How Principals Manage their Emotions

This study examines how secondary school principals manage their emotions at work. Specifically, this study used key informant interviews with 13 secondary school principals to identify conditions that lead to emotion-generating situations in their work, and to better understand the strategies they use to manage their emotions. This study also inquired about the supports secondary school principals access to mitigate emotion-generating situations. Gross’ (1998, 2001, 2002, 2010, 2013, 2014) process model for emotional regulation (ER) provides the conceptual framework for this study. The process model includes five families of ER: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. The interview sample included a broad range of principals representing the diverse contexts in which contemporary principals in Ontario work. Several trends emerged when collecting and analyzing the data. For example, principals use several strategies to manage their emotions beyond those previously reported in the literature. Further, participating principals also reported using strategies associated with all five families of ER found in Gross’ process model to manage their emotions. Principals in this study also described facing conditions that can lead to emotion-generating situations, including encountering barriers when advocating for students, system-based challenges, media attention, a lack of support, and managing crises or tragedies in the school community. Although principals in this study did not describe accessing formal professional supports to help them manage their emotions, they did seek out supports within their schools, often through members of their administrative teams. This study and its findings contribute to the current research base on principals and their work, and to the emergent line of inquiry exploring the emotional nature of educational leadership. This study also discusses the implications this research could have for secondary school principals’ professional practice, provincial education policies, and administrative theory. Further, this study also provides a solid foundation for several next steps in the research process, including exploring how ER strategies influence perceptions of principal professionalism, further examining the kinds of situations that incite positive emotional responses, and determining the impact of work intensification on how principals manage their emotions.

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