Scared leadership: an explanatory theory for the maintenance of the status quo

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, I present the construct of scared leadership as a theoretical explanation for the gradual decrease in courageous behavior as educators move from the classroom to campus and district level leadership. Scared leadership is a construct that can be used in future work to better understand and articulate the relationship between fear and leadership.I examine various explanations in the existing literature for the prevalence and perpetuation of systematized fear and compliance. I then put forward my own theoretical construct of scared leadership to better understand and articulate the relationship between fear and leadership in public education. I examine how emotional data, specifically fear, influences behavior at a systems level, and how that influence impacts institutional cultures and organizational practices in education. I look at ways fear presents itself in educational leadership, and delve into various external factors that produce conditions of fear. I began this work in order to deepen my own understanding of the relationship between fear and leadership, in an effort to understand how and why we systematize fear in educational leadership. As I studied, I found that this relationship was underdeveloped and underrepresented in the existing literature, and so I present the construct of scared leadership to representing the specific phenomenon this paper sets out to propose and define. Key scared leadership, educational leadership, critical love, systems theory, critical theory.