Trusting relationships and emotional epistemologies:1 a foundational leadership issue

Abstract

The connections among relational trust, learning and development are implicit in transformational leadership theory. They have also been established empirically in recent studies. Leadership preparation programs often endorse the need for leaders to build effective collaborative relationships that rely on trust. Trust is an emotional phenomenon. However, when consideration of emotions—the cooked and the raw—remains prohibited in professional discourse this can limit the development of trust and directly influence the likelihood of leader success in building collaborative school cultures. For these reasons, there is a need to address the emotions of leadership as part of a comprehensive approach to preparing leaders for the challenges in today's schools. In this study, it was of interest to learn whether an emotional epistemologies theoretical framework could be helpful in engaging aspirant leaders in re‐examining emotion's role in their practice. In the context of a Masters in Educational Leadership program, aspiring and practising leaders were invited to read and respond to a written report on an emotional epistemologies theoretical framework. They were also supported in their learning by a variety of classroom activities. Reported here is an analysis of written responses to the paper, which illustrate the students' engagement with its ideas and their struggles with the tensions among competing perceptions of emotion's place in leadership.