three interviews was approximately 60 minutes with each of the nine participants to gain comparable accounts, totaling 27 interviews.

Participants described their administrative career, their views on the role of emotion in the work of the secondary school principal, the CIs that had a profound emotional impact on them, and their understanding and meaning of the incident at the time and at present. The final component of the interview process asked participants to reflect upon the meaning of the emotional experience in a professional context.

Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim into two-column documents for analysis. Patterns from these shared experiences were identified through a process of individual and collective analyses of interviews and a refinement of numerous codes into a smaller number of categories, then into themes. Multiple readings of the transcripts and field note observations and documents collected in the field, such as principals’ resumes, allowed for immersion into the data (Marshall and Rossman, 2011). Secondly, key words or passages were selected to begin coding from ideas in the literature and the experiences of participants and the researchers for developing possible patterns of meaning within each case. As a third step, the analytic process utilized electronic color-coding to locate significant words and phrases and further delineated and grouped into categories. The process of reducing the categories and reduction to the final themes was continued using qualitative procedures for data analysis (Marshall and Rossman, 2010; Merriam and Associates, 2002; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Yin, 2008). Fourthly, case studies were written for each participant and themes compared within and across cases for patterns of difference, negative evidence, and similarities. As a final step, participants were asked to check for accuracy of themes and attendant quotes (Polkinghorne, 1989). The article uses direct quotes within the findings to provide detail to participants’ experiences (Denzin, 1989; Merriam and Associates, 2002; Patton, 2002; Richards, 2005).

To address issues of trustworthiness or reliability, the researchers maintained an audit trail, included multiple researchers on the team, and employed triangulation through multiple and different data sources. Data also included the researcher’s observations of administrators within the school setting by following them for a full day, field notes, and researcher memos. These artifacts, together with the primary interview data, established trustworthiness by triangulating multiple sources of information (Merriam and Associates, 2002; Yin, 2008). Credibility or internal validity was also established through engagement with the participants over the course of a school year, peer debriefing, reflexive discussions with multiple researchers, and member checking interviews to continue the ethical commitment, and further establish rigor.

Reflexivity (Schwandt, 2007) or reflexive engagement (Ravitch and Riggan, 2012) refers to examining the researchers’ personal and theoretical stances in relation to the research, in order to enhance validity. Regarding reflexivity, the lead author experienced her own CI when she was passed over for a leadership position, and the subsequent processing of emotion; the second author experienced a CI when her doctoral student threatened to commit suicide; the third author experienced a CI when she told a former student from her secondary school that he was forbidden from loitering in the school building to talk with friends. He died from an apparent suicide later that day. Processing emotion in leadership was a research issue with personal meaning for all researchers who were well positioned as administrators and former administrators to conduct the research.

Findings

Administrators reflected upon the process of the CI at the time of the occurrence, and how what was learned has been integrated into their current leadership. Four themes were identified.

My view of myself, my world. Who leaders thought they were as leaders changed, either purposefully or unintentionally, with CIs in emotion that tested integrity and wholeness. The unexpected CI tested the leader’s confidence, forcing a change in action or beliefs that provoked strong emotions, resulting in the leader refining, redefining, and restructuring who s/he was as a person. The definition of self was made explicit through words and actions, and therefore defined the leader to others.

Fragmentation of self in response to the CI. When the CI occurred there was a sense of loss of control and a gap developed between understanding what was needed and how the leader would bridge the gap. The gap fragmented the leader, resulting in a loss, however temporary, of wholeness. Emotion, consciously or unconsciously, was at work affecting thinking and decision-making.

Reintegration and reinvention of self. Making sense of the CI and determining what part of it defined them as a person and as a leader was crucial. Leaders created paths to regain wholeness by continually finding ways to match who they were with what they did. How the leader recounted the story of the CI provided information on how the leader processed the incident and how s/he viewed her/himself as a person and as a leader.

Relationship with self and others affirmed. Assistance with sense-making and dealing with emotion from the CI was provided by talking to trusted others, self-talk, and for some, turning to their own spirituality.

The study found administrators were able to, through story and narrative in the research process, progress through these four elements of self-inquiry to process the CIs of emotion. The incident caused self-reflection of my view of myself, my world; fragmentation of self that elicits feelings/emotion and results in disequilibrium; which later resulted in reintegration; and finally, affirming the importance of relationships for leadership and a new frame of reference of my view of myself, my world.

