Social Emotional Competence in School Leaders

School principals are responsible for the recruitment and retention of effective teachers, leading the instructional program, maintaining the climate and culture of the building, ensuring school safety, and improving student achievement, among other things. Social emotional learning (SEL) has become an important part of K-12 education and has been found to improve climate and culture, student achievement, long term student outcomes, and many other benefits. Research has been conducted on many of the student outcomes associated with SEL but there is limited literature in the area of the social emotional competence (SEC) of adults who work in schools, particularly school leaders. In this explanatory sequential mixed methods study, the social emotional competence of school leaders was explored through leader self-assessment, comparing their results to the ratings of their subordinates, and then interviewing selected leaders regarding their beliefs about the relationship between social emotional competence and leadership, as well as how they explain their own ratings and the congruence or dissonance between how they rate themselves and others’ ratings of them. Findings point to the importance of leaders’ self-awareness of their social emotional skills, the significance of leaders’ relationships with subordinates, peers, and mentors, and the need for leaders to prioritize a balance between their work and personal lives

Desired Leadership and Organizational Well-being: the Employee's Point of View

openIn un contesto lavorativo VUCA sempre più volatile, incerto, complesso e ambiguo, la chiave per il successo di oggi è promuovere una leadership efficace dove il leader è in grado di coinvolgere i collaboratori e crea le condizioni per elevare il loro potenziale, valorizzandoli e contribuendo così, anche al benessere personale e organizzativo. Con l’avvento del Covid-19, le imprese italiane hanno dovuto imporre nuovi modelli di organizzazione e di lavoro, sviluppare nuovi stili di leadership e nuove modalità per guidare e gestire i team. È importante, oggi, rivalutare e riprogettare questi aspetti perché il contesto lavorativo passato non è più funzionale alla situazione presente. L’obiettivo generale di questa ricerca è stato quello di stabilire come deve essere un leader ideale all’interno di un’impresa, secondo il punto di vista del collaboratore. Il progetto è stato suddiviso in quattro capitoli: nel primo viene analizzata la leadership e il cambiamento organizzativo a livello internazionale; nel secondo si cerca di cogliere la funzione della leadership e la valorizzazione del capitale umano nel contesto lavorativo italiano; nel terzo ci si focalizza su una nuova modalità di guida che riesca a mettere al centro la persona attraverso l’intelligenza socio-emotiva, la comunicazione, la collaborazione, la resilienza; per finire, nel quarto e ultimo capitolo, viene sviluppata la ricerca. In questo lavoro sono state coinvolte tre aziende di grandi dimensioni, collocate in province diverse quali Treviso, Rovigo, Venezia e diversi contatti personali. Le risposte ottenute dai sessanta questionari e dalle cinque interviste hanno permesso di comprendere di quale leader la persona ha bisogno per sentirsi maggiormente considerata e coinvolta nel gruppo di lavoro

Assessing and training leaders’ emotional intelligence, and testing its influence on leaders’ employees

Recent literature places emotions at the center of leadership construed as a dynamic pro- cess. The present study, with an experimental pre\u2013post design that included an experimental group formed by leaders and their employ- ees, and a control group of employees whose leaders were not assessed, tested whether self-reported leaders\u2019 emotional intelligence (LEI) is congruent with other-reported LEI, and whether a brief self-administered train- ing program affects self- and other-reported LEI assessment, as well as job involvement and life satisfaction, in leaders\u2019 employees. At Time 1, leaders in the experimental group and employees in both the experimental and the control groups completed the Emotional Com- petence Inventory (ECI; Boyatzis et al., 2000) \u2013 leaders completed the self-reported version; employees completed the other-reported ver- sion, i.e., rated their leaders. All employees evaluated their own job involvement and life satisfaction. At Time 2 (after training experi- mental group leaders), experimental group leaders and both experimental and control group employees again rated LEI using the ECI; all employees also evaluated their own job involvement and life satisfaction. The results show a significant effect of the train- ing on Time 2 measures in the experimental group, both on self- and other-reported LEI assessments, and on employees\u2019 outcomes. In particular, Time 2 showed an increase in lead- ers\u2019 ECI self-assessed conf lict management and other-assessed service orientation com- petences, and in employees\u2019 job involvement. The study indicates overall that training lead- ers for emotional intelligence can diminish the discrepancy between self- and other-reported LEI assessments, and increase employees\u2019 pos- itive outcomes