 
Week 2 - Healthy School Communities
|  | Pursuing the Paradox of Emotion and Educational Leadership |
| |
Listing of Papers | |
MS BRENDA R. BEATTY
Toronto, Canada
AS ANDY HARGREAVES (1997) has noted:
Teaching and leading are profoundly emotional activities (Fried, 1995). You would not guess this from much of the educational change and reform literature, however ... If educational reformers ignore the emotional dimensions of educational change, emotions and feelings will only re-enter the change process by the back door ( pp. 108 - 109).
Dr Hargreaves signals an important gap in our deliberations about school leadership. The consideration of findings from three studies, each pertaining to the emotions of teaching and leading, are considered in this paper. One study involves fifty teachers in interview, describing emotionally negative and positive interactions with administrators. This study provides the teacher's voice. Secondly, five leaders described in interview, a positive and a negative emotional experience in conjunction with their work. Additionally, there are findings emerging from a third study, which is ongoing, involving principals from five different countries, who, for several months, have been engaged in an online asynchronous conversation about the emotions of their work. A consideration of these three studies begins to create a collection of voices pertaining to emotion and educational leadership.
Forbidden Territory
The emotional implications of teachers' and leaders' working lives are apparently defining. However, they remain marginal to the discourse in theory, and largely in practice. Even broaching the subject of the emotions with educators- be they leaders or teachers- involves entering forbidden territory. It has elements of the exotic. Teachers who were invited to do so in interview, when asked to speak about an emotionally positive and an emotionally negative experience with an administrator, were often more concerned with telling what they were not feeling, or had not revealed, about their real emotions. The ethic of emotional control, and emotional masking, especially where negative emotions are concerned was pervasive. It took time and coaxing to get teachers and leaders to talk about their real feelings. Eventually, they did.
To begin in the positive vein, teachers talked about feeling inspired and encouraged by a few words, even looks of approval from their leaders. They talked about wishing there were more of this. They did wonder, however, why their daily work in classrooms was so rarely acknowledged, while public relations-oriented, school-wide occasions often brought 'a little note of thanks' or a 'pat on the back'. Teachers were heartened when administrators went out of their way to keep them in the school, or to get them back on staff. They appreciated 'back-up' with discipline. They thrived on a vote of confidence when a leader encouraged them to try something new, to stretch and grow. But these occasions were too infrequent, too rare, too exotic.
Leaders spoke of feeling affirmation when something they had envisioned went well. They felt motivated to do the work, out of the belief that they could make a difference in children's lives. In this, they share the heart of education with their teachers. Teachers reported being most deeply affected by their own successes in classrooms, by the work itself, with students. Teachers appreciated positive interactions with their leaders. However, it wasn't always a happy story.
Largely Absent Leaders
Teachers reported feeling isolated in their classrooms, with little indication of how they were doing, other than their own impressions. They described their leaders as largely absent from their workday worlds. As a result, they reported they were often misunderstood and little appreciated by their leaders, and frequently felt unknown. As contact with administrators was fairly rare, what there was took on a greater significance. Time and again, the words of praise for high profile successes were quickly offset by emotionally destructive and damaging encounters. Stories of harsh, public, unfair or unwarranted criticism, and outright betrayal, had caused pain that was seemingly still fresh. Were these teachers just sensitive, defensive, overreacting, or just plain whining? I don't think so. They had to be nudged and prodded to describe the negative interactions with their bosses. And when they did, they often couched their remarks, as if to sanitise or neutralise them. It appeared as if they were being extremely cautious. Some even seemed afraid that their words might bring them harm. When they had been humiliated by public criticism, the emotional toll had gone on for years. Some continued to suffer, and to shape their professional behaviour based on wounds that would not heal. As a result, leadership aspirations had been abandoned and many simply had learned to keep their heads down. Some, who avoided contact with all administrators, had lost faith in the system and had retreated to their classrooms, especially when the administrative style was highly controlling and punitive. In these schools, the spark was gone. Teachers' real selves seemed to remain hidden. They reported that often, their deep convictions about the worth of their work went largely unexpressed, even among their peers, except on special occasions.