The research process enabled secondary school leaders to recognize their own emotion and incorporate reflective practices that ensured wholeness. Patterns were consistent and validated by participants across eight of the nine cases, and the reader is referred to the study by Yamamoto (2010) for the completed multiple cases and analysis. The case of Principal Shepherdson in Critical Incident nine is then used as illustrative of the findings and the model. The one discrepant case, Principal Jacobs, attested that her experience did not fit the model. However, the discrepant case suggests further research as she saw herself as a ‘tough cookie’ and a competent administrator by reputation. Her unwillingness to share might not be evidence of a lack of processing of emotion, but rather an indication of the cultural norm of ‘silencing’ emotion, which has prevailed in traditional administrative practice. The model that conceptualizes the four themes consistent with the experiences of school administrators in the study is included in this article. But first, the narratives.

Critical Incident 1

Principal Lawson served as an administrator at Chandler High for nearly 15 years. The district-wide transition from a six-period day of 50-minute lessons to a block schedule of 90-minute lessons every second day created a CI. Teachers at Chandler High School resisted the organizational change she was implementing as they struggled to see how the new block schedule was in the best interests of students. Principal Lawson explained:

The emotional thing was what changing schedules two years in a row did to your staff. It has been emotionally draining…As the building administrator, you’re the in-between; you are the buffer. You’re the person who is trying to work with your community, parents, students, staff, and yet you also have to do what the district office wants you to do, which is oftentimes in opposition.

The problem was met head-on with determination and confidence, but the incident created emotional disequilibrium as she sought to serve the needs of students, staff, and the community.

Critical Incident 2

As Principal at Cambridge High, with more than 1300 students, the enrolment was double the middle school where Principal Marshall had served for the past 12 years. Principal Marshall faced a CI when she transitioned to principal of the new school and one of the teachers directly challenged her authority:

I talked with this particular person who does not have very many kids and asked him to teach another class, and he said, ‘I’m not teaching another preparation!’ He said he already had a deal worked out with the previous principal.

The direct challenge to her authority, while a new principal in the school, left her feeling ‘extremely frustrated.’

Critical Incident 3

Principal Sorenson described her CI as related to an English Language Learner (ELL) student whose behavior was detrimental to his learning and to the well-being of others. Her interventions had not proven effective and she worried that she would be forced to suspend him:

He doesn’t learn from his misconduct and keeps getting consequences. He’s at a point where I could suspend him right now. Out of the 12 or 13 years I’ve been here, I’ve only been through suspension three times. I try to keep kids in school. I don’t want to suspend him.

Sorenson is a proactive and results-oriented person, so her inability to find an effective solution for this young man impacted her emotionally.

Critical Incident 4

Principal Unishi depicted growing up in a traditional Japanese household where emotions were rarely expressed. Unishi’s fragmentation was the result of student suicides within a short period of time:

A student had to be dismissed. He got drunk one night and jumped off a bridge [causing his death]. Teachers were distraught because they knew that we have to keep these rules and they have to be very black and white, but now here is a situation where maybe this was a bad move to release him. A week later, the boy’s best friend committed suicide because he realized that the night his friend called him and asked him to go out and get high, he said no because it was a school night, and beyond that he didn’t want to get busted the next day. He shot himself in the head. So, how did it affect me as a leader? How did it change my thinking? It changed a lot.

Principal Unishi believed some students had a greater need for clear, firm boundaries and definite, consistent consequences. This belief was challenged by the CI of the student deaths that disrupted his personal and professional life.

Critical Incident 5

A veteran teacher was having difficulty in her teaching, and Principal Kelle made the decision she had to retire for the sake of the students. He recalled:

Something was amiss with a [female] veteran teacher, a very good teacher. I’m starting to get a sense that things are not good in the classroom because we’re moving away from a curricular direction to I’m not sure what direction we’re going. It’s weird stuff. She is now off medication and is bipolar. So, you’re either getting the manic stage or the depressive stage. The activities in the classroom are now directed to reorganizing and giving away things inside the classroom. This is not the conversation you would like to have at the end of a person’s career. It affected me deeply.

Principal Kelle was placed in the position of judging competence and determining the appropriate course of action, experiencing personal discomfort as he wrestled with how to resolve the problem for a veteran teacher with a disability, and remain fair to all concerned.

