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

by Daniel Goleman

The Leader’s Primal Challenge: Self-Management

Ultimately, the most meaningful act of responsibility that leaders can do is to control their own state of mind. The original sense of the hipster term cool referred to the capacity of African American jazz musicians who could control their rage at the racism of the times, even as they channeled that anger into an extraordinary expression of deep feeling. 23 Effective leadership demands the same sort of capacity for managing one’s own turbulent feelings while allowing the full expression of positive emotions.

After self-awareness and emotional self-management, resonant leadership requires social awareness or, put another way, empathy. The

Rather, empathy means taking employees’ feelings into thoughtful consideration and then making intelligent decisions that work those feelings into the response.

The art of handling relationships well, then, begins with authenticity: acting from one’s genuine feelings.

Four of these styles—visionary, coaching, affiliative, and democratic—create the kind of resonance that boosts performance, while two others—pacesetting and commanding—although useful in some very specific situations, should be applied with caution, as we shall see.

The Leadership Styles in a Nutshell VISIONARY HOW IT BUILDS RESONANCE: Moves people toward shared dreams IMPACT ON CLIMATE: Most strongly positive WHEN APPROPRIATE: When changes require a new vision, or when a clear direction is needed COACHING HOW IT BUILDS RESONANCE: Connects what a person wants with the organization’s goals IMPACT ON CLIMATE: Highly positive

WHEN APPROPRIATE: To help an employee improve performance by building long-term capabilities AFFILIATIVE HOW IT BUILDS RESONANCE: Creates harmony by connecting people to each other IMPACT ON CLIMATE: Positive WHEN APPROPRIATE: To heal rifts in a team, motivate during stressful times, or strengthen connections DEMOCRATIC HOW IT BUILDS RESONANCE: Values people’s input and gets commitment through participation IMPACT ON CLIMATE: Positive WHEN APPROPRIATE: To build buy-in or consensus, or to get valuable input from employees PACESETTING HOW IT BUILDS RESONANCE: Meets challenging and exciting goals IMPACT ON CLIMATE: Because too frequently poorly executed, often highly negative WHEN APPROPRIATE: To get high-quality results from a motivated and competent team COMMANDING HOW IT BUILDS RESONANCE: Soothes fears by giving clear direction in an emergency IMPACT ON CLIMATE: Because so often misused, highly negative

WHEN APPROPRIATE: In a crisis, to kick-start a turnaround, or with problem employees

There’s an obvious flaw when a leader relies solely on the affiliative approach: Work takes second place to feelings. Leaders who overuse this style neglect to offer corrective feedback on performance that could help employees improve. They tend to be overly worried about getting along with people, often at the expense of the task at hand. This “anxious” type of affiliation has been found to drive down the climate rather than raise it. 7 Stewing about whether they’re liked or not, such leaders’ avoidance of confrontation can derail a group, steering them to failure.

Perhaps that’s why many affiliative leaders—including Joe Torre—use this style in close conjunction with the visionary approach.

In contrast, Sister Mary’s democratic

style of getting buy-in from her constituents built feelings of trust and respect—and, in a word, commitment.

During her first week on the job, therefore, she had lunch and dinner meetings one by one with each member of the management team. Joan sought each person’s understanding of the current situation from a business and organizational standpoint. But her focus was not so much on how a given manager diagnosed the problems as on getting to know each as a person. Employing the affiliative style, she explored their lives, their dreams, and aspirations.

the coaching role, looking for ways she could help each get what they sought for his or her career.

Joan then followed up these one-on-one

one meetings with a three-day offsite meeting for the management team. Her goal was team building, so that everyone would own whatever solution emerged for the business problems.

Using an initial stance of th...

leader, she encouraged everybody to express their frustrations and complaints freely in, as she put it, a “kind of clea...

consensus emerged about priorities

the business, such as cutting costs.

with specific action plans for each priority, Joan got the commitment ...

With that vision for the future in place, Joan shifted into the visionary style, assigning accountability for each follow-up step to specific executives and holdi...

