Here you have the book summary of Primal Leadership (Amazon’s affiliate link), an astonishing, punchy and inspiring book written by Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis and Annie McKee
Subject
Primal Leadership focuses in the leadership development through EI (emotional intelligence) skills and competences from a “primal dimension”, which means that leadership needs to be approached from the emotional side in order to drive emotions positively –not just for the leader, but for followers, tribes and organizations – and bringing everyone’s the best. That is to say, we are looking at a more basic and primal perspective where effective and engaging leadership works through emotions. We call this process resonance. In addition, authors give advice in how to avoid dissonance (it drives emotions negatively and undermining the emotional foundations that let people excel). Two important facts that support the EI approach for an effective leader development are that first, leadership competences of emotional intelligence are far more determinant than IQ skills and second leadership traits –including emotional intelligence competences – can be learnt and enhanced over time.
In the book, the authors present an overview of the emotional skills that a leader should possess, a list of leadership styles and the influence these have on employees, and some recommendations for becoming an effective leader.
Summary
Primal leadership
The first part of the book explains and identifies the main ideas of the primal leadership competences and how it leverages as leaders as followers. It also explains that leaders are a model to be followed by others and they connect and inspire others by their primal emotional impact, so leaders tend to use EI as a way on influencing and attracting people around them.
Moreover, this chapter shows that there are some ways to build and create resonance and one of this steps are through laugh, when we laugh we create an emotional viral effect, which is contagious and puts people in the same frame.
In addition, as the chapter talks about aspects that create resonance – the open loop, contagion of good moods and feelings, the importance of being a people’s magnets, laugh…- between leaders and followers, also talks about aspect that creates dissonance, such as; how moods impact results or emotional hijacking.
Finally, I’d like to highlight – in my opinion – the main point of the book, which is that leaders’ emotional states and actions do affect how the people they lead will feel and therefore perform. How well leaders manage their moods and affect everyone else’s moods1.
Resonant Leadership
Differences between resonance and dissonance leadership
Dissonant leadership: When a leader fails to empathize, or to read the emotions, sending needlessly upsetting messages. Leaders get out of touch of the people around them, driving the group into a downward spiral from frustration to resentment, rancor to rage. People will feel off-balance and perform poorly. In short, dissonance dispirits people, burns them out, send them packing2, but the worse of all is that dissonance is that is being carried with the person to home, with friends… The book also gives us examples of how leaders build emotional dissonance; worrying too much about “me” and not about “us”, focus the leader’s attention in him/herself, leading to ignore the worries of the people who the leader need to make successful, being “clueless” in particular.
Resonant leadership: when a leader attunes with people’s feelings, connect with and moved them in a positive emotional direction3. Talking about his/her own values and resonating with the emotions of the people around him, creating an atmosphere of inspiration and engagement even in critical situations. Resonant people are unified by “one team” and “more signal, less noise” mantras. This chapter explains that resonance comes indeed to emotional intelligence leaders. The passion and enthusiasm that generates resound through the group motivating and uplifting it. Furthermore, there are more key competences -apart from the stated above – to create resonance. We are taking about empathy, sharing, learning from one another, make decisions collaboratively, get things done and of course connecting with others emotionally. Here you have some of the examples that the book gives us to build resonance; turning into people’s feelings –their owns and others’ – guiding them in a right direction…
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god. It has, of course powerful muscles, but not personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve” Albert Einstein.
The Neuroanatomy of Leadership
This chapter gives relevance to the EI competencies, which name as the vehicles of primal leadership. According to earlier studies there are more than just threshold abilities (IQ, technical skills or personality) of defining the best candidate for a leadership position. It refers to the distinguishing competencies. This proposal has developed what is today a standard practice for developing a leadership “competency model”. First step, identify the pool of star leaders. Second, stars will be compared with managers whose performance was only average and the two groups will undergo intensive interviews designed to assess their competencies. Four competencies of emotional intelligence emerged as the unique strengths of the stars: the drive to achieve results, the ability to take the initiative, skills in collaboration and team work and the ability to lead teams4.
However, the most important part of this chapter refers to the four dimensions of emotional intelligence5 – and the capabilities under each competence :
Personal competence: it refers to how manage ourselves.
1. Self-awareness: Understanding one’s emotions and being clear about one’s goal.
a. Emotional self-awareness
b. Accurate self-assessment
c. Self-confidence
2. Self-management: Without knowing, what we are feeling, we are at a loss to manage those feelings. Instead, our emotions control us.
a. Emotional self-control
b. Transparency
c. Adaptability
d. Achievement
e. Initiative
f. Optimism
Social competence: it refers to how we manage relationships
3. Social awareness: crucial for the leader task of driving resonance. By being attuned to how other feel in the moment, a leader can say what is appropriate in the moment, facilitating the ability to express his/her message in a way that move them
a. Empathy
b. Organizational awareness
c. service
4. Relationship management: Friendlessness with a purpose: moving people in the right direction with authenticity (acting from one’s genuine feelings)
a. Inspirational leadership
b. Influence
c. Developing others
d. Change catalyst
e. Conflict management
f. Teamwork and collaboration
The leadership repertoire
Six approaches to leadership in a nutshell
4 Styles that creates resonance and boos performance
- Visionary
- Coaching
- Affiliative
- Democratic
2 styles that if they are not applied with caution could create dissonance
- Pacesetting: use it carefully.
- Commanding: the least effective “Do it because I say so”
Become a Resonant Leader
First it goes against the “Leaders are made, not born” and then, it states that not only leaders can be made, but also emotional intelligence can be learned. When it comes to building leadership skills – and that last – motivation and how person feels about learning matters immensely.
Five discoveries of self-directed learning
- My ideal self – See the person you want to be: discovering of uncovering an ideal vision of yourself, so you feel motivated to develop your leadership abilities. That is to say, create a vision or dream through your own values and principles that guide your life.
- My real self – Who you are: how you act, how others view you, what your deep beliefs are. Strengths and gaps between who you are and who you want to be.
- My learning agenda – Create an agenda built in your strong points while reducing weaknesses, so you can move closer to your ideal self
- Experimenting – practicing and trying new leadership skills
- Developing trusting, supportive, helpful relationships, and encourage others each step in the process: you need others to identify your ideal self or find your real self.
Reality and the ideal vision – Discovering the emotional reality
How to build an emotionally intelligent organization
- Respect the groups value’s and the organization integrity
- Slow down in order to speed up
- Start at the top with a bottom-up strategy
Visualizing the idea
- Look inside
- Don’t align – attune
- People first, then strategy
Sustaining emotional intelligence
- Turn vision into action
- Create systems that sustain emotionally intelligent practices
- Manage the myths of leadership
Conclusion
Typically, we – as leaders – are usually very well prepared and concerned in the IQ skills. However, when it comes to handling others’ and our own emotions and emotions we have a great paradigm.
I think that, the importance of being emotionally intelligent lies in the fact that the leader should be in principle the ones who manage and develops not only his/her own emotions, but of his/her team too. The leader must know how to read and exploit the emotions – creating resonance -of the people around him/her in order to create an inspiring, motivating and empowering environment.
What else?
Have you read it? What are your views? I’d like to know your thoughts.