Critical Incident 6

With the Athletic Director out of town, Principal Kantor was in charge of the State Boy’s Basketball Tournament. Kantor recounted how people jumped in and got things done and, with the exception of a tardy statistics person, and how good she felt about everyone’s assistance to ensure the tournament ran well. Still, when one of the coaches commented about the missing statistics person, she was angry:

I was so mad, I was ready to slug him! I knew that if anyone would have asked me anything I would have just lost it and I didn’t want that to happen. So, you go to the bathroom and you close the door. I just had to get away. I remember standing there and just saying don’t lose it. Don’t cry, don’t cry. You can do this. Just hold it together.

Kantor laughs and says the experience shook her confidence as a leader, and forced a re-evaluation of who she is, and how she leads.

Critical Incident 7

Principal Johnson disclosed the CI of a teen fight in which he was involved at 17 years old, impacting his professional life for 30 years:

He hit me in the face resulting in a gash that took over 80 stitches to close … The next game I broke my ankle in two places, so that put me out of sports; I couldn’t wrestle; I couldn’t throw the shot put; and I couldn’t be the varsity catcher in baseball. Even though I was a prospect to play at a high level in a large college as a junior, not playing my senior year left me out of the mix. I was pretty down in the dumps. I was pretty depressed, pretty unhappy. All the things I used to define myself were gone.

Jim’s fragmentation was both physical and emotional as the physical disability he incurred resulted in the agonizing loss of his imagined future and the loss of his identity as a successful and popular athlete.

Critical Incident 8

Principal Jacobs experienced a CI with her previous principal where she felt a lack of trust, betrayal, and a general lack of administrative support with her superior administrator.

I was thrown under the bus more than once… She [principal] would try to psychoanalyse me. She was pretty much telling me what was wrong with both my job and the responsibility. I couldn’t figure out exactly where this was coming from or what she said, but I do remember saying to her, ‘Are you telling me that you want me to look for another job?’ That was the high point in terms of emotion for me…There was definitely gender inequity in how I was treated also. To an extent, I was used to that if you have a man and a woman you go to the man first [she felt the principal referred individuals to the male Assistant Principal]. The situation, the feeling, was like I couldn’t do anything right.

Principal Jacobs would refer to the CI as part of a ‘three-year ordeal’.

Critical Incident 9: illustrating the model

Principal Shepherdson served Providence High School with confidence and enthusiasm about learning and achieving in all facets of school life. He led the committee charged with hiring a varsity football coach. But he hired the wrong coach in the eyes of some in the community. They started by threatening him on his home telephone recorder:

The person said, ‘This is wrong. You hired the wrong person and we’re going to get your job for it. You’re going down. We’re not going to stand for this. We’re not going to allow this to happen. We’re coming after you.’ My first grade son heard this message on the telephone recorder in my own home and he said, ‘Dad, are you going to jail?’ Now this thing has impacted my family. You’re not really sure how you’re going to get through because something that really should just be at work is now in my living room!

Principal Shepherdson agonized over their decision to hire the best teacher who was also a varsity coach. Now he was not only threatened by someone he knew; it occurred in his own home.

My view of myself, my world

Principal Shepherdson defined himself as an individual with emotion and an ethic of caring that accompanied his leadership. He was there to serve:

Challenge yourself … when I am sixty-whatever, I hope that the teacher would believe that I supported them, that I cared about their family and their interests and getting them to be a better person as a teacher. Things might get tough, but we will get through this together.

Principal Shepherdson attempted to instill a sense of trust by consistently supporting the staff and showing he cared about them as people.

Fragmentation

The situations that unfolded with two varsity coaches would prove well out of Shepherdson’s control and understanding. His response alarmed him

I kept thinking of that saying that sometimes what’s right isn’t popular and sometimes what’s popular isn’t right. I was going all around. I tore that thing apart so many times. Finally, I just said, I’m going to do what’s in my heart and this guy’s a better teacher. I’ve got to hire the better teacher. I’ve got to do that. District Office warned me. They said, you’re going up against a really loud volume. I thought I knew what they meant, but I didn’t know what they meant. I had no idea how it was going to be.

The decision played out on a local radio station, in the local newspaper and via email. It was difficult for him to hear the comments, but even more disturbing was watching his newly hired coach weather the storm.

