Assignment ? Felt and displayed emotions may be different. This is particularly true in organizations, where role demands and situations often require people to exhibit emotional behaviours that mask their true feelings. Discuss in relation to educational leadership, supporting your answer with four (4) real life experiences, one for each Emotional Intelligence (El) competence - for each experience describe the event, your reaction, the outcome and any changes you would effect in retrospect. “All learning has an emotional base.” - Plato. This is not a lengthy statement by Plato, but if you stop and think about its meaning, it's quite a wise statement. All learning is, in some way or another, emotionally based. We learn the Italian or Spanish languages because we tend to like the sounds of the pronunciation or the culture of the country. But is it possible the other way round? Is it possible that we learn how to understand when a friend is feeling frustrated or when a co-worker is angry or when showing empathy is critical? Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim that it is an inborn characteristic. The concept of “social intelligence," as defined by Edward Thorndike (Thorndike & Stein, 1937) way back in the 1930s, was the ability to get along with other people. Yet again, in 1975, Howard Gardner, (Gardner, 1975) incorporated this term in one of the multiple intelligences when he noted that the core of interpersonal intelligence includes the “capacities to discern and respond appropriately to the moods, temperaments, motivations, and desires of other people.” Since 1990, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) have been the leading researchers on emotional intelligence. They define “Emotional Intelligence” (EI) as “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (1990). The concept of emotional intelligence became more popular through the publications by Goleman in 1995 (Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, 1995). In the EI framework that Goleman proposed and that he later on refined (Goleman & Cherniss, The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace, 2001), we find four clusters of general EI abilities: self-awareness, self-regulation or self-management, social-awareness and relationship management. Without these core EI abilities one is unable to demonstrate any personal or social competence. The ability to express and control our own emotions is important, but so is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. It may not always be the case that the displayed emotions are the true emotions and so the ability to control and manage one’s own emotions becomes critical. Some four years ago, I applied for the post of Head of the Department of Physics within the directorate for quality and standards in education. At that time I really wished to have that post but in the back of my mind I knew that it was somewhat impossible because even though I was more than qualified I did not have the required ten years teaching experience. I decided to apply all the same. A colleague of mine, who is also a teacher of physics applied for the same post and while I was found ineligible, he managed to take the post of head of department of Physics. I was not really happy about it because I really wanted that post but I was happy that a colleague of mine with whom I really worked well took the post. At least, having a colleague a head of department would certainly have voiced our concerns as teachers with greater authority. But things did not actually turn out as I expected. The working relationship we had soon turned into one where the head of department controlled everything from the apparatus we could use (obviously the most suitable apparatus were kept by the head of the department) to when we could use it and to what we could do in class. It was unbearable at times to say the least. I still continued to act and treat our working relationship in the same manner as before bearing in mind always that this person had now become my superior. During that year, as usual, I had prepared the half-yearly examination papers for a particular year group. The students did not do really well in the paper partly because I had produced a rather challenging paper. During parents’ day, which happened after the half-yearly examinations, the parents of our students came to express their concern about the low marks that the students had achieved in the exam. It also happened that the new head of department and myself were meeting parents in the same laboratory, not unusual as it had happened other times before. During that day, in more than one occasion, the head