Emotional Labor in Shared Equity Leadership Environments: Creating Emotionally Supportive Spaces

Darsella Vigil, Elizabeth Holcombe, Natsumi Ueda, Adrianna Kezar

Pullias Center for Higher Education (2023)

In this research brief, part of the On Shared Equity Leadership series, we explore what emotional labor looks like in environments where responsibility for DEI leadership is broadly distributed and shared across multiple campus stakeholders, rather than siloed or isolated in a single person or office. While the challenging emotions and emotional labor that accompany DEI work do not disappear in SEL environments, we did find some evidence that the burden is minimized by working in community with other leaders who share the labor. The emotional labor that does still occur is often less burdensome and overwhelming to those involved because of the support they have from colleagues who share both the work and the emotions that come with it. This report first summarizes some of the existing research on emotional labor and DEI work before highlighting the ways in which SEL can alleviate different types of emotional labor.

Categories: Shared Equity Leadership, Equity and Leadership

  shared equity leadership     adrianna kezar     equity and leadership  

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