Reintegration/reinvention

Principal Shepherdson was able to reintegrate by drawing on his own sense of being worthwhile and loved from his personal relationships. Reflection was the avenue that Shepherdson used to reintegrate and reinvent himself in order to be able to put behind him the crisis situation and lead the school:

You have to coach yourself inside your head. You have to talk to yourself. You have to be able to coach yourself because if you’re not, you’re not reflecting internally to work through a tough situation. You’ll make the same mistakes time and time again because you’re really not taking the internal time with yourself to tear it apart and put it back together.

Processing the incident through a reflective process of self-talk and feedback in story to self and others allowed him to make sense of the incident and reintegrate himself as a leader.

Relationships, story to others

Principal Shepherdson was able to draw on his values and his relationship with his family as a source of inspiration during the CI:

You can’t prepare for something like that, so why try to build up a bridge and a wall around myself to protect myself? I just needed to talk. I needed time to get balanced. You have confidence that you’re going to get help in dealing with this difficult situation. You’ve got to have that sounding board and the confidence that this too, shall pass. My wife and I are very close in that regard, but my spiritual advisor is a buddy of mine from up north. He’s got a stressful job. I’ve got a stressful job. We talk. We share books. I have a leadership book that is tied into a personal devotion…. He’ll read something and call me and say, ‘Hey, did you read the one from yesterday? That was so perfect.’ The next thing you know we’re having a conversation. That part is not in spirit, it’s in person.

Principal Shepherdson used the CI to deepen his understanding of himself, and to enhance his ability to connect with others in relationship. Through reflection, story to self, story to others, and spiritual work, Shepherdson was able to use the CI for leadership growth. The meaning he derived was to embrace the process of learning from emotion in a CI, which has become part of his leadership narrative.

Model of the processing of emotion as experienced by secondary school principals

Through finding the words that explained what had occurred in order to make sense of the event, the leader also discovered the meaning of the event. Making sense of fragmenting events began with story to self. The leader decided what would be told and how it would be told, first through self-talk and then in talking with others. Talk takes the form of stories as ‘stories are as close as we can come to the experience as we and others tell of our experience’ (Clandinin and Connelly, 1994: 415). Beliefs, values, and past experiences influenced word choices in describing the CI. How the leader recounted the story of the incident provided clues to the leader’s self-view. How the leader made sense of the incident that initially caused disequilibrium, determined if the view of self was altered, solidified, or remained fragmented. Eight of the nine of the participants in this study were able to make sense of their CI, and we interpreted Principal Jacobs as fitting in with the traditional silencing of emotion. The model allows for discrepant cases with other outcomes. Some administrators might not be able to process their emotion and learn from CIs. The storying and re-storying process and the resulting view of self and the world depicted in Figure 1 illustrates the processing of emotion in leadership for school administrators, and how they integrated a CI that provoked emotion through story to self and story to others.

Figure 1.

Emotion in leadership model.

Referring to the model, my view of myself, my world indicated that CIs arousing emotion shook leaders’ confidence and forced a change in action or beliefs and a redefining of who they were as leaders. Through the research process, leaders used CIs as a way to grow, even if the problem was not fixed or was not evident, supporting the work of Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski (2004). When the leader reflects and changes within, the leadership changes. Overcoming ‘silence’ on emotion, principals worked toward emotional coherence.

Fragmentation from CIs occurred as the principals’ strategy was to work through their emotion using self-talk and story. This finding adds detail to the notion of ‘repressing emotions’ advised against by Shapiro (2010: 242): ‘If educational leaders repress their emotions or explode with frustration and work until they are exhausted, they will suffer and in the process be less effective leaders’. Leaders who name the emotion aroused by a significant event see emotion as instructive and helpful in understanding the situation, others, and self, and avoid numbness (Beatty, 2000a, 2000b).

Reintegration was realized as leaders recounted stories of CIs and provided understandings of themselves as leaders. How leaders made sense of events that initially caused disequilibrium determined if their views of self were altered or solidified. Wholeness was achieved by aligning their view of themselves with their leadership (Beatty, 2000a).

Relationships, story to others was essential to leaders’ sense-making of emotion in leadership. As leaders told stories of CIs to others, they processed the event by putting it into words (Beatty, 2000a). Story allowed leaders to revisit emotion in a safe place. Leaders reconnected to self by connecting with caring others. Processing allowed leaders to remain inner-directed, but other-focused (Quinn, 2004). For some principals, such as Shepherdson, spirituality was an essential element, supporting work by Houston and Sokolow (2006) and Luckcock (2008). In their perspective, experiencing and reflecting on emotion through sharing gave principals tools to build stronger relationships with those they served.

