Emotional Intelligence for School Leaders

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Janet Patti and Dr. Robin Stern. Janet Patti is a former school leader and CEO of Star Factor Coaching, as well as a founding member of CASEL and professor emeritus at Hunter College School of Education at City University of New York, where her teaching and research concentrated on educational leadership. And Dr. Robin Stern is the co-founder and senior advisor to the director at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and is a licensed psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience.

[00:42]

She is also the author of the book, The Gaslight Effect. They are the co-creators of the Star Factor Coaching Model, which helps educational leaders enhance their emotional intelligence skills. And they are the authors of Emotional Intelligence for School Leaders, which we're here to talk about today.

[01:00] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:02] SPEAKER_00:

Janet and Robin, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[01:05] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Justin. Thank you for having us.

[01:07] SPEAKER_00:

So to kick things off, what is emotional intelligence and why does it matter for school leaders?

[01:13] SPEAKER_02:

I was just reading through the book the other day, and the introduction starts with the phrase or the sentence, our humanity is at stake. And I think that it is actually meeting the moment where we are in the world right now, certainly in this country. And I think emotional intelligence is not the cure all. There are much more cultural and political and religious factors that are heavy on us right now in many places. However, for school leaders, emotional intelligence and the skills of emotional intelligence make all the difference in the way they can lead, in the way that people perceive them. In fact, in Ed Week or this week or next week, myself and James Floman and Mark Brackett have an article coming out

[02:06]

about the hidden power of emotional intelligence in leaders based on an article and some research that Mark Brackett and James Floman did. And it completely aligns with the book and the work that Janet and I have been doing for years, where we know that those leaders who can regulate their emotions, who can be aware of their emotions and name them, and who can co-regulate with others who are empathic and are the kind of leaders that ask questions before they criticize and are curious rather than judgmental, are the leaders who create an environment of emotional intelligence. And you asked, what is emotional intelligence? And basically, it's about being smart about your feelings. and using your feelings, using the power of emotions in the service of your goals.

[02:56] SPEAKER_01:

I think Robin has covered it very well and how and what is emotional intelligence. What's interesting is how some people don't really understand its purpose and that it is an intelligence and that we are reasoning about emotions. It's something that school leaders need all the time. They're making decisions 24-7, well, if they were there for 24-7, some of them are. And so it's really what we would call it skills and competencies in how to think about our emotions, as Robin was sharing with you. And, you know, thinking about emotion sounds a little bit unique, no?

[03:36]

But if we are being rational about our emotions, if there is such a thing, then it is about thinking about them and making decisions before we jump and may have impulses. And, you know, we send that email without thinking. before we shoot it out. So I think what's really important in our conversation and what Robin and I have tried to do is to inform the public about what it is to be a school leader and the necessity of having emotional intelligence, of being self-aware and being able to think about what it is that I do or say.

[04:14] SPEAKER_02:

Janet, you know, you're speaking to something that comes even before developing skills, which is the mindset, which is the understanding that emotions matter and the not only mindset, but then the capacity and the behavior that goes along with the capacity where school leaders give emotions a seat at the table, if you will, give emotions, give people... the opportunity to have their emotions and the permission to feel as Mark Brackett would say, but also just bringing emotions up in the context of school meetings or parent meetings. And not necessarily just by saying, how do you feel, but also that, of course, is the question of the moment, asking other people how they feel, but by acknowledging that there is a lot of upset in the school right now, or there's a lot of moral distress in the school right now, or people are coming into school feeling fearful, or whatever it happens to be, or joyful, maybe something wonderful happened, and the impact of that.

[05:24] SPEAKER_01:

You know, I'm thinking about when I was in a school and when I was in leadership of a school and how we were able, we being the administration and the teachers, the faculty, the parents, everyone together. But we were able to shift mindset with spending time talking about and experiencing how emotions play out. in the life of an individual and in the life of a school culture. And I think that's something that we don't think often about, or those that are not connected with schools perhaps don't really think about how critical that culture and climate is and how much EI, if we would, impacts that.

