Getting to the Heart of Leadership

Emotion and Educational Leadership

'…The book is framed to illuminate how headteachers experience, and talk about, emotion and meaning in their daily interactions, and sets out to understand how emotion impacts on their leadership.' (author's introduction)

Understanding the close relationship between leadership and emotion is essential for school leaders. This book discusses why emotion is such a powerful component of leadership, and how better knowledge of emotion and leadership can sustain leaders.

The author examines the part leaders, and especially headteachers, play in creating, modifying, and sustaining the emotional coherence of the whole school. The book contains examples of how school leaders experience emotion and meaning in their daily interactions and through stories, the reader can engage with how school climate depends on the personal emotional quality of the leader, and his/her interface with other social relationships in the school.

The book discusses personality and life history, dealing with difficult people and situations, shame and loss, and the future of leadership. All of these are shown through practical examples - primary and secondary case studies as well as through school leaders' reflections on the influence of their life history on leadership and emotion.

This book is for practicing educational leaders and managers, tutors, and students in graduate courses, education courses, and in programs such as the National Professional Qualification for Headship, its equivalent for Children's centers, and other national programs in educational leadership and management.