Attempts to improve poor academic performance in South African public schools resulted in the Schooling 2025 mandate, which stipulated the academic standards that learners needed to achieve by 2014. As school leaders must do this through their teachers the emotional tensions associated with such changes are likely to increase. This paper investigates the use of emotional competence by school leaders via the perceptions of their teachers. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses of the data obtained from a random sample of 2386 teachers indicated that the postulated five sub-dimensions associated with emotional competence could be reduced to two, namely intrapersonal and interpersonal. The Structural Equation Model suggested a strong positive causal relationship between the two competences and hence a good understanding and regulation of one’s own emotions, influences, understanding and relationships with others. A school leader with a good understanding of their personal emotional competence will have a greater influence on social orientation towards others and possibly lead to improved interpersonal competence. In the South African context it was found that both competences are associated with gender, school type, socio-economic contexts of the learners and home language of the educators.