PDF Summary:Primal Leadership, by Daniel Goleman

In Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee argue that the most important trait for a leader to have is emotional intelligence. A leader who’s emotionally intelligent will create a positive climate for their group in which productivity, collaboration, and performance will soar. The authors argue that a critical mass of emotionally intelligent leaders and groups is the foundation of a sustainably successful organization. The purpose of Primal Leadership is to teach individuals and organizations how to lead with emotional intelligence so they can achieve long-term success.In this guide, we’ll explain what emotional intelligence is, why emotionally intelligent leadership is critical for group effectiveness, how to lead with emotional intelligence, and how you can boost your own emotional intelligence and the emotional intelligence of your group and organization. Throughout the guide, we’ll connect the author's concepts to theories and recommendations of other experts in cognitive science, behavioral psychology, business, and management.

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Collaborative

The authors call this style affiliative, and it creates harmony by building strong relationships among team members. A leader enacts this style by forming interpersonal relationships with employees—by sharing emotions, providing support during hard times, and giving praise for jobs well done.

(Shortform note: This leadership style is widely discussed among business and management experts, and is also referred to as “people-first” or “servant” leadership. Experts explain that, in addition to the benefits discussed by the authors, servant leadership is beneficial to the community as well: These leaders aren’t only concerned with the well-being of their employees, but the well-being of the community and environment as a whole. Experts add that in our present circumstances—the Covid pandemic and environmental crises due to global warming—these leaders are especially sought after and needed.)

Poll-Taking

The authors call this style democratic, and it creates harmony by involving group members in decision-making. This style shows employees that the leader values their input and ensures that everyone’s on the same page about decisions. A leader enacts this style by laying out problems and solutions and asking her employees or stakeholders what they think the best option is.

(Shortform note: In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer argues that leadership styles ultimately break down to two types: egalitarian and hierarchical. While the vast majority of leadership styles in the US, and included in this list, are hierarchical, poll-taking is uniquely egalitarian. This is the one leadership style addressed by the authors where both employees and leaders are treated as equals, having equal say in the decision-making process.)

Standard-Setting

The authors call this style pacesetting, and it’s used to create harmony by setting an example for employees to follow which can help the group overcome challenges and accomplish exciting goals. In this style, a leader sets high standards for herself and her team, quickly identifies shortcomings, and demands perfection. Rather than giving employees specific guidelines, she expects them to simply watch and learn from her.

This style creates harmony only if the leader is able to empathize with others, is aware and in control of her emotions, and is able to bring people together as a team. Without these microskills, standard-setting will create discord because it can make employees feel burnt out and confused about what exactly the leader wants from them.

(Shortform note: Experts explain standard-setting leadership can also create discord by eroding employees’ confidence. Not only will this decrease motivation and productivity, but it can also lessen an employee’s EI abilities—self-confidence is a microskill of self-awareness, so if you lack confidence your self-awareness will decrease. And according to the authors’ argument, your ability to self-manage is likely to decrease as well.)

Authoritarian

The authors call this style commanding, and it’s used to create harmony by providing strict direction in a critical or high-stress situation. A leader enacts this style by giving orders and expecting immediate compliance without explaining her reasoning. She controls the situation very tightly, and if employees fail to follow orders, they are faced with threats or punishment.

This style creates harmony only if the leader is able to empathize with others, and is aware and in control of her emotions. Without these microskills, authoritarian leaders will create discord by making group members feel intimidated and putting them in a bad mood because of her demands and lack of empathy.

(Shortform note: Psychologists explain that an example of an extremely well-known authoritarian leader is Bill Gates. Gates built one of the most successful tech companies to date because of his authoritarian leadership, characterized by high demands and quick turnarounds. However, a number of employees have recently come out to describe him as demanding, impatient, unrelenting, and condescending, reporting that most employees were dissatisfied with his leadership because he created discord in the workplace.)

Part 3: How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

The authors explain that emotional intelligence is something anyone can learn as long as they’re motivated, committed, and put in solid effort.

The most effective technique to learn EI is self-directed learning, a model that allows individuals to develop personalized goals, learning plans, and measures of achievement. The model lays out five steps that individuals must go through to acquire a new skill—in this case, increased EI.

In the sections below, we’ll discuss each of the five steps and how to accomplish them.

The Flaws of Self-Directed Learning

Self-directed learning is a recognized education method that has roots in Ancient Greek schooling, emphasizing a student’s self-directed planning and evaluation of their learning process. While the authors present self-directed learning as a sure-fire method to gain emotional intelligence, some management experts say it’s not so easy—despite the fact that self-directed learning is supposed to foster motivation and commitment, experts explain that the method isn’t always enough to keep busy bosses on track.

