THE TWO FACES OF LEADERSHIP

Abstract

Leadership has two faces: an outward-facing, public, performative dimension as well as an inward-facing, private aspect. The emotional labour performed ‘behind the scenes’ by leaders often remains hidden from observation. Nevertheless, it exacts a toll on their wellbeing. Opportunities to gain insights into the socio-emotional toll experienced by leaders are therefore limited. This arts-based research stages that oft hidden drama in the form of a five character one-act play, or ethnodrama, created from anonymized data generated from semi-structured interviews with school principals in Canada. The data was first coded using emotional codes developed from the positive and negative affect schedule [PANAS] (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The most pronounced affects were incorporated into an original ethnodrama using the interview data and were subsequently validated by readers of the final artistic product. Stakeholders in education, leadership or the arts might engage in ethnotheatre, through performing or witnessing this work, to understand the hidden dynamism of the socio-emotional toll of school leadership. This article offers insights into the transdisciplinary intersections between leadership education and arts-based research, followed by the full script of the ethnodrama, and concludes with a description of the unique process through which data generated from classic, qualitative methods was artfully fashioned into The Two Faces of Leadership.

Keywords

• School leadership
• Socio-emotional labour
• Ethnodrama
• Ethnotheatre
• Emotional coding
• Principalship