A Framework for School Leader Wellbeing: Understanding the Interaction Between Self And Environment

School leader wellbeing is increasingly recognized as essential to leadership effectiveness. This chapter presents findings from a Canadian phenomenological study examining how school administrators’ wellbeing is shaped by stress appraisal and coping strategies, and how wellbeing influences leadership behaviors. The study explores how leaders’ stress appraisal and coping relate to their leadership identity, capacity, and behaviors. A framework is presented to illustrate the dynamic interaction between school leaders’ perceptions of stressors, their coping responses, and the resulting impacts on wellbeing. This study uniquely integrates school leader wellbeing with the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), highlighting how interactions between self and environment shape both stress formation and coping responses. The chapter offers a distinctive perspective on school leader wellbeing by examining stress appraisal and coping as they relate to leadership behaviors, interpersonal and intrapersonal identity, and personal capacity, while accounting for individual differences, interpersonal interactions, and role complexity.