Introduction (JOANNE)

School leaders play a vital role in providing every student in New South Wales public schools with a great education and the best start in life. They have a positive impact in classrooms and on their staff. They guide teacher development and engage their communities. Here at the School Leadership Institute, our mission is to support all New South Wales public school leaders by providing world class, evidence informed, leadership development program and resources. Our School Leadership Institute conversation series will explore the key issues and challenges of school leadership. We'll talk to experts and share their tips and experiences on leading with purpose and impact. I'm Joanne Jarvis, the Director of the New South Wales Department of Education's School Leadership Institute. Welcome to the Leadership in Focus series.

JOANNE

Hello and welcome to our second episode of the Leadership in Focus podcast series. I'm Joanne Jarvis and I'm the Director of the New South Wales Department of Education's School Leadership Institute. In this two-part episode, we'll be discussing emotional intelligence.

Part 1 will examine what emotional intelligence is and why it matters for school leaders. In Part 2, we'll explore some strategies to support school leaders in understanding and using emotional intelligence.

With me today is Dr Ben Palmer from Genos International and Karen Maraga, a principal with the School Leadership Institute. It's a real privilege to have you both join me today, Ben and Karen, as we discuss this important topic.

BEN

Hi. It's great to be with you. It's a privilege to be here with you too, Joanne and Karen. Thanks for having me.

KAREN

Thank you, Joanne. I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to discuss today with you and with Ben.

JOANNE

So let's just start by talking about what emotional intelligence is. Ben, you're very familiar with the research on emotional intelligence. How is it defined in the research?

BEN

It's defined in the research a number of different ways. I think the most accessible and practical is as a set of skills that define how will we perceive, understand, express and respond to emotions, both those within ourselves and in others. Now, these skills are very important in school leadership, when you think about the context that school leaders are working in. If we just step back and think about that for a moment. I think school leaders are doing what I call a lot of emotional pivoting on a day-to-day basis. One minute, you could be promoting Student of the Week. The next, you could be helping a student through a personal crisis. Today, you might be helping parents think about how they're going to navigate flooded borders to get to the school, to pick up their children. You could be helping your staff cope with increased stress and uncertainty due to COVID. Suffice to say that leading schools involves what's called high levels of emotional labour and requires high levels of emotional regulation. And that's why the skills of emotional intelligence, as I've just defined them here, really relate to things like our wellbeing, our interactions, whether that be with staff, students or parents or other school stakeholders and carers, and how well we navigate those emotional pivots that I was talking about.

JOANNE

So you have alluded to the importance of these skills for leaders. Could we explore what the research says about the impact of strong emotional intelligence in schools?

BEN

Emotions really sit at the heart of how well we think and how well we behave. And we know that students perform well when they're in an environment that facilitates good thinking. And what I mean by that is pleasant feelings, by way of example, help students think more broadly, help students adapt more of a growth mindset. Pleasant feelings broaden and build the way we think and the way we engage. So students, for example, that are experiencing pleasant feelings, tend to ask more questions, listen more deeply and think more broadly about topics that are giving to them. Pleasant emotions facilitate learning generally and help students reach potential. So pleasant feelings come from effective school culture, where staff feel valued, cared for, consulted, informed, understood. And when parents feel properly communicated to, well engaged around the learning of their child. I should use the words parents and carers there. So strong emotional intelligence skills in school leaders and teachers generally help us pick up on the way students are feeling, help students navigate their own emotional world and help us demonstrate and role model emotions that we know are needed for good learning. It's not to say that negative emotions are bad. All emotions are good. Sometimes we learn the most from the most difficult life experiences we have, and that is true. Some anxiety can be good. Too much anxiety is generally bad, though, for learning. So all emotions are important, but generally, on balance, you want to have a school where students and staff are experiencing pleasant emotions and are responding effectively to unpleasant emotions.

That's why these skills of perceiving and understanding emotions, that self awareness and awareness of others, the skill of managing your own emotions and the skill of positively influencing the emotions of others, these are critical emotional intelligence skills. They ultimately lead to better wellbeing in staff and students and they ultimately lead to better learning because students are thinking more broadly and engaging more deeply around curriculum.

JOANNE

So would it be true to say that leaders who lead with high levels of emotional intelligence are able to respond to complexity more effectively?

BEN

Yes, because people who have high levels of emotional intelligence recognise that emotions are very context specific. So they require great perspective taking. So rather than, say, reacting to complexity, you're getting on the balcony and thinking about how to respond to complexity. I like this notion of reacting or responding, and I think what the skills of emotional intelligence do is catch ourself when we're on autopilot and be more intentional rather than reactionary to what's going on.

