Conceptualising leadership and emotions in higher education: wellbeing as wholeness

In this conceptual article the authors outline an approach to leadership in higher education that foregrounds attention to wholeness and wellbeing, framing emotion as inherent to the practice of leadership, with all organizing actions inseparable from and influenced by emotion. The article is framed within findings from their research on wellbeing in schools and positive organizational scholarship that intentionally foregrounds virtues and positive human capacities as essential and vital to thriving for individuals and groups in organizations. The authors reflect on the benefits and potentials of re-orienting leadership toward the more life-giving qualities of work in higher education, and suggest that this generative reflection may serve to counter the predominant stances of competition and scarcity-mindsets that seem to pervade academia. This positive organizational stance toward leadership in higher education is timely given the increasing focus on encouraging wellbeing among administrators at all levels of the education system.