[06:06] SPEAKER_00:

I think it's fair to say that schools are places with a lot of emotion and particularly because there are places where there are a lot of people. There are not a lot of buildings on earth that have just the density of humanity that we have in schools. We have young people, we have faculty members, we have parents who come in for various reasons. And often when parents come in, The emotions are high. They're not there for no reason. They're there because something has come up.

[06:32]

So there's a lot of emotion to manage. And I don't think I really grasped how much of other people's emotions I was dealing with as a principal until I stepped away from that work and into the work I'm doing now and just realized the drop in the amount of emotion that I was dealing with in a day. So I think one of the big challenges that school leaders face is, as you said, the self-awareness of how am I doing? What am I experiencing? and the need to constantly manage the emotions of other people, whether that's an upset student, an upset staff member, an upset parent. There's just a lot of emotion to manage.

[07:07]

Why do you talk so much about the self-management and the self-awareness? What is the primary task for us in dealing with other people's emotions that starts with our own kind of self-awareness and self-management? Talk a little bit more about that, if you would.

[07:22] SPEAKER_02:

Well, and how much EI and your skillfulness and your mindset around emotions impacts the every day of it. I know that in our book, we have a lot of examples of people who are in the field and using particular kinds of, from their repertoire of emotional intelligence strategies, picking one that they lean on most. And one of the things that I was thinking about is just the power of pausing. Like something happens, you walk into the school building and you get to your office and there's an angry parent sitting in the waiting room. And rather than just marching forward without pausing, pause and talk to yourself. Okay, I got this.

[08:05]

I know this parent or I don't know this parent. But spend your time listening. and not just waiting for the pause from the other person so that you can jump in to fix it because you may not know how to fix it. Maybe there isn't even a fix and maybe that isn't even what the person wants. But that's just one moment where your emotional intelligence and awareness of somebody feeling angry. How do you use your skills, your facial expressions, your tone of voice, your actual words to bring them to a place where we can even have a conversation?

[08:40]

where we put everything on the table and we're both addressing it absent the heat of intense emotions.

[08:48]

I want to address what you were saying about schools being a place where there are a lot of emotions. First of all, what we know about emotions is emotions are contagious. So that if you walk into a school in the morning and you are, especially they're most contagious from people who have a power seat and the more powerful you are, the more your emotions have the ability to ripple out and influence other people. So if you walk in and you've had a really tough commute and you aren't self-aware, to make the point about why it's important to be self-aware, and you don't have a moment to pause and bring yourself into a place of calm, you could be pouring out, exuding, a lot of difficult, stressful, angry emotions and not even really be aware of it.

[09:39]

You're just walking in and you've just had a lousy time. The other thing that I want to say about emotions and how many there are in school, countless emotions in school, is if you think about a day in the life of you Your educator, if you're a leader, your educators, your students, your cafeteria workers, counselors, everyone in the school, each one of you experiences a roller coaster of emotion all day long. And so if you think about that image, which we often do a reflection about that, like where did you start at the beginning of the day? What are your emotions in the morning? And then as you go through the day, you're up and down, up and down. So I may run into you, Janet, in the hallway.

[10:24]

And I'm at the peak of happiness because I just gave my exams back in my class and everyone did really well and everyone is really happy. I run into Janet who just comes from another class or another meeting and she's at the abyss. It's not an abyss of a roller coaster, but she's at the lowest point and she snaps at me and I'm thinking, what's her problem? Once I have a mindset that we're all having emotions all day long, then maybe I take the time, again, being self-aware. Oh, wow, I feel really activated by that. But rather than slamming Janet or being snarky in return, I say, hey, are you okay?

[11:11]

You seem a little bit out of sorts. Or let's go grab a cup of coffee. You don't look like yourself or something.

[11:20] SPEAKER_01:

You know, I'm thinking as you're talking about the importance of this awareness of our self-awareness, our social awareness, and how do we get there? And I think that that's something that we do and try to really do in our book is to help leaders recognize that. Not only the mindset, which is number one, absolutely, but then how do I get that mindset and how do I shift and transform when I may not be in the place of realizing or thinking that my emotions matter, which is often the case. And when we speak with many principals and you know, it's like, how am I going to stop during my day and think about my emotions, you know? Well, you know, not so. As Robin was explaining, as you were talking about before, it's that they are 24-7 and those emotions are taking place.