For example, if organizations encourage leaders to take on the self-directed learning process but then leave them to figure the rest out on their own, the stresses of work and home life may outweigh their desires to work on new skills in their downtime. To avoid this outcome, experts recommend that organizations support individuals throughout the learning process, answering questions and giving advice or direction, providing learning materials and libraries, and giving leaders opportunities for hands-on practice with their peers.

Step 1: Identify the Leader You Want to Be

The first step in becoming an emotionally intelligent leader is to imagine the ideal version of yourself as a leader—which microskills do you want to possess and which leadership styles do you want to excel at?

To do this, the authors suggest imagining the leader you want to be in 10 years. Who’s around you? How do your followers feel about you and how do you feel about them? What's the environment and emotional climate like? How do your interactions create harmony?

Further, the authors warn against creating goals based on what other people want or expect from you. Other people’s standards provide extrinsic motivation (motivation driven by external rewards) rather than intrinsic (motivation driven by internal satisfaction), undermining the purpose of self-directed learning and making you less likely to succeed.

Visualization Can Help You Manifest Your Goals

The authors explain that imagining the leader you want to be in 10 years will help you identify your learning goals. Many experts claim that this visualization process can go further and actually help you manifest your goals as well. In other words, simply imagining yourself achieving your goals can bring them to fruition.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill argues that we can achieve any goal through visualization, or what he calls “autosuggestion.” To do this, imagine that you’re already in possession of your goal. Similar to the authors’ suggestion, Hill says to imagine who you’re with, how you feel, where you are, and how you’re interacting with people once you’ve accomplished your goal. Then, let this vision come to life in your head for a few minutes every day—imagine yourself conducting daily life as this person. The more you do this, the more you will become this person in real life.

Further, Hill says that for the visualization process to be effective, your goal must be an “all-consuming desire.” Like the authors, Hill explains that this desire must be your own, not someone else's, and you must fully dedicate yourself to achieving it.

Step 2: Identify Your Current Leadership Competencies

Once you’ve identified the leader you want to be, you must examine the leader you are. Identify which of the main skills and microskills you rely on so you can identify the gaps between your ideal and current self—these are the areas you can improve.

To discover your current leadership, reflect on your strengths and weaknesses in the four main skills of EI: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

Also consider which of the six leadership styles you rely on most frequently, and then examine which microskills they use. For example, a coaching leader relies on the ability to help people reach their goals and cultivate their abilities.

Finally, explore which leadership styles you lack and which microskills you need to improve on to master that style.

(Shortform note: In Goals!, Brian Tracy lays out a twelve-step process that will help you achieve any goal. One of these steps is to assess your starting point. Like the authors, he explains that before you can create a plan and get to work, you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses and where you’re starting from. Without this self-assessment, you may be unaware of the barriers that are hindering you from success and the areas you need to improve on.)

The authors warn, however, that our self-analysis can often be inaccurate because our ego causes us to see a positively-skewed image of ourselves. To overcome this distortion, they recommend seeking negative feedback from people who know you well and who interact with you on a regular basis. Ask them to judge your microskills in each of the four main EI skills. You can make this an anonymous survey so no one fears retribution and can respond honestly.

Blind Spots Can Lead to an Inaccurate Self-Assessment

In Thanks for the Feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen add to the authors’ argument, explaining that one of the reasons people aren’t good at accurately self-assessing is because of our “blind spots”—behaviors that we see as unimportant or don’t notice but that other people see as disruptive or obvious. Consequently, receiving feedback from others is the most accurate way to self-assess.

For example, when we have an emotional reaction to a situation, it might seem much more intense to others than it does to us. Or, we may roll our eyes when we hear something we think is silly without realizing we’re doing it. While we think we might be very good at understanding and controlling our emotions and impulses, others might have a very different perspective because of the behaviors that exist in our blind spots.

Step 3: A Practical Plan for Improvement

Now that you know what you need to improve on, you should create a learning plan that’ll help you gain the skills and microskills you lack.

The authors recommend that for your learning plan to be most effective, you should choose goals that align with your strengths and that are realistically achievable.

The authors also say to create tasks that focus on learning rather than meeting benchmarks. For example, a learning goal like “practice sharing an inspirational vision with a peer twice a week” will be more effective to improve inspirational competencies than a benchmark like “present an inspirational vision at the board meeting by next month.” Ultimately, focus on the learning process rather than the outcome.

SMART Goals, an Alternative Approach to the Learning Process

Another popular strategy recommended by experts for creating achievable goals is the SMART method.

• S: Make your goals specific—identify the specific microskills you want to improve on and what improving in these areas would look like.

• M: Make your goals measurable—what does it look like when you’ve achieved your goal? For example, you could set a benchmark like “be able to sell my product to the board at the next meeting.”

