Educational leadership and emotion

Abstract

This chapter presents an account of ideas about emotion and leadership. It argues that mind reading is critical for the successful execution of principals' work. Understanding mind reading has a legitimate role in the discussion of principal training programs. In order to accomplish the task people set themselves, they need to understand the relationship between mind reading, or cognitive empathy, and affective empathy, what empathy is taken to be in the research literature, what is known of its origins, and by what means or mechanisms empathy is shared between individuals, including emotional contagion and simulation. Leadership would neither be effective nor wise if it were not for emotion..