Primal Leadership, With a New Preface by the Authors: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Unleashing the Power of Emotinal Intelligence)

by Daniel Goleman

SETTING GROUND RULES: THE LEADER’S JOB MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE, it is the team leader who has the power to establish norms, maximizing harmony and collaboration to ensure that the team benefits from the best talents of each member. A leader accomplishes that by moving the group toward a higher emotional tone, using positive images, optimistic interpretations, and resonance-building norms and leadership styles, particularly visionary, democratic, affiliative, and coaching styles (see chapter 4 for more on styles). For example, leaders can model behavior through their own actions or by positively reinforcing members who do something that builds the group’s emotional capacity. One might do this by conducting a short check-in session before meetings start, to ensure that people whose mood might be “off” can express their feelings and have them soothed. As Kenwyn Smith of the University of Pennsylvania and David Berg of Yale University noted in their research, such emotions in a group are crucial signals to a leader “that the issue or event at hand should be engaged rather than avoided”—short-circuiting the trouble rather than letting it smolder. 12 For example, a leader might make a point of phoning a member whose behavior has been rude and discussing the issue, or she might make sure she asks members who have been quiet what they think about a particular decision. Setting the right ground rules requires an emotionally intelligent leader—again, common sense, but not common pract...