Chapter 13: Educational Leadership As Emotional Labor: A Framework for the Values-Driven Emotion Work of School Leaders

The reality is that organizations are places of emotion, ranging from anger to joy to sorrow, from love to hate, with characteristic emotional climates and cultures—

—Hearn and Parkin (1995, p. 136)

Emotions are an integral part of the human experience, both in and out of the workplace. Although leadership theories have acknowledged that emotions matter for successful leadership, traditional views typically support the idea that cognition and emotion are separate, and that cognitive activity is the stuff of leadership. Scholarship aimed at building our knowledge of what makes for effective leadership has naturally focused on understanding effective decision making as well as leader behaviors associated with organizational success. Important for our discussion here is that recent research from psychology and neuroscience rejects the ideas that emotion and cognition are separate, and that cognition is more important in our decision making (Barrett, 2017); scientists from multiple fields are building consensus that emotion and cognition are deeply intertwined and likely inseparable. Moreover, as our knowledge base around leadership is evolving, emotions are moving from backstage to front-and-center as being worthy of investigation and understanding. The spirit and plan for this chapter is to offer readers a broad conceptual framework that incorporates constructs related to leadership theory and the emotional demands of educational leadership in hopes that we spark interest in more—and perhaps novel—educational research and practitioner dialogue focused on understanding leadership as emotional labor.