Book SummaryPrimal Leadership, by Daniel Goleman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Primal Leadership

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.

Daniel Goleman is a psychologist and the New York Times best-selling author of both Emotional Intelligence and _[Social...

Primal Leadership Summary Part 1: What Is Emotional Intelligence?

The authors define emotional intelligence (EI) as the ability to understand and manage our own emotions while also being able to understand and influence the emotions of others.

Emotional intelligence is composed of four main skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Each of these skills contains a set of microskills—specific competencies that give people the ability to successfully execute the skill:

1. Self-awareness is the ability to understand your own emotions—what caused them and how they might impact other people. The microskills you need to excel at self-awareness are: understanding your emotions, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and having self-confidence.
2. Self-management means that you’re able to manage and rationalize your emotions—that you know when it is and isn’t appropriate to express them and how to do so effectively. The microskills you need to excel at self-management are: emotional control, adaptability in the face of ambiguity and challenges, high personal standards, personal motivation, and optimism.
3. Social awareness is the ability **to understand the emotions of other...

Primal Leadership Summary Part 2: How to Create Group Harmony

The authors explain that there are six primary leadership styles that can create group harmony: visionary, coaching, collaborative, poll-taking, standard-setting, and authoritarian. Most effective leaders use many of these six styles on any given day or week, applying the style that’ll be most effective based on the situation, people, and emotions involved.

To effectively use each of these styles, it’s important to exhibit the microskills they’re based on—if you lack the necessary microskills, you might end up creating discord rather than harmony. For example, if you try to create harmony with the visionary style but lack the ability to inspire others, you're more likely to create discord.

Additional Leadership Styles

While the six leadership styles discussed in Primal Leadership are common, experts note that there are four additional styles that are prevalent in US work culture: laissez-faire, transformational, transactional, and bureaucratic. Laissez-faire leaders delegate many tasks to team members but provide little to no supervision. Transformational leaders focus on...

Primal Leadership Summary 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...

Primal Leadership Summary 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...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Your EI Strengths and Weaknesses

To improve your emotional intelligence, identify the EI skills and microskills you rely on so that you can then identify your weak spots. One of the best ways to do this is to analyze which leadership styles you rely on: visionary, coaching, collaborative, poll-taking, standard-setting, or authoritarian.

Which of the six leadership styles do you typically use when managing your team?