The Longevity of Emotional Wounds
These 'special occasions' deserve special attention here. Even though emotional wounds had lasted for years, leaders who had bridged the gap and opened conversations about how teachers were feeling had done worlds of good. One person reported feeling complete relief and even joy, when her principal apologised and admitted to having made a mistake in not promoting her to the head of the department many years before. While her husband suggested that this apology, and a dollar, might buy a cup of coffee, her release and recovery was clearly transformational. She had been unburdened of the suffering from feeling he had seen her as unworthy, and from having wondered these things about herself all these years.
Emotional understanding (Denzin, 1984) and its counterpart, emotional misunderstanding, can apparently defy time. The former can heal ancient wounds in an instant while the latter may cause wounds that last forever. This is where the interface with creative, emotionally courageous and connected leadership comes in.
When leaders speak of problem teachers, staff bullies, dissonants, trouble makers, and the like, in connection with their teachers, they depersonalise, de-emotionalise them, and begin pitting themselves against them as warring factions in what is, of course, their shared responsibility for education. Many leaders have reported similar kinds of responses to troublesome staff. Yet there are more and more leaders every day who dare to be the exceptions. Some teachers described their principals as people-oriented, humane, caring, down-to-earth, and approachable. They reported feeling 'known', 'accepted', 'cared about', 'wanted', 'safe' and 'optimistic' with principals who made it their business to make contact positive with their staff. These were principals whom teachers went out of their way to work for. They were also leaders who inspired excellence and creativity. Teachers reported that it didn't take much to know you were cared about 'as a person' and 'appreciated,' but it did make all the difference.
Loader's Reflective Practice
When leaders who have begun to examine themselves and their own emotional responses reflect upon the whole interpersonal dynamic in their work, and learn to include themselves in their consideration, their approaches can become transformational. Loader's (1997) testament to reflective practice in educational leadership blazes a trail toward a different approach to the work. He began with himself, as 'transparent principal' (ibid.: v), seeing various images as having an effect on the way he was seeing himself and others. In an engaging and revealing way, he considers various metaphors, including 'Cinderella principal', 'dreaming principal', 'big top principal', 'paranoid principal' and 'journeying principal'. In the process of this shared reflection, they all come together and Loader details how his approach to leadership began to change.
Decrying the lack of concern for what leaders are really feeling, Loader calls for more attention to 'the inner principal', saying that we need '... a more balanced view of leadership ... those who have researched the current educational writing have identified a gap . . . Little seems to have been written about the person of the leader and the emotions that person experiences while leading' (ibid. p.3). He offers many insights, like the following:
Leadership has its highs and lows, its successes and failures. Principals cry, laugh, dream and become suspicious. There are times when principals do want the fairy godmother to come and save them. While leadership is about courage, about creating the tomorrow of our choice, heroism does not come easily. (ibid. p.3)
Exceptional Candour
Loader's candour about his personal and professional self is exceptional in educational administration literature. I salute his courage in taking this stand. I say 'courage' because it is not part of the traditional educational administration image to be seen as one who spends time in quiet reflection, admits to imperfection, and concerns her/himself with others' emotional welfare. Nevertheless, this is becoming increasingly important to some principals.
Whether male or female, the ethic of care (Noddings, 1984) is becoming more and more acceptable in conversations about leadership. The culture of care can have a foundational role to play in a school and in its ability to provide healing and growth-promoting qualities for everyone. Leaders, too, suffer from not being known. They say their real selves are well hidden from each other, from their teachers and from themselves. Principals who were invited to speak about the emotions of their work have struggled to grapple with their feelings. When the persona you are hired to project requires you to do the emotional labour necessary to present a brave and emotionally controlled front, it is easy to lose touch with what one is really feeling. Does this requirement make a better leader? Emotional control is one thing. Emotional numbness is another.
Seeking Deeper Emotional Understanding
Several of the principals in the current online networked conversation are considering the value of seeking deeper emotional understanding (Denzin, 1984) of themselves and their teachers. They have begun to experiment with creating the possibility for non-threatening opportunities to get at the real feelings that drive the real behaviours of the teachers with whom they are having difficulties. While having no intention of playing therapist, these leaders are trying to acknowledge the importance of emotional awareness in problem-solving, believing that suppressing this dimension may just be fanning the fires of discontent and self-destructiveness, which so often accompany problem interactions with teachers. Hargreaves' opening comment about the 'back door' seems particularly pertinent here. In all, the emotional experience of educational leadership has not been explored in sufficient depth to date, in educational administration research. Perhaps this is changing.