Over the following months, Joan continued to lead mainly with the visionary style, continually articulating the group’s new mission in a way that reminded each person of how crucial he

or she was to achieving it.

an occasional shift into the commanding style should someone fail to meet his or her responsibility.

Reeducating the emotional brain for leadership learning, therefore, requires a different model from what works for the thinking brain: It needs lots of practice and repetition.

For example, researchers at the University of Wisconsin taught “mindfulness” to R&D scientists at a biotech firm who were complaining about the stressful pace of their jobs. 18 Mindfulness is a skill that helps people keenly focus on the present moment and drop distracting thoughts (such as worries) rather than getting lost in them, thus producing a calming effect. After just eight weeks, the R&D people reported noticeably less stress, and they felt more creative and enthusiastic about their work. But most remarkably, their brains had shifted toward less activity in the right prefrontal areas (which generate distressing emotions) and move in the left—the brain’s center for upbeat, optimistic feelings.

words, once they’d learned how to improve the emotional intelligence abilities that make leaders great, they continued developing new strengths on their own. That finding provides solid evidence that these competencies can continue to be acquired throughout life.

Complexity, or chaos, theory states that many processes are better described as abrupt changes rather than as smooth transitions.

Likewise, in building leadership, sudden, shocking discoveries about our lives may shake us into action, “wowing” us with a stark truth about ourselves and offering new clarity about our lives. Such startling discontinuities can be frightening or enlightening. Some people react by running from them. Some simply deny their power and shrug them off. Others hear the wake-up call, sharpen their resolve, and start to transform self-defeating habits into new strengths. But how do they actually make those changes?

getting a strong image of your ideal self, as well as an accurate picture of your real self—who

When a parent, spouse, boss, or teacher tells us what we should be, they’re giving us their version of our

ideal self, an image that contributes to our ought self—the person we think we should become. When we accept that ought self, it becomes a box within which we are trapped—what sociologist Max Weber called our “iron cage”—moving around like a mime pressing against invisible walls. The

When the gap between a person’s ideal self and the ideal imposed by the training becomes evident, the result is apathy or rebellion.

It begins with a holistic vision of one’s life, in all its richness. To achieve improved business performance, leaders need to be emotionally engaged in their self-development. And that requires connecting the effort to what really matters to them.

A person’s philosophy is the way he determines values—and which leadership styles he gravitates toward.

A leader who values achieving goals above all else will naturally be a pacesetter, viewing a more democratic style as a waste of time. Understanding your operating philosophy can help you see how your ideal self reflects your values.

operating

philosophies—the most common of which are pragmatic, intellectual, and humanistic. 4

The central theme of a pragmatic

philosophy is a belief that usefulness determines the worth of an idea, effort, person, or organization.

People with this philosophy believe that they are largely responsible for the events of their lives, and often measure things to assess their value. No surprise, then, that among the emotional intelligence competencies, pragmatics rank high in self-management. Unfortunately, their individualistic orientation often—but not always—pull...

The central theme of an intellectual

philosophy is the desire to understand people, things, and the world by constructing an image of how they work, thereby providing some emotional security in predicting the future. 7 People with this philosophy rely on logic in making decisions, and assess the worth of something against an underlying code or set of guidelines that stresses reason. People with this outlook rely heavily on cognitive competencies, sometimes to the exclusion of social competencies. You

The central theme of a humanistic philosophy is that close, personal relationships give meaning to life. 9 People with this philosophy are committed to human values; family and close friends are seen as more

important than other relationships. They assess the worth of an activity in terms of how it affects their close relations. Similarly, loyalty is valued over mastery of a job or skill. Where a pragmatist’s philosophy might lead him to “sacrifice the few for the many,” a humanistic leader would view each person’s life as important, naturally cultivating the social awareness and relationship management competencies. Accordingly, humanistic leaders gravitate toward styles that emphasize interaction with others, such as democratic, affiliative, or coaching.

That’s why one often sees leaders in