• A: Make your goal attainable—are you giving yourself ample time to complete your goal and do you have the resources necessary?

• R: make your goal realistic—is this goal something you are motivated to achieve?

• T: make your goal time-specific—when do you want to achieve your goal?

The SMART plan both supports and contradicts the authors’ suggestion. They both recommend making your goals specific (identifying the skills and microskill you need to work on), attainable, and realistic. However, the authors don’t address a time limit and disagree with “measurable” goals like benchmarks. Further, the authors recommend focusing on your strengths when designing your goals—for example, if you’re good at self-awareness but weak in relationship management, you might approach interactions with others with an attitude of being aware of their needs—while the SMART plan asks you to focus on your weakness when choosing goals.

Step 4: Develop New Habits

Next, the authors recommend identifying areas in your life where you can regularly practice your new skills so they override your old habits. To make this change, acknowledge your bad habit, consciously practice a skill to replace it, and use that new skill at every opportunity until it becomes an automatic response.

For example, if you realize you need to replace defensiveness with emotional self-management, you can commit to pausing before you respond to questions to make sure you fully understand the other person’s perspective and can formulate a genuine, non-hostile response.

It’s necessary that you practice new EI skills because to override old habits and build new ones, your brain needs to create new neural pathways, and these pathways can only be formed through repeated action.

(Shortform note: In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins calls this process of rewiring our brains neuro-associative conditioning, or NAC. He explains that there are six steps to successfully rewiring your brain: (1) identify your goal and what’s getting in the way, (2) create a sense of urgency to change, (3) disrupt your usual pattern, (4) create a positive pattern to replace the old one, (5) reinforce your new pattern, and (6) make sure your conditioning is successful. Ultimately, these are the same suggestions made by the authors but broken down into more descriptive steps.)

Step 5: Develop Supporting Relationships

While this is the last step, the authors recommend that you develop supporting relationships throughout the learning process. These relationships should be with people who’ll help and encourage you to accomplish your goals.

The authors argue that these relationships are especially beneficial with a mentor or coach who has expertise in your field, can understand the barriers you face, and can give you feedback on your progress. For a supporting relationship to be effective, they note you must trust the other person, feel safe disclosing personal information to them, and be able to be honest with them—the authors call these elements trust, psychological safety, and candor.

(Shortform note: The authors don’t go into much detail about what trust, psychological safety, and candor look like in a relationship. Experts provide a more complete picture: In supporting relationships, you and the other person feel comfortable asking each other for advice, follow each other's recommendations, respect each other, forgive each other for mistakes, and are usually involved in each other's personal development.)

Part 4: How to Create an Emotionally Intelligent Group and Organization

The authors explain that once a leader becomes emotionally intelligent, her next responsibility is to spread this emotional intelligence to her group and organization.

First, leaders should focus on fostering EI competencies within their group. Then, they should look at the underlying norms that dictate how people think and behave in the organization and change them if they lack EI.

(Shortform note: Business and management experts second the author's argument, emphasizing that leaders are the foundation for organizational change. When leaders are emotionally intelligent, they will spread their EI skills to their group members. And because organizational culture is shaped by the actions and feelings of employees, this will work to change the organization’s culture. Ultimately, organizational change must start with leaders, move to groups, and then tackle the organization as a whole.)

Creating Emotionally Intelligent Groups

The authors explain that to create an emotionally intelligent group, you first need to understand the current EI practices of the group. Then, you need to uncover the ideal vision for the group and formulate a plan for achievement.

Step 1: Identify Current EI Competencies of the Group

To uncover the EI of your group, examine how well each of your employees exhibits the EI microskills. Then, examine how prevalent these microskills are in group interactions. Next, ask your employees to self-report their competency in each of the microskills, and then to report how well the group exhibits these competencies during interactions as a whole. When individuals or the group score low in a certain microskill, question employees about why they think that is.

This investigation will uncover the norms of the team that dictate how and why they act so you can determine which microskills to work on. For example, you might discover that a group norm is to interrupt others if someone thinks their idea is better, indicating you need to improve on group empathy and managing impulses and emotions.

(Shortform note: Experts second this approach to improving team EI. They explain that both individual attention and group work are necessary to bring groups together as a cohesive whole. Working only one-on-one with individuals will prevent group relationships that are needed for effective collaboration from forming, while only working with the collective group may leave individuals who need extra help behind, which can cause discord.)

Step 2: Identify the Ideal Vision of the Group and Create a Plan of Action

Once you’ve uncovered the group reality, gather people's individual visions of ideal emotionally intelligent interactions so you can create group goals and a plan of action to achieve them. For example, if you want to foster support in place of the norm to interrupt others, set a standard that members must allow each other to finish speaking and provide feedback before proposing other ideas. This shows self-awareness, self-management, and empathy for the people speaking.