[12:10]

So you don't have a choice in whether or not we're going to deal with our emotions or not. And so one of the things that we have put into the mix of how we interact with our leaders is coaching. And I bring that in because we don't just coach on what the daily events are, but we coach about the daily events and the underlying emotions that are in every particular moment that the leader is having to shift from one place to another because of one child, one teacher, or one parent, or just themselves, as Robyn was saying, not being in the right place. So we found that coaching environment creates the psychological safety for a leader to be able to pause and reflect and think about

[13:05]

what their emotions are doing in that moment. And is this going to work for them or is it something they need to shift? And then we help them with how, not because we give them the answer, but we help them think and feel about their own answer.

[13:19] SPEAKER_02:

I really like what you were saying, Janet, because it captures the fact that in our coaching model, people are bringing problems of practice and into the space of the co-created space between coach and coachee that hopefully over time becomes a safe space for practitioners to talk about what's working for them, what's not working for them. And they begin to be very nuanced in, well, I said this, or I didn't say that, or I wish I didn't say that. And so they're talking about what we call emotionally intelligent behavior, which is different than the knowledge of emotional intelligence, because you can be really smart. In fact, people have been learning about emotional intelligence since Dan Goldman's book launched the field in 1995. And yet we still have so many issues that people are dealing with that could be vastly improved or ameliorated with the knowledge and skills of emotional intelligence and the practice.

[14:20]

So we know we learn it and then we practice it, but we don't do it, then we need to ask ourselves, well, what is my way of being, of living an emotionally intelligent day every single day. And you may find that you don't feel comfortable being vulnerable with emotions or asking people about their emotions or bringing emotions into the school, into the school community. Or you may find that you just don't have the motivation in that moment, or you're too angry or whatever it is, but behaving in an emotionally intelligent way is a choice and becomes a practice and a commitment and the journey of a lifetime.

[15:04] SPEAKER_01:

I think about those day-to-day moments on the job. And at that time, I was just beginning to learn myself about the importance of emotional intelligence. And so were young people. So we were a middle school and you know, that's an age that most people say middle school, how do you handle middle school? You know, they're just little kids and they grow up in big bodies. But the reality is learning the skills for young people in a school is equally important.

[15:34]

And that's why we do the work with adults that we do. Because, you know, if we just focus on the kids and think, okay, this is for kids, this is a kid's program, then the adult's behavior gets glanced over. When many times the issues were actually, believe it or not, were begun by an adult who just didn't have kids. the awareness and the ability to shift their emotion in a moment and to not yell or scream at a child. I think we've all been there. Many of us have been parents as well as teachers and educators.

[16:09]

And it's a learning process.

[16:11] SPEAKER_02:

And what we often say is your students are watching you. They're watching how you manage in the moment. One of the anecdotes I love to tell is, you know, think about the teacher who walks into the classroom in the morning after it's been raining and said, just give me a minute. Like I've just been through it on my way to school. As opposed to the teacher who walks into the classroom after the same experience and just different version of what it could look like and says, you know, I got a chance to use my most favorite umbrella this morning. It was really a rough ride, but I had my trusty umbrella.

[16:52]

So what happens then? What's the impact of that on the classroom? So I think all the time about the impact of what leaders and teachers are doing on the school community.

[17:06] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And what I'm thinking about also is how it's not easy to change ourselves, even if something as simple as keeping the cap on the toothpaste. which my husband would remind me of if I take it off all the time and leave it on the sink. That particular behavior is something I've learned since forever. So how do I shift that? How do all of a sudden I see that that's as important as anything else and it's important to the person I live with?

[17:35]

So these are the nuances that you're speaking about and why it's so critical for us to embrace our emotions in the school context.

[17:46] SPEAKER_02:

In the research that James and Mark did about emotionally intelligent leaders, educators rate the emotional support they get from their leaders as the most important support they can possibly get.