JOANNE

I'm wondering, Ben, if we could explore the notion of wellbeing and how emotional intelligence impacts not only on one's wellbeing but also on the wellbeing of others.

BEN

There's a very strong relationship between your level of emotional intelligence and wellbeing, and that is and occurs for a couple of reasons. I mean, at the heart of wellbeing is the way you feel. Self awareness helps you kind of gauge properly, if you like, things like your level of stress, your level of frustration and how it might be impacting you. Self management is the skill of emotional intelligence that really helps you effectively respond to emotions. And when we respond to emotions effectively, we generally achieve better outcomes. When we're reactionary with our emotions, we often do things that we later regret. We've all sent that email out of anger that we've wanted to get back later, once we've become more level headed about it. We've all had, in some metaphorical way, our toilet paper moment down at Woolworths. Um, even being very emotionally intelligent doesn't mean you don't have moments like that. But you minimise moments like that, and as a consequence, you generally are responding and adapting better to your environment. But the other reason why emotional intelligence relates so much to your wellbeing, is because it relates to the quality of your relationships. And the better our relationships, the better our wellbeing. Being lonely, by way of example, is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of its detrimental impact on your health. So think about these skills of emotional intelligence. If you're not self aware, you're not really cognisant of the way you're impacting on others. If you don't perceive and understand the emotions of others, it's very hard to be empathetic. If you don't respond well to other people's emotions, if you don't relate well to other people's emotions, it's hard to be effectively vulnerable and so on.

These things sit at the heart of the quality of your relationships and therefore your wellbeing. So really direct relationship between how self aware you are, how empathetic you are, how well you express emotions, how well you manage emotions and your wellbeing.

JOANNE

What you're saying makes so much sense and I'm just wondering, how do school leaders be more emotionally intelligent?

BEN

Well, there is a large number of things, and I hope we can go through a few of them today, but one of them really is context. The great starting place for being more emotionally intelligent is context. I think people who have high levels of EI really get very curious about the way people are feeling and they're not reacting. They are evaluating context and then taking a broader set of perspectives, if you like, into account before they respond to emotion. So context is key. How do you get context? Really through, I think, the mindsets of curiosity, of exploring what's underneath and around the emotion that you're seeing in front of you or that you have yourself.

JOANNE

Karen, I'm going to bring you in here. As a principal, how would you go about reading and responding to context?

KAREN

I think it's really important to take the time to listen and seek to understand what the issues, the frustrations, the concerns or the challenges could be. But the parents, the teacher, the student that we're engaging with. To me, Joanne, as Ben said, it's around mindsets, and it links very nicely to the School Leadership Institute Leadership Mindsets, in particular, the mindset of curiosity. By this we mean as leaders, we remain intentionally curious. That we're really seeking to understand by asking questions and suspending judgement.

In this way, we're really able to clarify the issue, concern or problem before we move on to our response. As busy people, sometimes it can appear efficient to manage situations quickly, but that can also lead to us making assumptions about the issue. We think that we know the answer, and then we jump to conclusions. As a leader, the most important thing when we are dealing with highly emotive responses, is to make sure that each person feels that they have had an opportunity to be heard and understood. Once we get to that point, we can then look at working together to achieve a solution or an outcome.

JOANNE

Yes, I agree, and I think it's useful to tap into our deep reservoir of empathy and remember that when we find ourselves managing complex emotional situations with parents, teachers or students that we need to recognise that we are often speaking with people who may be feeling highly anxious or even fearful about their situation, that what might show itself as unreasonable behaviour might be a person who is really struggling with their situation and just simply needs to be heard. And I think in these situations, the expressions of genuine empathy, seeking to understand by remaining in a place of deep inquiry, such as our curious leadership mindset suggests, and being non-judgmental is really critical.

KAREN

Yes, if you're able to manage your own emotions, you're able to think clearly before you act and therefore you are more flexible about considering different approaches to addressing a problem. You're able to create an environment where you've been seen as fair and someone who interacts with integrity and therefore someone who can be trusted.

JOANNE

Yep. So, Ben, how do you be contextually aware of emotions in a school context?

