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Confronting Challenges: Case Studies for School Principals

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Confronting Challenges: Case Studies for School Principals

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Confronting Challenges - Case Studies for School Principals

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Examining Equity in Texas PublicSchool Funding

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Examining Equity in Texas PublicSchool Funding

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Examining Equity in Texas Public School Funding

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Within-District Resource Allocation and the Marginal Costs of ProvidingEqual Educational Opportunity: Evidence from Texas and Ohio

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Within-District Resource Allocation and the Marginal Costs of ProvidingEqual Educational Opportunity: Evidence from Texas and Ohio

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Within-District Resource Allocation and the Marginal Costs of Providing Equal Educational Opportunity

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Creating Your Personal Leadership Philosophy

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Creating Your Personal Leadership Philosophy

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Creating Your Personal Leadership Philosophy

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The more that you, as a leader, manage each of these areas, the higher your emotional intelligence. So, let's look at each element in more detail and examine how you can grow as a leader.

Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

1. Self-awareness

If you're self-aware, you always know how you feel, and you know how your emotions and your actions can affect the people around you. Being self-aware when you're in a leadership position also means having a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and it means behaving with humility.

So, what can you do to improve your self-awareness?

Keep a journal. Journals help you improve your self-awareness. If you spend just a few minutes each day writing down your thoughts, this can move you to a higher degree of self-awareness.

2. Self-regulation

Leaders who regulate themselves effectively rarely verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions, stereotype people, or compromise their values. Self-regulation is all about staying in control.

This element of emotional intelligence, according to Goleman, also covers a leader's flexibility and commitment to personal accountability.

So, how can you improve your ability to self-regulate?

Hold yourself accountable. If you tend to blame others when something goes wrong, stop. Make a commitment to admit to your mistakes and to face the consequences, whatever they are. You'll probably sleep better at night, and you'll quickly earn the respect of those around you.

Practice being calm. The next time you're in a challenging situation, be very aware of how you act. Do you relieve your stress by shouting at someone else? Practice deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself. Also, try to write down all of the negative things you want to say, and then rip it up and throw it away. Expressing these emotions on paper (and not showing them to anyone!) is better than speaking them aloud to your team. What's more, this helps you challenge your reactions to ensure that they're fair!

3. Motivation

Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work.

How can you improve your motivation?

Re-examine why you're doing your job. It's easy to forget what you really love about your career. So, take some time to remember why you wanted this job. If you're unhappy in your role and you're struggling to remember why you wanted it, try the Five Whys technique to find the root of the problem. Starting at the root often helps you look at your situation in a new way. And make sure that your goal statements are fresh and energizing. For more on this, see our article on Goal Setting.

4. Empathy

For leaders, having empathy is critical to managing a successful team or organization. Leaders with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else's situation. They help develop the people on their team, challenge others who are acting unfairly, give constructive feedback, and listen to those who need it.

If you want to earn the respect and loyalty of your team, then show them you care by being empathic.

How can you improve your empathy?

Respond to feelings. You ask your assistant to work late - again. And although he agrees, you can hear the disappointment in his voice. So, respond by addressing his feelings. Tell him you appreciate how willing he is to work extra hours, and that you're just as frustrated about working late. If possible, figure out a way for future late nights to be less of an issue (for example, give him Monday mornings off).

5. Social Skills

Leaders who do well in the social skills element of emotional intelligence are great communicators. They're just as open to hearing bad news as good news, and they're experts at getting their team to support them and be excited about a new mission or project.

Leaders who have good social skills are also good at managing change and resolving conflicts diplomatically. They're rarely satisfied with leaving things as they are, but they don't sit back and make everyone else do the work: they set an example with their own behavior.

So, how can you build social skills?

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Emotional Intelligence in Leadership - Learning How to Be More Aware

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Relating to others is vital in today's workplace. Learn how to build your emotional intelligence (EI) with this article.

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Leadership, Leadership Styles, and Servant Leadership

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Leadership, Leadership Styles, and Servant Leadership

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Leadership, Leadership Styles, and Servant Leadership

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A Case for Relational Leadership and an Ethics of Care for Counteracting Bullying at Schools

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A Case for Relational Leadership and an Ethics of Care for Counteracting Bullying at Schools

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A case for relational leadership and an ethics of care for counteracting bullying at schools

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Charismatic Leadership: A Study on Delivery Styles, Mood, and Performance

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Charismatic Leadership: A Study on Delivery Styles, Mood, and Performance

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Charismatic Leadership A Study on Delivery Styles, Mood, and Performance

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Accountability of Teachers: Does it Invigorate Transformational Leadership in Schools?

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Accountability of Teachers: Does it Invigorate Transformational Leadership in Schools?

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How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill

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How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill

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Anyone trying to come up to speed on emotional intelligence would have a pretty easy time of it since the concept is remarkably recent, and its application to business newer still. The term was coined in 1990 in a research paper by two psychology professors, John D. Mayer of UNH and Peter Salovey of Yale. Some years later, Mayer defined it in HBR this way:

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How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill

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A reading list to bring you up to speed.

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Emotional Intelligence - A minute with John Maxwell

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Emotional Intelligence - A minute with John Maxwell

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Emotional Inteligence - A Minute With John Maxwell, Free Coaching Video

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Effectiveness of a Leadership Development Program that Incorporates Social and Emotional Intelligence forAspiring School Leaders

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Effectiveness of a Leadership Development Program that Incorporates Social and Emotional Intelligence forAspiring School Leaders

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Effectiveness of a leadership development progra that incorporates social and emotional intelligence for aspiring school leaders

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by ·

Recently, a colleague leading in a multi-party collaboration described her role to me as being a lubricant to the system. She told me her job was to facilitate, to connect people together who should be connected, to grease the wheels so to speak, and just generally remove obstacles so people could get their work done.

I like the idea of a lubricant as a metaphor for collaborative leadership. I think the attributes of a lubricant are consistent with the attributes I associate with someone who is being collaborative.

These are the same properties we want to see in a collaborative leader. As lubricator (or if you rather, collaborative leader), one can:

What metaphor do you use to describe a collaborative leadership style?

If you'd like to leave a comment about this blog post, click here.

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Recently, a colleague leading in a multi-party collaboration described her role to me as being a lubricant to the system.

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Collaborative Leadership: An Overview with Peter Dewitt

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Collaborative Leadership: An Overview with Peter Dewitt

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Collaborative School Leadership: An Overview From Peter DeWitt

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Collaborative Leadership by Peter Dewitt

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Collaborative Leadership by Peter Dewitt

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Collaborative Leadership Book Cover Image