The Struggle to Define Leadership
Leadership researchers and theorists have identified a number of different traits, styles, behaviours and ingredients associated with leadership (Burns,1978; Bennis,1989; Leithwood and Jantzi,1990; Sergiovanni, 1992; Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach,1999; and many others). In the past ten to fifteen years, the widespread acceptance of the need for change in education and elsewhere has led to extensive reconsideration of the questions 'what is leadership?' and 'what are effective ways in which to lead?'. We struggle to define leadership, from the mutual exclusivity between 'management' -as maintenance and control - and 'leadership' - as creation and inspiration (Bennis, 1989) - through to the suggested recombination of these dimensions in a composite blend (Fullan, 1991). The conception of leadership as 'influence' continues to dominate the discourse ( Leithwood, Jantzi and Steinbach, 1999), while leadership as 'support' remains under-represented (Greenfield, 1999). The dialogue continues as we attempt to define leadership, and to discover how to do it best.
In recent years, the concepts of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983) and emotional intelligence (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Bar-On, 1992; Goleman, 1995 & Goleman, 1998) have become increasingly popular in the examination of corporate maximisation strategies. The need for workers and leaders to develop these intelligences has become part of the business success rhetoric:
... emotional intelligence can be an inoculation that preserves health and encourages growth. If a company has the competencies that flow from self-awareness and self-regulation, motivation and empathy, leadership skills and open communication, it should prove more resilient, no matter what the future brings ... The ever-pressing need to serve customers and clients well and to work smoothly and creatively with an ever more diverse range of people makes empathic capabilities all the more essential. At the same time, the meltdown of old organizational forms from a hierarchical wiring diagram into the mandala of a web, along with the ascendance of teamwork, increases the importance of traditional people skills such as building bonds, influence, and collaboration ... The capabilities needed for leaders in the next century will differ radically from those valued today. (Goleman, 1998, p.312)
While the applicability to educational leadership of the principles and benefits of collaboration, and the emotional skills required to promote and maintain collaborative cultures, may seem self- evident, human emotions per se have been consistently marginalised in educational leadership research. It should be noted that, in education, several writers and researchers do acknowledge emotions as relevant to teachers' work in terms of themes that include morale, stress and burn-out, motivation, empowerment, the self, change, the deprofessionalisation of inspection, and emotions of learning to teach (Acker, 1992; Blase and Anderson, 1995; Dinham 1995; Hargreaves, 1994; Jeffrey and Woods, 1997; Nias, 1989; Noddings, 1992 ; Rosenholtz, 1989 and others). However, to get a better understanding of the emotions of leadership we need to hear from the leaders themselves.
The Emotional Labour of Leadership
For instance, in her study of several principals, and the pressures to compete in the educational marketplace at the expense of shared collegiality, Blackmore (1996) found several principals whose experience was revealing. The need for an increased appreciation of the emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) involved in educational leadership, especially during times of severe fiscal restraint and aggressive educational reform, was apparent from her study. Several principals in the same area, had to cut ties with each other as a result of a new competitive fiscal structure.
Principals in one study discovered that there were disturbing emotional implications to learning to 'let go' of control in shared governance of schools (Blase and Blase, 1997). Principals, mandated to implement distributed leadership in their schools, reported emotional and professional rewards for themselves and their teachers. However, the anxiety and fear that accompanied making the adjustment held them back and, in some cases, undermined their ability even to try to make the necessary changes.
In educational administration literature, leadership behaviours that have emotional implications are repeatedly recommended: lending support, exhibiting moral integrity, providing safety, fostering collaboration, offering intellectual stimulation, encouraging organisational learning and practicing consultative and shared decision-making (Leithwood et.al.,1999). Optimally, it is theorised, these features combine to create cultures in schools that generate and sustain the kind of energy necessary for change and transformation. These ways of leading may foster the ability to improve schools from within (Barth, 1990). Csikszentmihalyi (1990) might call the total engagement possible during self-directed authentic collaborative synergy 'finding flow' (Beatty, 1999a). Yet, leaders' emotional capacities to exhibit these behaviours will most certainly vary. Indeed, the emotional causes and effects of so many conditions, to which a leader may deliberately or inadvertently contribute, remain under explored, while the emotional processes of the leader her/himself remain virtually uncharted territory.
