The Emotion Management (Others) Facet in Leadership and Education

Introduction

Movies, television shows, books, movies, and plays oftentimes have a tendency to tug at our heartstrings. Examples include [spoiler alert] Matthew Crawley’s premature death in Downton Abbey^®, the beheading of Eddard Stark in the series known as A Song of Ice and Fire^®, and of course, the deaths of the two principal characters in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Why does the emotional turmoil of fictional characters affect us so deeply? The answer to this is because that was its intention—Julian Fellows, George R. R. Martin, and William Shakespeare, the writers of the aforementioned works respectively, were able to manage the emotions of others—their viewers/readers— and achieve a desired effect.

Petrides (2009a) defines the emotion management (others) facet as “concerns one’s perceived ability to manage other people’s emotional states” (p. 59). It involves being able to “influence other people’s feelings (e.g. calm them down, console them, motivate them)” (Petrides, 2001, p. 5), and “they know how to make others feel better when they need it” (Petrides, 2009a, p. 59). In short, the emotion management facet of trait EI means that a leader or educator is “capable of influencing other people’s feelings” (Petrides, 2009b, p. 5). Leaders and educators alike must promote the emotion management (others) facet, because leaders and educators must work through the emotions of others and manage them effectively in order for organizational tasks to come to fruition and for learning to occur.

Therefore, in order to ensure that leaders and educators are able to work through the emotions of others and manage them effectively, this chapter will meet the following objectives:

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  Discover how leaders promote the emotion management (others) facet in their leadership by influencing the feelings of their followers, giving bad news to others, and calming and consoling their followers.

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  Discuss how educators can promote the emotion management (others) facet in their classrooms by encouraging, inspiring, motivating their students, giving their students bad news, and then working to calm and console them.

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  Finally, this chapter will also elucidate the arguments of those who oppose the promotion of the emotion management (others) facet in leadership and education.

The Sociability Factor

Leadership and education alike are, at their foundations, relationship-oriented (Kouzes & Posner, 2003; Mortiboys, 2012; Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2010), since leaders must work with their followers to accomplish goals (Goleman, 1998), and educators must relate to their students in order for meaningful learning to occur (Mortiboys, 2012; Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2010). Thereby making the sociability factor crucial to effective leadership and education, because it explicitly “emphasizes social relationships and social influence” (Petrides, 2009a, p. 61). Petrides (2009a) defines the sociability factor as a factor that concentrates upon “the individual as an agent in social contexts, rather than on personal relationships with family and close friends” (p. 61). Petrides (2009a) argues that those leaders who are able to promote the sociability factor in their leadership “are better at social interaction” (p. 61), and “they are good listeners and can communicate clearly and confidently with people from diverse backgrounds” (p. 61). The sociability factor of trait EI comprises the emotion management (others), assertiveness, and social awareness facets of trait EI (Petrides, 2001, 2009a, 2009b), all of which are central to effective leadership and education (Bass & Bass, 2008; Mortiboys, 2012; Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2010).