Conceptualising leadership and emotions in higher education: wellbeing as wholeness

Abstract

In this conceptual article the authors outline an approach to leadership in higher education that foregrounds attention to wholeness and wellbeing, framing emotion as inherent to the practice of leadership, with all organizing actions inseparable from and influenced by emotion. The article is framed within findings from their research on wellbeing in schools and positive organizational scholarship that intentionally foregrounds virtues and positive human capacities as essential and vital to thriving for individuals and groups in organizations. The authors reflect on the benefits and potentials of reorienting leadership toward the more life-giving qualities of work in higher education, and suggest that this generative reflection may serve to counter the predominant stances of competition and scarcity-mindsets that seem to pervade academia. This positive organizational stance toward leadership in higher education is timely given the increasing focus on encouraging wellbeing among administrators at all levels of the education system.

Service learning in Indonesia: developing undergraduate students' leadership during COVID-19 pandemic

“…Responding to this, Roberts and Ullom (1989) argue that higher education is HESWBL 12,5 responsible for preparing students to become leaders of the future. Meanwhile, Cherkowski et al (2020) add that universities can engage students in research, teaching and service to develop students' leadership and give them opportunities to build their sense of agency. stipulates that "everyone leading are leaders" (p. 34).…”

Understanding the emergence of females as leaders in academia: The intersections of gender stereotypes, status and emotion

“…Although women and male leaders arguably display and experience certain emotions at work to a similar degree, women are in fact bound to certain emotional rules or emotion conventions (Cherkowski et al, 2021; Fineman, 2003; Hoschchild, 1983), which they must appropriately choose and know the intensity of and appropriate emotions they must display in certain situations—this is related to emotional labour (Hoschchild, 1983). Because of the pejorative view of emotionality, not all emotions are socially acceptable.…”

“…Gender stereotypes have also influenced how women leaders should regulate and manage their emotions in the workplace to maintain a positive image and improve performance. Yet, the cultural stereotypic attributions to women that are associated with the adjectival femininities of irrational, emotional, subjective and individual pathology (Blackmore, 1996; Cherkowski et al, 2021; Mavin, 2009) have intrinsically made women inferior—while males are endowed with adjectival masculinities, and thus are believed to be rational and cool, and therefore superior (Blackmore, 1996; Crawford, 2009). These adjectival dichotomies are seen as a form of boundary maintenance work to control workers (Blackmore, 1996) and have emerged as ‘an administrative paradigm partly as a defense against the perceived dysfunctions and pejorative connotations of emotion’ (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995:10).…”

“…The gender system also has constraining expectations of emotion display or expression, as well as stereotypical expectations of effective leaders and leadership that generalise women with the logic of ‘emotionality’ rather than ‘rationality.’ As such, the fallacy in that logic has created status beliefs and status characteristics in that women are less qualified to take on leadership roles than men (Blackmore, 2014; Brescoll, 2016; Cherkowski et al, 2021; Crawford, 2009; Fischbach et al, 2015). Because emotional expression is important to qualify women as effective leaders gained from the proper state of mind in perceivers (Brescoll et al, 2010; Hoschchild, 1983; Tiedens, 2001), women need to know how to manage and display their emotions or do emotional labour (Hoschchild, 1983).…”

Las emociones en el aula. Una propuesta de innovación desde la Educación Física y la Música

“…2). Asimismo, la IE, cuando se relaciona con la habilidad de manejar las emociones y la capacidad de liderazgo, está vinculada con una mejora en la capacidad de mantener relaciones sociales de alta calidad y, a su vez, menor número de relaciones conflictivas (Cherkowski et al, 2020), así como con un incremento en el rendimiento académico y desarrollo personal de estudiantes (Zhoc et al, 2020).…”