Pesky Interlopers
In educational administration and leadership theory and research, the emotions have been treated, if they are mentioned at all, as little more than pesky interlopers, distracting us from a higher rational purpose. This is the case throughout much of social science:
Analysis of political and cultural forces that condition emotional experience across time and space is neglected [while] emotional processes are treated as separate from other kinds of subjectivity such as thinking and somatic experiences ... As a result, emotional and cognitive orientations are viewed as competing perspectives ... [and] little has been done to unravel the complex manner in which emotion, cognition and the lived body intertwine (Ellis and Flaherty, 1992, p.3).
This dualist paradigm continues to pervade our consciousness, harkening back to the age of enlightenment (Damasio, 1998) and obfuscating a more complete view of the human mind - body continuum. As Davies warns, in the context of examining cultural narrative,
The binary pairs male/female, mind/body, reason/emotion, light/darkness, fact/fantasy take their meaning not only in relation but in hierarchical opposition to each other. Our new stories must rework the element of these dualisms, so that both sides are equally valued, their meaning is no longer part of any oppositional binary form of thought, and both become necessary elements of each person's subjectivity. In the meantime though, personal identities have been (are being) constituted in terms of those very dualities we are in the process of challenging (Davies, 1989c). (Davies,1992, p.67)
The Myth of Sane as Unemotional
Emotions are political. The hierarchical relationship between reason and emotion has particular implications for life in organisations - for leaders and for followers - in that it is often played out as one of mutual exclusion. Power positions in the hierarchy are ritually reasserted through strict emotional control and suppression - the maintenance of an exclusively and dominatingly rational appearance. Continually, the notion that, optimally, saner heads prevail and that sane is synonymous with unemotional is re-enacted. However, this may be the antithesis of the way people are really feeling. Thus the display of rational 'sanity' which is held to be synonymous with control, may actually belie emotional insanities, or incongruities which can function as valuable indicators of the need for change in an organisation.
A similar phenomenon may explain rationalist preferences in educational research. Reason itself is not free of emotional foundation, and even in the purest of intellectual moments, emotions are present. The mind is actually a seamless blend of thinking and feeling (Damasio, 1997). The consistent exclusion of the emotions in traditional educational administration is limiting, for it distorts our theoretical understanding of human experience. In the literature, problem-solving, strategic planning, and even reflective practice are considered from an exclusively rational standpoint. Educational administration research can no longer afford to treat the emotions as subordinate, insignificant or peripheral, if we are to explore fully the way leaders are, and the ways they can be.
Perhaps we need to recombine the previously polarised cognitive and affective domains and envision the 'whole body as mind' (Pert, 1998). With this image of the 'whole mind' in mind, then, we may begin to understand people whose realities are largely defined, and whose values are heavily influenced, by their emotions. A fuller understanding of the emotional dimension of the total human experience, then, may complement cognitive and behavioural emphases that have gone before, giving us a closer look at some of the less considered parts, and moving us nearer to a fuller appreciation of human beings as whole persons.
Emotional and Organisational Life
School cultures support the notion that ideal 'professional' demeanour is primarily rational and carefully emotionally controlled. This is especially the case in terms of emotional display rules among adults in schools. In attempting to retain appropriate professional decorum, the continual denial or suppression of the emotionality of our experience may be creating an artificiality to organisational life that is energy depleting and even unhealthy.
Typically, in organizations, people suppress ideas and feelings about ongoing problems at work, behaviour often viewed as politically useful and adaptive. Paradoxically, successful efforts at organizational change and development rely upon participants' feelings and ideas. Nevertheless, sincerity may challenge the political nature and defensive strategies that characterize most work relationships. Resistance to change is therefore inevitable. (Diamond, 1993. P.117)
This denial of the emotionality of experience may also be limiting the potential for professional renewal and synergy that can only occur when the whole self is safe to grow and to discover in collaboration with trusted colleagues (Barth, 1988; Little, 1993). Perhaps leaders themselves need a forum of trust and safety within which to examine and reflect upon the emotionality of their experience (Fineman, 1992; Osterman and Kottkamp, 1993). There is a connection between the emotions of feeling safe and secure in shared heterarchical leadership and the ability to engage in authentic collaborative professional learning and creative risk taking (Beatty, 1999a). However the relationship between teachers' emotional experience in this sense and that of the leader may be one of inverse proportionality. That is, in some cases, the more secure and empowered the teacher, the more threatened, insecure and anxious the leader (Blase and Blase, 1997).