Techniques to Explore EI

Management specialists explain that two techniques you can practice with your group to enhance EI are role-playing and “storyboarding.” When role-playing, members take on others’ opinions and interaction styles which can help everyone in the group understand why that person may be acting the way they do. For example, someone’s passive-aggressive behavior might not be because they have a superiority complex, but because they feel inadequate in the situation.

Storyboarding is another technique that helps group members understand each other’s ideas—each member writes their ideas and feelings on a small poster. Both of these techniques are shown to improve trust and participation.

Creating an Emotionally Intelligent Organization

The authors explain that once you’ve created emotionally intelligent groups, you can move on to implement EI throughout the organization. Emotionally intelligent organizations have a culture and set of norms that are founded on five components: truth, transparency, integrity, empathy, and healthy relationships.

(Shortform note: Experts add that in addition to EI, organizations also need to have balanced incentives or motivators, clear authority and decision makers, accurate and timely information, and clear organizational structure to function properly. When these four components become misaligned, for example the organizational structure becomes a power-hungry hierarchy because the incentives are too money-focused, the organization can become what experts call a “passive-aggressive organization.” This type of organization is the antithesis of an emotionally intelligent organization. So, when creating new norms and culture based on EI, be aware of how these four factors may be impacting the organization’s culture.)

The authors note that changing an organization’s culture is hard, but they recommend a few steps to do so:

1. Uncover the emotional and cultural reality of the organization by asking employees at all levels of the organization open-ended questions. These questions should explore what employees care about, like, and dislike in the organization, and what’s helping or hindering their success. Within their answers, shared language will emerge that’ll uncover the underlying feelings, complex norms, and overall culture of the organization—in other words, the emotional reality.

Interviews Provide More Accurate Data than Questionnaires

Experts explain that interviews and open-ended questions are more effective than questionnaires at uncovering people's true thoughts, ideas, and feelings for a number of reasons.

• Interviewers can gather non-verbal data from employees. For example, if the employee acts nervous after the interviewer asks a question, that will let her know that she might be discussing a sensitive topic.

• Interviewers can gather more precise data because employees have the opportunity to clarify questions, and interviewers have the opportunity to follow up on answers that are too vague.

• Interviewers can adjust their questions in real-time. When employees are interviewed in person, interviewers have more flexibility to go into depth on certain questions or ask additional questions that might help them gather more information. This is especially helpful when exploring a general topic like organizational culture.

2. Uncover the ideal emotional and cultural climate of the organization by asking employees how they think the organization should incorporate the five components into daily functions and interactions. The shared language that emerges will generate goals and will motivate people to change by tapping into their hopes for the future.

(Shortform note: In Crucial Accountability, the authors explain that getting people involved in finding solutions to problems, such as overcoming an organization's cultural barriers, is one of the best ways to accomplish your goals. This is because when employees are involved in coming up with goals or solutions, they’re more intrinsically motivated to actually see these goals accomplished. Further, organizational culture is created by how people in the organization act and feel—so if your employees are motivated to change, you’re almost guaranteed to achieve your cultural goals.)

3. Bring the ideal culture to life by getting people—leaders and employees—emotionally involved. A great way to do this, the authors explain, is to bring people together to share a unique experience that highlights the new culture you want for the company. For example, you can bring employees together to watch an inspirational movie that illustrates the five components and have a discussion afterwards.

Strategies to Gain Emotional Buy-In

Experts add to the authors’ advice on how to gain emotional buy-in from employees by laying out a number of recommendations:

• Make the change real. Put visual reminders around workspaces so employees are constantly looking at the image they want to uphold, for example, positive quotes or posters.

• Create a clear vision that you passionately share with employees—vividly and emotionally describe what you want the culture to become. This passionate speech will inspire employees.

• Establish constant and open communication—regularly discuss with employees instances where they’ve excelled in the new standard and instances where improvement is necessary. Also, encourage employees to discuss their feelings—excitement, concern, doubt, and so on.

4. Make these changes sustainable by ensuring that emotionally intelligent leaders who uphold the five components are present at every level of the organization. Further, make the development of emotionally intelligent leaders and employees an ongoing process—continue training people in EI and hire people who are emotionally intelligent.

(Shortform note: Business and management experts agree with the authors that EI leaders are crucial for sustainable change, but add that diversity is another key component to making organizational change sustainable. When leaders are diverse in age, gender, personality, race, background, and so on, organizations have a higher potential to develop unique and creative solutions, making them better at handling obstacles and unexpected issues. A diverse range of leaders also will be more effective at managing and relating to diverse employees.)