Effective Leadership: An Emotional Intelligence Model

Ensuring an effective and productive team and providing effective and inspirational leadership within a school community requires a range of abilities. These abilities reflect specific skills that encompass many aspects of effective communication and the ability to empower and relate to members of the team. Leading a school requires skills well beyond current knowledge of government requirements, budgets and strategic plans. Effective leadership requires a range of qualities, and strategies including:

• Empathy
• Discernment
• Integrity
• Tact
• Assertion
• Vision
• Effective decision making
• Understanding
• Perspective taking
• Development of meaningful relationships
• Team building

These elements of leadership are enhanced through understanding fundamental aspects of ones' own personality, leadership style and values. Leadership requires constant consideration, self reflection and awareness of how one's personal style is perceived and interpreted by others.

Effective and inspirational leadership is also about providing a role model, creating vision, generating ideas, and enhancing and guiding the educational understandings of a whole school community. Most importantly, leadership is about creating the opportunity for all members of the community - parents, teachers, staff members and students - to reflect and build a culture of genuine care, commitment and acceptance of each other.

Leaders within a school community have a responsibility to consider the elements of their own leadership style and skills, and to model effective and open professional reflection to others. An effective leadership team will impact significantly upon all aspects of the school community including effective teaching and professional learning from staff, a culture of excellence in student performance and behaviour, and parent input and contribution.

The emotional intelligence model provides a basis upon which principals and other leading teachers within a school community have the opportunity to undertake professional reflection, and to learn specific aspects of communication, empathy and leadership. The emotional intelligence model emphasises aspects of intra and inter personal communication and intelligence and strengthens leaders by providing them with an additional range of skills that relate specially to the relationships and interactions between members of a team or community. It provides a fundamental first step in leading, decision making and moving forward.

Kathy Walker, an education consultant who has lectured in education for over 12 years, and Helen Newton, an education consultant and retired principal, provide an introductory session to leadership and emotional intelligence.

The session provides an overview of the theory of emotional intelligence and leadership and provides specific strategies for participants to workshop during the session and to use within their individual school communities. Workshops include identification of individual indicators of emotional intelligence, how to workshop with team and how to utilise these elements to build a cohesive and productive school team.

If you would like further information or to talk directly with Kathy, please contact her
on 03 8802 9352 or contact us.