This 'either or' relationship between leaders' and teachers' emotional security may prove to be central to the inner workings of educational stasis and critical to our understanding of the possibility for educational change. It is important to note, however, that teachers' willingness to make voluntary commitment to extracurricular duties is not necessarily dependent on the extent of their perceived empowerment (Blase and Roberts, 1994). Closed and open, authoritarian and transformative, leaders with various styles get results. Thus, there may be other more elusive qualities to the effective leadership connection with teachers. Could these be emotional qualities? The characteristic emotional inter-subjectivity of an organisation may be a measure of its energy system and its openness to learning, growth and change.
Emotional Attachment to Power and Control
Some models of the learning organisation are based on empowerment and shared decision-making. Schools that have succeeded in fostering a truly collaborative culture report a self-generating creative synergy and commitment (Blase and Blase, 1997). However, despite much rhetoric about the desirability of a horizontal organisational structure characterised by shared decision making and authentic collaboration, the present education system is still typically hierarchical and exclusionary. The hierarchical educational administration regime is often characterised by centralised control, favoritism, and highly restricted information flow (Blase and Anderson, 1995). Thus, the processes whereby leaders experience their emotional capacity, or incapacity, to provide the necessary impetus for optimal personal and organisational growth and change are worthy of our consideration. For instance, the emotional attachment of leaders to their values of power and control, may be a factor in the seemingly irrepressible, self-replicating power of hierarchy. Thus, an emotional link may be partly responsible for a corresponding loss of opportunity to energise the system through alternative leadership styles. In the highly controlled, closed regime, wherein an authoritarian or even emotionally damaging leader restricts the possibility of transformation, there is the danger of entropic depletion of personal and organisational energy. Important, therefore, are the shaping and maintaining forces in the culture of educational leadership, and the underlying emotionality that is associated with these forces.
Economic and Emotional Realities
There is an ongoing need for publicly funded organisations to become places that are safe, dynamic, learning, evolving, adaptive and creative. However, at the same time, exists the increased momentum of a new external political reality. Increasing demands for fiscal restraint and professional accountability have created pressures for change and improvement, with little money and less time to support these initiatives. Thus, there is an increasing demand on human resources at a time when there are few supports to facilitate human adjustment, and more importantly, real deep organisational change or transformation.
The need for transformation is felt keenly in the education milieu today. Educators are aware of the need for change. They are not, however, sufficiently informed, prepared or supported in these changes. For instance, making the transition from having exclusive control over what students will learn, to joining them as fellow learners in an information-flooded world is, like principals learning to share leadership, an emotionally-challenging feat. Importantly, it is the teacher who is encouraged to be a life-long learner, looking inward as well as outward for growth, who can best exemplify this most potent lesson for students. However, the teacher who is emotionally safe to take the necessary risks is far more likely to become such a model (Beatty, 1999a). The ability of the leader to foster such a safe environment, to promote and perhaps exemplify such a learning model is in part an emotional capacity (Loader, 1997). The emotional self-awareness and capacity of the leader is a little researched link in the chain of professional growth and organisational change.
Emotions and Micropolitics
Blase and Anderson's (1995, p.18) treatment of leadership styles as relatively open or closed, transactional or transformative provides a useful construct with which to consider power and emotions in leadership. Emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant, can be linked to particular leadership practices and examined for their interrelationship. The notion here is that the emotions of the leader are likely to be fundamental to her/his practice, even if they are not displayed, or perhaps even acknowledged at the time. Authoritarian and adversarial leadership styles were noted for their provocation of 'anger, depressive, anxiety, resignation and satisfaction' states in teachers. The latter, 'satisfaction', was mixed with 'concern for ethics' and 'feeling sorry for those who were not' among the favoured group (Blase and Anderson, 1995, p. 40-41).
Continue |
|
| | |