Crawford (2007) instead stressed the importance of regulating emotion in leadership. Her study revealed that while emotion can be beneficial, it is important to manage certain emotions, such as anger. Our study revealed a full range of emotion and a process for the use of emotion for wholeness to enhance leadership practice and to inform theory. Nevertheless, it would not be advisable for administrators to allow emotion to govern their decision-making any more than excluding emotion as a source of leadership is recommended.

Conclusion

The study found CIs forced principals to make meaning of fragmenting events by choosing words to describe them, and going through a process of story with self and others. The findings indicated a theory that emotion is inextricably associated with leadership. Processing of emotion derived from CIs catapulted leaders into a willingness to self-reflect, to engage in storying and re-storying with self and others, thus using emotion to grow as a person and leader as illustrated in the model, emotion in leadership.

The study has limitations of qualitative research, such as the purposive sampling of school administrators, which may have yielded participants who were not representative. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized to school principals. Increasing the sample size with additional principals and ethnicity in the sample may have assisted with trustworthiness and transferability. Nevertheless, the processing of emotion in leadership was revealed in the empirical data collected and analyzed, and the resulting model developed from themes in the leaders’ narratives.

The study suggests self-knowledge defines beliefs that translate into action, and sustains the principal through the journey (Beatty, 2000a, 2002, 2005a, 2006, 2007; Crawford, 2009; Mitchell, 1990). Thus, education can meet the needs of a diverse population of students and the people who teach and lead (Shields, 2006). Leadership begins with self-knowledge and a continual practice of reflection, in solitude, and in relationship. The model also reflects the need for further research on the notion of authentic leadership.

Leaders have a responsibility to understand their own emotion and to respond to the well-being of others (Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski, 2004: 312). If emotion in leadership is neglected, ‘leaders who are insecure about their own emotional capacity and identity will create organizational settings, which tend to deprive others of theirs’. Whether intended or unintended, ‘the actions and attitudes of those in positions of authority affect the actions and attitudes of employees’ (Erkutlu, 2008: 721). School leaders must be able to understand how to unravel and interpret emotion following CIs. University classes should not be silent on the topic of emotion. The type of self-reflection demonstrated through the present study helped leaders to understand themselves, improve communication, and avoid misunderstandings. Geijsel et al. (2007) stressed the importance of school leaders maintaining strong identities within the school to help schools function as capable learning environments.

A concern voiced by some researchers is leaders can be too self-aware and become ruled by emotion (Book, 2007; Cliffe, 2011). Male leaders and female leaders alike may be limiting their capacity as leaders; men fearing they may appear too angry or too feminine; and women afraid they may appear too emotional, or ‘hysterical’ (Gardiner et al., 2000). Cliffe (2011) suggested being too empathetic can result in a failure to deal effectively with an individual or situation because rationality is trumped by emotion. This may help explain the marginalization of research on emotion in leadership. However, falling prey to the argument of the ‘dark side’ of emotion in leadership removes the possibility for enhancing leadership. Ignoring a human dimension of leader development and leadership – leaders’ emotion – invalidates theory on leadership and leadership practice.

The study revealing administrators’ emotion in leadership has clarified some understandings and provoked further issues for research. Administrators, as a result of the research inquiry, acknowledged the emotion, processed it, and incorporated it into their leadership narrative. Further qualitative and quantitative studies are recommended on how emotion is processed and impacts educational leadership, and to refine understanding of effective use of emotion. Auto-ethnographic studies and hermeneutical phenomenological studies are recommended. Such studies are needed to lend insights into the experiences of diverse school leaders. By understanding others’ experiences, we gain valuable insights and enrich our own understandings of emotion in leadership.

Additional research is also suggested into the spiritual dimensions of leadership with the indication of one’s own faith and beliefs as an element of self-talk for some of the principals. Further research is also indicated on how positive CIs might provoke different emotional responses and different effects on leadership. Finally, leadership development must include ending the silence on emotion in leadership and raising self-awareness through evaluation of CIs for secondary school leaders. Emotion has a vital role for making sense out of CIs in the journey toward authentic leadership.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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