BEN

Well, as you were saying, I think you've got to have that mindset of curiosity and not be reacting to emotions, but to be reading them well and that involves, as you're saying, suspending judgement and really seeking to understand what's going on. I think Stephen Covey brings what we're talking to life through a story that he tells in his book 'The 7 habits of highly effective people'. I don't know it verbatim, but it goes along like this that there are 3 young children who are misbehaving on a fairly full train carriage. And it's clear who the father is to everybody who's getting annoyed and frustrated with the behaviour of these children on a train. And as the journey goes on, the sort of behaviour gets worse. And finally one of the passengers gets frustrated to the point where they go up to the father and say, 'why aren't you doing anything to manage the behaviour of these children?', in a kind of gruff voice to which the father then responds, 'I'm so sorry. I can't, I've just lost their mother'. And, of course, everybody on the train who was sitting there almost equally as frustrated as this person who decided to take action, sort of takes a deep breath and instantly sees the situation in a very different context and their feelings of frustration move to empathy and wanting to help. And of course, you know, you start seeing the behaviour of the children and the lack of behaviour and the father in a completely different way, and I think that parable is a great way of bringing that to life. Whenever we see an emotion, we don't always see the big context, or whenever we see behaviour, that's not quite right, we don't always see the big context behind it. And that parable for me really brings the to life the importance of curiosity, but also Joanne, the importance of empathy for leaders.

JOANNE

Mmm. It's a really powerful and moving example. And I think this might be a good segue to exploring more deeply the importance of empathy for leaders.

BEN

Yeah, absolutely so. Empathy is not feeling for someone. I like to think of that as sympathy. Empathy is feeling with someone. I think when we're demonstrating sympathy, which often disconnects us rather than connects us, we're saying things like, 'it'll be fine. Don't worry about it. Oh, don't overreact to that. Or gee, that's a bad situation. I feel for you'. That's really sympathy. Empathy is more, 'what's going on? Tell me how you're feeling?', and acknowledging those feelings and feeling with someone. The good thing about empathy is that just about all of us have the natural biology for empathy. We all have the mirror neurons and the wherewithal to be empathetic. And for anybody who'd like to see that in action, go into YouTube and type in, 'Amnesty International: 4 minutes of eyes contact'. There's many other examples of it, but Amnesty International has got a great little video in YouTube, where they bring people together who don't know each other simply to sit opposite each other and be with each other. And of course, when you do that, when you sit opposite a stranger and you look at each other, you do just naturally start to feel with each other. It's a context that ignites people's biology for empathy. We can ignite that same biology if we just take 6 deep breaths before we meet with someone. That 6 deep breaths, where you exhale for twice as long as you inhale. That engages your parasympathetic nervous system. It slows you down, and it helps you feel with someone. And that's really what empathy is all about. Empathy is a complex notion in the literature. There's a number of different things with it that are worth knowing. One is the empathy gap phenomenon.

This is a phenomenon where we often find it hardest to empathise properly for people who are experiencing hardships that we have experienced and got through ourselves. For example, a student who's bullied at school, who are they more, or better off, to go and see for empathy, a teacher who had been bullied themselves, or a teacher who had never been bullied? The answer, in large data, is the teacher who has never been bullied because they are less likely to fall into the empathy gap phenomenon. That is, they're more likely to feel with the person, rather than feel sympathy for the person, 'oh, yes, that's a terrible situation. Sorry about that'. They're more likely to simply acknowledge and hear, rather than the person who's been bullied themselves, who's much more likely if they're not paying attention, to jump into problem solving mode and indeed giving advice. And that can get in the way of empathy. So you can avoid the empathy gap phenomenon by remaining curious and by acknowledging and just being listening and asking questions.

JOANNE

Welcome back for Part 2 of our series on Emotional Intelligence.

Ben, I've heard you talk often about the EAR Model as a systematic way of being empathetic. Could you share that in a summary form with us now?

BEN

Yeah, thank you. I love the sort of acronyms or mnemonics like this that help us remember. So E in the EAR Model stands for Empathise. That's where we are, suspending judgment - think about that Stephen Covey parable - when we are demonstrating curiosity, we're asking questions, we're exploring context, we're acknowledging what we see. Once you've felt like you have empathised enough, one of the important things to do towards the end of that phase, if you like, of a conversation around EAR is to say to the person, what outcome would you like to see here in a perfect world or in a not so perfect world, what are some likely outcomes here that you'd like to see happen? That becomes a nice anchor point for the next part of the EAR Model, Alternatives, we say - would it be beneficial to come up with Plan A and B or even Plan A, B and C, a number of different ways or alternatives if you like, of responding to this situation? And there you really just ask the right questions, give the right advice on coming up with a couple of different options, couple of different alternatives, on how to respond. And then R in the EAR Model stands for the Response and here we want to really try and make that very tangible. So what actions are you going to take? When are you going to take them? What can I do? What support do you need etcetera? So Empathise, come up with some Alternatives and help the person really come up with them with a proper structured, actionable Response. The EAR Model for being, if you like, empathetic. So EAR can be a really great model for demonstrating empathy, but EAR and things like it often sound great in theory and can be difficult in practice, particularly in school environments where leaders are really busy.

