Page 27 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Current Challenges of Educational Leadership

timentalist culture (Barrio Maestre, 2022) that has led to an emotivism
where emotions serve as the perfect tool for political and social manip-
ulation (Menéndez Álvarez-Hevia, 2018), as tragically reflected in the
series of dystopian novels written by American author Suzanne Collins,
The Hunger Games, where spectacle is elevated to the category of po-
litical weapon in the purest style of the man considered the founder of
modern political theory, Niccolò Machiavelli. Namely, in his key work
The Prince, where he collects his first-hand experiences as a diplomat
and military commander in the Florentine Republic, he asserts that ef-
fective leaders must consider questions such as ‘whether it be better
to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that
one should wish to be both’ (2021, p. 77). His explanation consists of
affirming that both are useful for governing and, as is his custom, he
understands them to be necessary means justified by the end. Further-
more,heasserts thatifhehas to choose,itisbettertobefearedthan
loved, because (Machiavelli, 2014, p. 78):

[M]en have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one
who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation, which,
owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for
their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment,
which never fails. Nevertheless, a prince ought to inspire fear in
such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred because
he can endure very well being feared while he is not hated, which
will always beaslongashe abstainsfromthe property of hisciti-
zens and subjects and from their women.

It is worth noting in the language used by Machiavelli the primacy
of emotions in the exercise of leadership, as well as the risk involved
in considering them as tools for an end, which, however lofty, is not
necessarily legitimized to fully justify the means.
On the other hand, human emotions cannot be described as mere
factors or processes to be controlled by leaders, regardless of the educa-
tional, social, or political context. They are a constitutive part of human
beings, defining us as people and differentiating us from other beings
and even from machines with artificial intelligence. Without emotions,
it would not be possible to explain fundamental human experiences
such as gratitude or forgiveness, which lie beyond mere reason (Caro &
Fuentes, 2021), nor would it be possible to live virtues such as optimism
or experience the deep and renewing satisfaction of hope (González

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