Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead With Emotional Intelligence [Paperback]

I've assigned this book and related exercises to a number of my executive coaching clients. Even if they only breeze through emotional intelligence domains and associated competencies (page 39) and the styles of leadership (summarized on page 55), we have plenty to work with. Clients come back amazed at how often they employ non-resonant styles (and begin to notice the consequences), at how transparent their moods are to others, etc.

One client, hugely successful in prior businesses, wondered aloud if he should "go back" to his former hard-driving (Pace-Setting) style, given his lackluster experience in his current tech start-up using a softer approach.

It helped him to distinguish between his former endeavors (where his teams were highly self-motivated, competent, and connected to one another) and his current endeavor (where there was less intrinsic trust and some questions about competencies on the team). Rather than the often dissonant Pace-Setting style, he realized the need to emphasize more resonant styles, especially some very specific Coaching style interventions to address competency issues. After working together, it wasn't just about "hard" or "soft" styles in business, but about appropriate styles for different situations.

If you're interested in "integral theory" then this is one of of the ones that counts. Here's a quick mapping of models that Primal Leadership explores and how they relate to the the domains of integral theory:

* Self-awareness and self-management map to the subjective world, my world, the world of "I." While "mood" is covered, I would have liked to see more of a distinction between mood (a person's ongoing "climate") and emotions (a person's current reactions or "weather").

* Social awareness and relationship management map to the intersubjective world; the world of business, culture, and relationships, where many rules are unwritten and must be sensed. Social competence is the world of "We."

* The "neuroanatomy of leadership," with its focus on how the brain works and learns, maps to the objective world, the world of physical phenomena and measurements, the world of "It."

Primal Leadership is an easy read, but it's also a great reference, with models that people "get." Highly recommended!

On the negative side, the authors appear so disconnected with reality that it is often difficult to take them seriously. They honestly seem to think that emotional intelligence (EI) is the only important aspect to business and that personality, ambitions, abilities (other than EI abilities), and strategy are virtually irrelevant. They never acknowledge many aspects of the real world such as some people don't belong in certain roles or organizations and need to be removed, ideally with "EI". Another example is that leaders need to be focused on the real world and not just emotions. If assumptions about the market for a new product are found to be falsly optimistic, all the "EI" in the world is not going to replace admitting a mistake was made and pulling the plug.

While it doesn't have the emotional component, I'd recommend The Prime Movers by Edwin Locke to cover the other aspects of leadership that are neglected by this book.

The book is broken into three parts: The Power Of Emotional Intelligence, Making Leaders, and Building Emotionally Intelligent Organizations. The main points of The Power of Emotional Intelligence are that leaders are not born, with opportunity and training leaders can be made, and leaders either create resonance or dissonance. Resonant leaders bring positive energy, create excitement and passion for an organizational goal or objective, inspire excellence, and promote collaboration. Dissonant leaders are out of touch with the feelings of others, create emotionally toxic environments, and dispirit by misleading or manipulating. The authors describe four traits that emotional intelligent leaders have in varying degrees: self awareness, self management, social awareness, and relationship management.

The main points of Making Leaders are that many leaders do not get appropriate feedback, training and seminars rarely provide lasting change, and self directed learning is the best way to change behavior. Self Directed Learning is a five step process that address who you want to be, who you are, developing an agenda, practicing, and feedback.

The main points of Building Emotionally Intelligent Organizations are that the most effective teams are those where the leader relinquishes complete control to the team and sustainable changes should be an ongoing process rather than a one time program.

Overall, we felt that the book was well presented. We, each had a different break-through with the book. For instance, one group member felt that the discussion about leaders being made instead of born was beyond prevailing mainstream thinking. Another group member had never heard of the CEO Disease, which describes how, as a leader ascends in power and influence, the quality of feedback diminishes and the leader becomes unable to correctly self assess their effectiveness. Others related to the differences between resonant and dissonant leaders and the realization that many of our leaders are untrained and have no organizational opportunities to grow as a leader.

Our action plan includes making sure that leaders have 360 degree feedback, access to mentors and coaches, establish weaknesses and goals to bridge the gaps between their strengths and weaknesses, and have opportunities both social and professional to practice.

In conclusion, we would recommend this book to some people but not to everyone. The book focused more on theory rather than practice. We would have preferred several different applications of the theories to case studies, and a more in depth discussion of the four main skills used by managers. Overall, the book was relatively easy to follow, but difficult to remain engaged in. There were some discussions about neuroanatomy that some of us found hard to understand and that tended to break the flow of the book. Primal Leadership had great leadership philosophies in it, but we found many of those philosophies were not knew. We agreed that there are other books on the market that are easier to read and provide more application.