Finnish Urban School Teacher's Evaluations on Principals

Emotional Leadership Competencies

Petri Nokelainen and Pekka RuohotieUniversity of Tampere, Finland

Kirsi TirriUniversity of Helsinki, Finland

Introduction

• Leadership as a social process, affecting both end products and personnel emotions, is seldom studied.

• Emotional Intelligence (EI) research has recently become one of the most important constructs in modern psychological research.

• EI refers to the competence to identify, express and understand emotions, assimilate emotions in thought, and regulate both positive and negative emotions in one and others (Matthews, Zeidner & Roberts, 2002).

Introduction

• In this paper, we use the term Emotional Leadership (EL) to describe school principals’ EI capabilities as leaders.

• We study with an empirical sample (N = 124) how Finnish schoolteachers evaluate their principals EL competencies.

• This paper focuses on teachers responses, leaving out other school personnel (for example, cleaners), students and their parents.

Introduction

• Emotional Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ) measures leader’s EI as perceived by his/her subordinates.

• ELQ is based on Daniel Goleman’s and his colleagues (2002) four domain model of emotional intelligence: (1) self-awareness, (2) self-management, (3) social awareness and (4) relationship management.

Introduction

• In a conceptual level, ELQ measures leaders competencies instead of his/her ‘intelligences’ or ‘abilities’, as the subordinates are expected to be well aware only of their leaders explicit, procedural abilities (metacompetence), not that much of their declarative knowledge (metaknowledge).

Introduction

• The following results section has two parts: (1) Comparison of the mean values and standard deviations of the 51 ELQ items measuring teachers’ evaluations on their principals EL-

(2) Examination of the variable structure of ELQ to test it against the theoretical EI –model.

Results

• RQ 1: Teachers’ Evaluations on Principals Emotional Leadership Competencies . – Results indicated that school principals were able to

• keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control,• adapt to new challenges and • see the upside in the events.

– The result of high emotional self-control was expected, as it is a highly respected leader ability in Finnish work culture.

Results

• RQ 1: Teachers’ Evaluations on Principals Emotional Leadership Competencies . – Respondents were most unsatisfied to their principal’s

lack of high personal standards that would drive them to constantly seek improvements in performance.

– Further, teachers would see their leaders to possess higher ability to monitor parents and students satisfaction carefully to ensure they are getting what they need.

– As expected, leaders skills to resolve disagreements and to generate an atmosphere of friendly collegiality would benefit from improvement.

Results

• RQ 2: Variable Structure of the Emotional Leadership Scale. – The clustering of eighteen EL characteristics was

further studied to see if the theoretical model of four domains (Goleman et al., 2002) is present in this sample.

– The visual inspection of the Bayesian network shows that the model is unidimensional, as all four EI domains are connected to each other in the model. (Figure 2.)

Results

• RQ 2: Variable Structure of the Emotional Leadership Scale. – Figure 2 shows that clustering of the EI domains

follows the theoretical assumption.– First cluster depicting leaders’ self-awareness (i) leads

to two other clusters of self-management (ii) and social awareness (iii).

– Fourth domain, relationship management (iv) is related to both second and third domains as follows.

Results

• RQ 2: Variable Structure of the Emotional Leadership Scale. – The predictive model shows that principal who is able

to cut through red tape or even bend the rules is experienced by his/her subordinates as an influential person who is able to overcome barriers to change.

EL_ii_08_23 “My superior does not hesitate to cut through bureaucratic obstacles.”EL_iv_14_40 “My superior knows how to create a network of support for a new initiative.”EL_iv_16_45 “My superior is a strong advocate for change even in the face of opposition.”

EL_ii_08_23 “My superior does not hesitate to cut through bureaucratic obstacles.”EL_iv_14_40 “My superior knows how to create a network of support for a new initiative.”EL_iv_16_45 “My superior is a strong advocate for change even in the face of opposition.”

EL_ii_08_23 “My superior does not hesitate to cut through bureaucratic obstacles.”EL_iv_14_40 “My superior knows how to create a network of support for a new initiative.”EL_iv_16_45 “My superior is a strong advocate for change even in the face of opposition.”

Results

• RQ 2: Variable Structure of the Emotional Leadership Scale. – Investigation of predictive dependencies showed that

empathetic leader with high intercultural abilities is able to promote teamwork and collaboration, manage conflict situations, and develop others.