Karen, I'd love to throw back to you here, Joanne if that's all right if I could do so, because like you've heard me talk about the EAR Model a lot, I've heard Karen talk about how busy leaders generally build good relationships in schools. Karen talk to us about some of those sort of rituals and routines that you've seen, busy school leaders engage in to build positive relationships.

KAREN

Thanks Ben, I think referring back to Stephen Covey, Stephen Covey also talks about big rocks, but in this situation, I think it's the little things that matter. It's making time to be with your colleagues in the staff room. It's those incidental chats that getting to know people as people, not just members of staff. As a principal, I tried to build in a session each day where I would go to the staff room, be it for recess or part of lunch. This is a great way to get to form positive relationships with staff in a very different context.

Also, being in the playground every day talking to students know their name, be at the gate, greeting students and families as they arrive in the morning and leave in the afternoon. This also helps to build relationships. You're making connections, demonstrating in your actions that you're an open and approachable leader. It's the notion of building the emotional bank account. It's much easier to have those challenging conversations or a difficult one with a parent or a student if you've formed a positive relationship in these informal interactions.

It's also I found, a great opportunity to find out information about families, to get to know them, see how they're going. For some people, some parents, some of our carers, schools are not places where they feel they can speak to a school leader, but by creating opportunities to have informal conversations, we can build a shared understanding of what together we can do for their child.

JOANNE

I really enjoyed the 2 of you speaking about this topic in such an eloquent way and listening to the examples that you've also shared, Karen. To me, basically what we're saying is you build relationships and trust in moments and it's about being a person first, rather than a position and therefore being mindful of the self who can form and deform relationships as a leader.

BEN

One of the things that I've enjoyed so much about my interactions with the School Leadership Institute, is whenever we meet, whether it's one on one or in small groups, I find that there's just a nice 5 minutes for general chatter before we get into the work. And to me that's one of those little routines, it's like an emotional check in. It's not even called that, it doesn't have to be so explicit. It's implicit, but it's very much cultural and I find that personally very effective. So things like check ins, asking people what's going well, what's something weighing on your mind? The other thing that I think a little ritual and routine around emotional intelligence, it doesn't take much time, so you combine it, wind it into busy schedules, is to be consciously using frameworks. What are you finding is going well? What are you not sure of or feel is really challenging? I think using frameworks helps people actually be vulnerable and think more deeply. It's like, how are you? Fine. I've got an open door policy, but is anyone coming in? You've got to be more intentional and I think a little bit more considered in how you go about it. And to me, things like practicing the EAR Model, taking 6 deep breaths before you meet with someone, having frameworks like what are you enjoying at the moment, what's a bit challenging? I think that's rare that some of the real work, if you like, comes out. The more you do, some of that sort of definitional work for yourself and just come up with those 3 or 4 little things that just become your way of being, the more natural they become and soon you'll find yourself doing them on autopilot, rather than having to really think about doing them.

JOANNE

Yes, I think leaders would come across as being much more authentic and genuine, when they, when they become a habit of mind or as you often say habit stacking, in the daily work of a leader. It's a phrase I love hearing you talk about. You've also talked a lot about the research in terms of how much time we should be spending on our emotional intelligence and developing that. Could you just elaborate a little more on that for us, Ben.

BEN

Yeah. So one of the things Genos does is EI-360 Assessments, where we look at how well school leaders are demonstrating emotional intelligence and we correlate those scores with overall leadership effectiveness. So we have a very accessible question in our survey, which is 'overall, how effective would you rate the leadership of this person'. And the correlation between how well you demonstrate EI and perceptions of overall leadership effectiveness is around 0.74. What that says to us is that our emotional intelligence accounts for about 50 per cent of the variants in effective leadership. So if you were to think about an apple pie that represented 100 per cent of what it takes to be an effective leader in schools, the research suggests that about 50 per cent of it is dependent on our emotional intelligence, because emotional intelligence is really at the heart of how well we relate to people, our wellbeing and therefore overall school culture and wellbeing. So I think what that says for me is, 50 per cent of the time, we should probably be working on 'the what', the real technical aspects of running an effective school and 50 per cent of the time, we should probably be really focused on the interpersonal aspects, how well we're demonstrating self awareness and empathy and executing on the EAR Model and things like that. I think when you really look at the research, it's a timely reminder that continuous improvement and finesse of our emotional intelligence is very likely to lead to better outcomes in terms of our own wellbeing, in terms of the wellbeing of our staff, in terms of the wellbeing and potential of our students.