[17:58] SPEAKER_01:

And in their research, I believe they also were looking at the more emotionally intelligent the adult, in this case, the principal or the assistant principal, is the more teachers are willing to trust that person.

[18:16] SPEAKER_02:

Yes, and the greater psychological safety in the community. And what was also interesting, as you'll read about when the article comes out, that many leaders believe they're offering support to teachers, but the teachers, there's a gap between what they believe they're offering and what teachers are getting or teachers are feeling. And the other thing that I wanted to say is that when a leader, emotionally intelligent, emotionally skillful leader is in place in leadership roles, it's, I think, it really incumbent upon them to put the policies in place and the routines and rules in place for the system so that if they leave that school, that they brought emotional intelligence into the system. We think about bringing emotional intelligence in through the Yale work, the work we do at the Yale Center, bringing Ruler into schools as a systemic effort.

[19:09]

And coaching supports that effort, of course, because the leaders themselves then have the buy-in, the leaders themselves have been through that experience of knowing how emotions make a difference and doing something about it, but then putting it into hiring practices and discipline practices so that it becomes part of the way the school works.

[19:31] SPEAKER_00:

And I was going to ask your advice or your thoughts for system leaders, for supervisors and directors who do their best to hire for emotional intelligence and hire people who have what it takes, including the self-awareness and the self-management to do this difficult work. But also I know many supervisors of principals and many supervisors of other administrators find themselves in a situation where they have someone who doesn't have the self-awareness, who doesn't have the self-management skills and gets into hot water. I think often The situations that end up in the news media, the situations that end up blowing up with parents often tend to be where the school leader has not exercised that level of awareness and self-control. So what advice do you have in closing for people who lead and develop school principals?

[20:22] SPEAKER_01:

I'll start with just saying that it's interesting about that question is I literally was on the phone with a systems leader yesterday who was having that exact problem. And so my first thought is we have to create opportunities for reflective thinking, for reflection, for the movement in mindfulness and how it's become so important is just exactly for that reason is that we have to build self-awareness. And the way to build self-awareness is by providing those kind of quote, meetings, moments, opportunities, as opposed to business as usual.

[20:58] SPEAKER_02:

I would say something that echo what you said and also bring in professional development to the system and through the system and back to the hiring practices. I think making sure that you check in with people who have actually worked with the people you're planning to hire or thinking about hiring and can be let you know what they, what it feels like, what they've observed about how people handle difficult situations and how people handle others who are going through difficult situations. And are they good listeners and asking the questions that will get to the practice of skillful practice of emotional intelligence and whether they in fact think about emotions as important or whether they're irrelevant than they should be left at the door as if that were even possible.

[21:51]

And I think to your point, Janet, I always love to think about a world where there could be more time for there to be professional development retreats where they're out of the school environment and they go away for a couple of days and there is time for that reflection that you were talking about and time for people to remember their purpose in teaching and remember their passion for teaching, which in the day-to-day of it can be hard to remember. And where there is a refresher in emotions matter and a teaching of skills and an opportunity to practice and have case studies and role plays, really engage people so that they feel it, not just hear it.

[22:37] SPEAKER_01:

It reminds me of what we in our coaching when we work with our coaches practicing the art of asking good questions and listening well. Those two skills are really crucial and they also provide the empathy. that is needed on the part of the leader and that the leader needs as well. I mean, remember Robin, when we were asking people about how this work impacted them and they talked about how for the first time they really felt listened to and they had a safe place to go to someone who could listen without worrying or fearing that they're going to lose their job or those are really critical incidents that remain with us.

[23:23] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And talking to people, bringing to the school and bringing to the district and to the training, people who have gone through training in emotional intelligence, who have lived it in their own schools and allowing those people to be the models for other people and presenting the science and presenting the data. People need to hear that, that it's not emotional intelligence is not just about being nice. It's about being skillful with emotions that we have all day, every day.

[23:52] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is Emotional Intelligence for School Leaders, published by Harvard Education Press. Dr. Janet Patty and Dr. Robin Stern, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[24:02] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for elevating this work. I really appreciate it. Absolutely.

[24:07] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.