Getting emotional: a critical evaluation of recent trends in the development of school leaders

Abstract

Emotion is a growing focus for contemporary thinking about leadership in public policy and corporate arenas. In British education systems, three imperatives are evident: the idea that transformation is essential; leadership succession in crisis; and, more recently, that leaders must be able to run organisations that address the emotional well-being of staff and students. Viewed as a key outcome of schooling, its importance is mirrored in school leadership, especially professional development. This article considers whether this represents a step-change in leadership development praxis or is, instead, an invasive form of emotional engineering redolent of long-established orthodoxies of control and domination. If so, it is argued, leadership development as the advocacy of emotional acumen presents moral technology as a new form for intervening in leaders' emotional selves, thereby distracting them from addressing fundamental aspects of education for which they are primarily responsible.

Keywords:

• emotion
• well-being
• leadership
• leadership development
• moral technology

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the BELMAS (British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society) Conference, ‘New Organisations, New Leadership’, July 2010, at Wokefield Park, Reading, and at a seminar on Critical Approaches to Educational Leadership and Policy, June 2010, at the University of Manchester, UK. Delegates' comments are gratefully acknowledged as are those of reviewers for this article.