Leadership metaphors: Evacuated principals’ role during a war crisis

The role of school principals during crisis, and especially during a war crisis, is central to maintaining community stability, learning continuity, and the well-being of the educational staff. A war crisis threatens the organization's goals and its very survival, creates a complex reality of destruction, evacuation, and psychological distress, and necessitates an immediate principal's response. This study explores principals’ role perceptions through their use of metaphors, conceptualizing metaphors as a scaffold for understanding reality and creating meaning in the midst of extreme crisis. Based on a qualitative–narrative approach, semistructured indepth interviews were conducted with 33 Israeli school principals who were forced to evacuate their institutions due to the October 7 war. This approach is particularly suited for examining meaning-making processes, as leadership metaphors serve as interpretive tools through which principals construct their understanding of reality. Content analysis revealed five main axes of role dimensions expressed through metaphors: the principal as a role model, providing ethical inspiration; as a strategist, navigating the organization to safety; as emotionally containing, offering resilience and mental well-being; as a performer, generating creative solutions for unexpected complications; and as an operational, ensuring logistical stability and order within chaos. The study proposes a multilayered model for the principal's role during wartime, contributing to the development of a conceptual framework for school leadership during extreme crises. Accordingly, it recommends preparing principals for multidimensional leadership that integrates strategic thinking, distributed management, and delegation of authority, as well as incorporating the use of metaphors as a managerial tool for constructing meaning in conditions of uncertainty and displacement.