Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence

Great Book, Title [Stinks]

"Primal Leadership" is written to help leaders become better leaders by improving their emotional intelligence. The book gives insight into the collective feeling of an organization, or its emotional climate, and how this is influenced by the people at the top of the organization and the leadership methods adopted by the organization.

The authors identify four key aspects of personal competency in emotional intelligence:

* Self-Awareness
* Self-Management
* Social Awareness
* Relationship Management

The stronger a person is in these, the better leader he or she will become. Unless we are aware of our own emotions, we won't know how to control them. For example, if you make a unintentional, snide remark to an employee, because you're frustrated with the employee, the employee will probably not benefit, nor will the work environment. But, to prevent such a remark means you first must accept that you're feeling frustrated and, secondly, control that emotion.

Being socially aware means that you understand the power structure of the organization and it means you have empathy. As an extreme case of lack of empathy, suppose an employee's wife just dumped him and you enter his office and say, "Hey, Jack. Won't ask about the wife. Ha, ha. Just kidding. But, I need that report today, so focus. Don't worry about your personal, little life."

Obviously, that wouldn't go over too well! A great film of unmotivating leadership is "Office Space." The CEO is too funny. He walks around talking in monotone and he doesn't hear what the employees are saying. Again, an extreme case.

A leader must understand the emotional state of his/her employees and take it into consideration. That doesn't, of course, mean you must agree or tolerate unacceptable behavior.

After discussing these core competencies, the authors discuss different leadership styles, including:

* Visionary
* Coaching
* Pacesetting
* Democratic
* Commanding

The authors argue that visionary, coaching, and democratic leadership styles are beneficial to an organization. But, many leaders rely upon the more tenuous pacesetting and commanding methods of leadership, which can backfire or be overdone. For example, a pacesetting, commanding leader often makes people feel irrelevant and stressed out. That makes them less effective and motivated.

And, stress isn't good personally. Quoting the authors: "When stress is high and sustained, the brain reacts with sustained cortisol secretion, which actually hampers learning by killing off brain cells in the hippocampus that are essential for new learning." (Well that [stinks]!)

However, there is hope for stressed-out leaders or followers. Quoting the authors again: "Human brains can create new neural tissue as well as new neural connections and pathways throughout adulthood."

The authors argue that most leadership training fails because it teaches the neocortex brain or the learning brain. But, leadership skills require more limbic learning. The limbic part of the brain is the more emotional part that learns via repetition and personal experience. The authors compare learning leadership to learning to play the slide guitar. You must practice good habits.

To motivate oneself to improve as a leader, the authors suggest forming an image of your ideal self, acquiring a realistic image of your present self, and then practicing behaviors (until they become automatic) that have you act more like your ideal self.

The authors argue that this is the best way to improve, because it's a positive way of seeing yourself in the future and seeing a positive goal. Plus, as you improve your EI skills, not only will your leadership skills be enhanced, but so too will your personal relationships. Don't look at your weaknesses as 'gaps' that need to be improved.

The authors write: "Emphasis on gaps often arouses the right prefrontal cortex--that is, feelings of anxiety and defensiveness. Once defensiveness sets in, it typically demotivates rather than motivates, thereby interrupting, even stopping, self-directed learning and the likelihood of change."

Focusing upon how good you can become versus fixing gaps seems akin to looking at the glass half full versus half empty, but apparently that makes all the difference.

Peter Hupalo, Author of "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur."

Discovering a new leadership paradigm

While it is not difficult to follow this book even if you are not familiar with his prior works, familiarity with the concepts would make the reading flow much smoother. For this text he is joined by EI experts and co-authors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee as they unravel the use of EI in the workplace.

The bottom line of Primal Leadership is that one of the most important tasks of a leader is to create good feelings in the people they lead. They do this by maintaining those same positive feelings in themselves. In addition they have to create change, sustain change, and build an EI competent organization.

The book introduces the concept of "resonant leadership". This is the tendency of employees to perceive the business environment in the same manner that their leaders do. The moods, opinions, and actions of the leaders resonate to their employees and create the same feelings in them.

The top leaders develop four leadership styles and have the ability to easily change between them as needed. The book not only defines primal leadership but details how to develop and use these leadership qualities to make your business excel when others flounder. A great read with a thought-provoking analysis, this book is required reading for those seeking to excel as leaders in their organization.

How to optimize leadership competence