School Leadership During Covid-19: Emotionally Intelligent Crisis Management

Abstract

"The COVID-19 pandemic presented rapid, unpredictable shifts in education, which had rippling effects on school leaders’ responsibilities. In the early stages of the pandemic, school leaders throughout the United States, and the rest of the world made the strategic decision to transition to remote learning in adherence to CDC guidelines. This decision presented critical and immediate challenges for school leaders to manage their institutions. Emotional intelligence (EI) is well documented in the literature as a contributor to leadership effectiveness. We considered the novelty of the pandemic and the myriad of changes that accompanied it. To this end, we conducted a qualitative study to learn how emotionally intelligent school administrators leveraged EI in their daily leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic. A sample of eight emotionally intelligent K-12 principals from a larger study on school leadership across North Carolina was selected for analysis. We utilized Goleman’s emotional intelligence model to frame our analysis of principals’ emotionally intelligent leadership. Four coders analyzed semi-structured interviews through a series of open coding followed by axial coding techniques. The findings revealed that emotionally intelligent school principals across North Carolina generally displayed key emotional competencies that supported self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. In their crisis leadership during the pandemic, the principals attended most to relationship management. Given that EI is known to positively impact school leadership, these findings can help us understand how it works in practice to lead schools during difficult times. This work adds a US perspective to current education conversations that aim to unpack the COVID-19 experience, by providing practical knowledge from principals rated high in EI. Our work has implications for professional development and principal preparation programs as they forge forward to prepare principals for these unpredictable experiences."