EL_iii_10_30 “My superior is able to get along with people of diverse backgrounds or from other cultures.” EL_iv_15_42 “My superior shows a genuine interest in helping his/her subordinates.” EL_iv_17_49 “In conflict situations, my superior is able to draw out all parties and understand the differing perspectives.” EL_iv_18_51 “My superior draws others into active, enthusiastic commitment to the collective effort. ”

EL_iii_10_30 “My superior is able to get along with people of diverse backgrounds or from other cultures.” EL_iv_15_42 “My superior shows a genuine interest in helping his/her subordinates.” EL_iv_17_49 “In conflict situations, my superior is able to draw out all parties and understand the differing perspectives.” EL_iv_18_51 “My superior draws others into active, enthusiastic commitment to the collective effort. ”

EL_iii_10_30 “My superior is able to get along with people of diverse backgrounds or from other cultures.” EL_iv_15_42 “My superior shows a genuine interest in helping his/her subordinates.” EL_iv_17_49 “In conflict situations, my superior is able to draw out all parties and understand the differing perspectives.” EL_iv_18_51 “My superior draws others into active, enthusiastic commitment to the collective effort. ”

Results

• RQ 2: Variable Structure of the Emotional Leadership Scale. – Where domain boundaries are not following the

theoretical model, a closer examination reveals theoretically justifiable item-level dependencies.

– For example, predictive model shows that principals conflict management competency is positively connected with his/her level of optimism.

EL_iv_17_49 “In conflict situations, my superior is able to draw out all parties and understand the differing perspectives.”EL_ii_09_26 “My superior sees other people in positive rather than in negative light.” EL_ii_09_25 “My superior has an optimistic "glass half full" outlook.”

EL_iv_17_49 “In conflict situations, my superior is able to draw out all parties and understand the differing perspectives.”EL_ii_09_26 “My superior sees other people in positive rather than in negative light.” EL_ii_09_25 “My superior has an optimistic “glass half full” outlook.”

EL_iv_17_49 “In conflict situations, my superior is able to draw out all parties and understand the differing perspectives.”EL_ii_09_26 “My superior sees other people in positive rather than in negative light.” EL_ii_09_25 “My superior has an optimistic “glass half full” outlook.”

Results

• RQ 2: Variable Structure of the Emotional Leadership Scale. – Another ‘boundary-crossing’ dependency worth

mentioning is the one between items EL_ii_08_21 (“My superior seizes opportunities rather than simply waits for them to come.”) and EL_i_03_07 (“My superior welcomes difficult assignments knowing that he/she is able to meet the expectations.”).

– Predictive examination of the interdependency shows that superiors’ strong self-confidence leads to opportunity-seizing, i.e. initiative, behavior.

EL_ii_08_21 “My superior seizes opportunities rather than simply waits for them to come.” EL_i_03_07 “My superior welcomes difficult assignments knowing that he/she is able to meet the expectations.”

EL_ii_08_21 “My superior seizes opportunities rather than simply waits for them to come.” EL_i_03_07 “My superior welcomes difficult assignments knowing that he/she is able to meet the expectations.”

EL_ii_08_21 “My superior seizes opportunities rather than simply waits for them to come.” EL_i_03_07 “My superior welcomes difficult assignments knowing that he/she is able to meet the expectations.”

Discussion• Matthews, Zeidner and Roberts state that before evaluating

distinctiveness of any EI instrument, researcher needs to ascertain the statistical dependency between the instrument and existing measures of intelligence, as well as established personality dimensions, for example, those of the Five Factor Model: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscitiousness (2002, 178).

• In this study, we calculated correlations between the four EL domains and four Spiritual Sensitivity Scales: (1) Awareness sensing, (2) Mystery sensing, (3) Value sensing, and (4) Community sensing (Tirri, Nokelainen & Ubani, 2006). – The results of correlational analysis revealed zero correlations between

the EL and SSS components.

Discussion

• In the current version of ELQ, we asked teacher’s to evaluate their superiors according to our fixed, person-related questions.

• In the next version we will add an additional scale measuring the importance of each question in a five-point Likert scale. – This allows us to compare personal level EL factors to other

measures, for example, the Multiple Intelligences Profiling Questionnaire (MIPQ), an operationalization of Howard Gardner’s’ MI theory, (Tirri, K., Komulainen, Nokelainen & Tirri, H., 2002).

Finnish Urban School Teacher's Evaluations on Principals Emotional

Leadership Competencies• Abstract. This paper presents a 51-item self-rating Likert-scale Emotional

Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ) that operationalises Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee’s (2002) four domains of Emotional Intelligence (EI) with eighteen characteristics. The sample consists of 124 Finnish teachers from four comprehensive and two upper secondary schools. The construct validity of the ELQ was tested with following two stages: (1) Comparison of the mean values and standard deviations of the 51 ELQ items measuring teachers’ evaluations on their principals Emotional Leadership (EL) and (2) examination of the variable structure of ELQ to test it against the theoretical EI –model. Results showed that school principals were able to keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control; they were able to adapt to new challenges and see the upside in the events. The theoretical structure of EI was present at least in component level in this domain. Further, the visual inspection of the Bayesian dependency network showed that all four EL domains were present in the model derived from the empirical sample.