What Is the Role of Emotions in Educational Leaders’ Decision Making? Proposing an Organizing Framework

Abstract

<jats:p> Purpose: Emotions have a pervasive, predictable, sometimes deleterious but other times instrumental effect on decision making. Yet the influence of emotions on educational leaders’ decision making has been largely underexplored. To optimize educational leaders’ decision making, this article builds on the prevailing data-driven decision-making approach, and proposes an organizing framework of educational leaders’ emotions in decision making by drawing on converging empirical evidence from multiple disciplines (e.g., administrative science, psychology, behavioral economics, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroeconomics) intersecting emotions, decision making, and organizational behavior. Proposed Framework: The proposed organizing framework of educational leaders’ emotions in decision making includes four core propositions: (1) decisions are the outcomes of the interactions between emotions and cognition; (2) at the moment of decision making, emotions have a pervasive, predictable impact on decision making; (3) before making decisions, leaders’ individual differences (e.g., trait affect and power) and organizational contexts (e.g., organizational justice and emotional contagion) have a bearing on leaders’ emotions and decision making; and (4) postdecision behavioral responses trigger more emotions (e.g., regret, guilt, and shame) which, in turn, influence the next cycle of decision-making process. Implications: The proposed framework calls for not only an intensified scholarly inquiry into educational leaders’ emotions and decision making but also an adequate training on emotions in school leadership preparation programs and professional development. </jats:p>

Leading schools during the COVID-19 school closures in Estonia and Finland

“…The process of making decisions is one of the foundations of leadership whether we focus on school leaders’ individual or collective leadership (e.g. leadership team) actions or leaders’ methods for ensuring and supporting teacher teams in their joint decision-making ( Wang, 2021 ). Literature on crisis leadership underlines collaboration along with distribution of responsibilities and leadership tasks (e.g.…”

“…During the school closures the meaning and aim of communication has expanded beyond its instrumental purpose ( Beauchamp et al 2021 ). Timely communication along with providing information and instructions have become means for expressing support and comfort ( Wang 2021 ). Consequently, communication requires a leader’s increasing engagement and interaction in a two-way process with teachers, students, guardians, and others involved ( Drysdale and Gurr, 2017 ).…”

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“…Once in the role, it is important to uncover the degree to which work-related stress may impact a principal’s mental health. For instance, principals should receive support on how to assess their emotions, as well as learn techniques that may help them to regulate their emotions (Wang, 2020). Therefore, engaging in mindfulness might help principals cope with stressors instead of reacting to them (Klocko et al, 2015).…”

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“…Decision-making—choosing a course of action out of a choice set—is the foundation of educational leadership (Wang, 2021). Educational leadership is “a general, abstract application of decision-making” (Tarter and Hoy, 1998, p. 212).…”

“…sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste) collect incoming information, which is then processed by the brains' different systems, including the attentional system, memory system, motivational system, emotional system and cognitive system. After processing the incoming information, human brains take a winner-takes-all approach to generate a decision, which is then executed through behaviors via muscular movements to engage in verbal and nonverbal communication (Wang, 2021). In this process, AI—with its efficiency and brute force of computational power—can complement data-driven, evidence-informed decision-making.…”