“We need uncommon leaders who center love, care, and vulnerability—leadership centered on one’s soul.”
–Carlos R. Moreno
My leadership coach told me once of a Buddhist leader who taught her that humans only have two core emotions, fear and love, and that the rest of our emotions spin off from them. While Brené Brown’s work has catalogued a total of eighty-seven emotions within the human experience, it ist rue that our reactions to change often come from a powerful combination offear and love. This is particularly true for caregivers who, quite naturally, love their children deeply and fear for their wellbeing and success.
When I first started interviewing educational leaders around the world for my newest book, Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership: Doing Right by Learners Without Losing Your Job, I never expected love to come up as often as it did. As I asked leaders about the good work they were doing and the resistance those initiatives were garnering, they spoke again and again about how easily that combination of fear and love could manifest in a loss of trust in the school. And the more innovative the initiative, the more intense the fear; as Vladimir Nabokov wrotein Lectures on Literature decades ago, “Stranger almost always rhymes with danger.” It is difficult to be on the bleeding edge of any industry, and given that most caregivers have not experienced learner-centered, identity-responsive education themselves, their fear is understandable.
Educating young people requires deep trust, particularly with the families we serve. Parents drop their hearts off on our doorsteps each day, often overwhelmed by the combination of intense love for their childrenand a constant, gnawing fear for their wellbeing. Helping caregivers let go of tiny hands and allow their children to spend six hours a day on our campuses requires they trust us to do right by their children and set them up for success.
Leading work that challenges a community requires even more trust, as effective leaders need to bring caregivers and otherconstituents along even when they don’t understand an initiative or disagree with the decisions being made. Whether the context is public or private, leaders need to understand why parents or the broader community might ber eacting poorly to a given initiative before they can effectively address those concerns.
A superintendent in the American Southwest who we will call Caroline Danvers feels much of her success comes from making sure families understand that the educators in her district love their children, too. That foundation of love builds relationships and trust, as does firing someone who isn't playing along with their values. Danvers focuses on elevating lots of positive personal interactions through love—and doing so helps create a very loving space in the schools under her leadership. She feels principals must have great relationships with the community, and the superintendent needs the same—but above all, leaders need to remember they’re really running school for the community. Danvers’ principals are very loving—she hires a very specific kind of person, whose character aligns with their core values. With inclusion and community at the heart of their values, Danvers and her school leaders build trust by acting consistently on the basis of that thinking.
Retired Hawaiian principal Jan Iwase captured similar ideas about love and empathy in her 2019 book, Leading with Aloha: From thePineapple Fields to the Principal’s Office, writing that leading with aloha means “treating others with love, compassion, empathy, and respect, being open to listening when there [is] a concern, being visible around campus, disciplining in private, and welcoming new students and families to become a partof our ’ohana (family)” (p. 60). In Iwase’s view, how a school leader treats members of their community has a direct impact on how the community views the school and its intentions, and cultivating a sense of ’ohana across the community is essential. Iwase always tried to lead from the mutual goal all of her community members believed in, “to ensure that our students are happy and successful, not just in school, but in the life they will lead after they leave us” (p. 61). According to Iwase, treating others with aloha has a cascading effect; when leaders treat teachers with love, compassion, empathy and respect, those teachers will do the same for students; and when students are treated with aloha, they learn to treat each other that way, too.
When I look back at my own journey as a school leader, I can see now that I needed to cultivate more empathy and love for my adult constituents even when they didn’t agree with the vision I was hired to bring to life. While I have a limitless capacity for empathy and love for students, as well as patience when they stumble, I’ve always struggled to do the same with adults, perhaps because I feel they should already know how to behave in difficult conversations. But knowing that adults are entering these hard conversations from a place of intense love for their children and fear for their well-being, how might I have handled contentious conversations differently? Did I effectively convey my deep love for their children and concern for their well-being? Did I assume I was right and never try to understand their perspectives? And were there elements of Colombian culture that I misunderstood or misinterpreted, even after a lifetime of building and refining my intercultural skills?
As we watch waves of extreme conservatism ripple across the world, undermining so much of the work educators have done to cultivate equity and innovation, I remain convinced of our goals—and I believe educators will continue to do right by learners, even when it’s dangerous. I’ve seen Catholic schools stand up for LGBTQ+ learners, families, and staff, even in the face of mandates from the archdiocese. I’ve seen school leaders reorganize pick-up lines behind their buildings when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was out front, communicating with parents through a phone tree and using the back exit to get learners to their cars. Caroline Danvers warning families when white nationalists are coming into her district to be disruptive demonstrates the same resolve to protect and educate. Educators will continue to celebrate Black History Month, Women’s History Month—all the months designed to celebrate diversity—and to find ways to protect and champion the dignity of all students and families, whatever the law might suggest. We didn’t become educators to ignore the needs or challenges of our students; we became educators because we love and support young people.
There is so much hate out there right now, but my work comes from the deep love I feel for the thousands of educators and learners I’ve encountered along my educational journey, and my enduring conviction that we can do better. I believe that educational leaders can do this work froma place of love, confronting our fears and the resistance we face from a place of compassion for every member of ourcommunities. It’s up to us to tame the turbulence, to cultivate the climate, and to support every child in the best ways we know how.
This article is adapted from Jennifer’s newest book, Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership: Doing Right by Learners Without Losing Your Job.