JOANNE

You've touched on some of the behaviours that school leaders can focus on in developing their emotional intelligence, Ben. What are some of the recommendations you could share with our listeners, so they could explore this further?

BEN

Well, the internet is our friend and there's lots of great information on emotional intelligence. But I recommend, if you want to do a deep dive in this area, firstly, to really get to understand emotions. And I would really recommend Lisa Feldman Barrett's book 'How emotions are made'. She talks about emotions and context that we've talked about here a bit today. So that's a great book. The other thing I would really recommend listeners do is get to know their own personality, values and beliefs and try and focus on better understanding the personality, values and beliefs of those that they work with every day and as many stakeholders as they can, because those things really shape the way we feel about things. We all feel differently, just as we all think differently about situations that are occurring around us. So by getting to better understand your personality, values and beliefs, you can become more self aware of the things you create emotions around and you can become more aware of the way others feel about things.

And I personally found it very fascinating to get to know my personality and things like my ego and how they cause certain reactions and certain evaluations of events. And yeah, I think that's one way of becoming really more emotionally intelligent. I have to tell one quick little story. Um, one of my buttons, if you like is criticism, when I get criticised I tend to be a bit defensive. Now, where does criticism occur for me? Well in our house, it often occurs in the kitchen after work when a certain partner comes home and finds that the kids are a bit ratty and I haven't been managing them well. Have you been on your phone the whole time? What's been going on? So off goes my defensiveness button and I usually explain to Georgia, you know, if she had only been around here for the last hour, she'd completely understand why the kids were ratty and it's not because I've been on my phone and I go into quite a defensive mode. What I've kind of learned around curiosity and things like that. Where does that Button come from? And why is there that natural reaction to that to be defensive? When does it work? And when does it doesn't, you know, and 9 times out of 10, it doesn't work very well, defensiveness. That doesn't mean I always stop it, but it allows me to be a bit more intentional and say, 'oh this could be a good time to just shut up and listen'. And that's the sort of thing that can go on I think, from better understanding where your emotions come from, how you react to them, where other people's emotions come from and how they react.

It's that insight and that knowledge that allows you to make that emotional pivot and to be more emotionally agile.

JOANNE

I don't think you would be alone, I suspect in the example you've just provided to us and our listeners, Ben. Thank you for sharing your vulnerability around that too.

When I reflect on the key points that I've heard today and there's been many significant points that you've made, 3 that stand out to me would be: that demonstrating emotional intelligence is intentional and it's practiced; that understanding multiple perspectives is absolutely key; and that empathy is something we are all equipped for and do better at by being curious, by being open to asking questions, being asked questions of and deep listening and acknowledgement of the perspectives of others. I think those 3 particular points together, would enable us to grow in our emotional intelligence as leaders.

Does that represent some of the key points for you, Ben?

BEN

It really does. And I think that Karen's also really reminded us that we can define little rituals and routines around EI and build those into our busy work schedule. Whether it's the check ins in the staff meeting or walking the school ground at lunchtime, Karen, one of the things I've really learned from working with you is, defining those little rituals and routines is 50 per cent of getting there, I think.

JOANNE

What are your final thoughts, Karen.

KAREN

I've really enjoyed the opportunity to really think deeply about emotional intelligence and the thing that I really take away from this is that sometimes we think that it's something that you born with, but it's it's something that can be developed, that you can put in place structures and processes and be very intentional in being more emotionally intelligent and that awareness that you can in fact work with that and work towards being, as a leader and then emotionally an aware leader, in terms of how you lead, as well as what you lead and that's something that's quite optimistic. I think as a leader, that's something that we can do and continue to do each and every day and that will not only enhance our own wellbeing, but it will create a culture within our school climate, that's a positive one for everybody to engage in.

JOANNE

Absolutely. And I think that's a good note to end what has been a fascinating conversation with both you, Ben, and Karen and I really want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your wisdom and insights with me and our listeners. And if our listeners are also interested in other resources from the School Leadership Institute, please go and visit our website. We're certainly expanding the resources available. And follow us on Twitter @NSWSLI. And thank you, Ben, thank you Karen.

BEN

Thank you, Joanne and Karen. It's been great to be with you both. Thank you for having me.

KAREN

Thanks Ben. Thanks Joanne. It's been a pleasure.

JOANNE

Thank you for listening.