Leadership and people management principles

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

In the book "Primal Leadership: Realizing the power of emotional intelligence," authors David Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee presented and discussed the findings of their research about more than 3,000 executives' leadership styles. More importantly, the discussion delved onto the relationship that these executives have with their emotional intelligence. Leadership style is dependent on emotional intelligence primarily because an executive's ability to adapt to problems, challenges, and unexpected situations depend mostly on one's skill to adapt or adjust efficiently to these situations / problems. From the researchers' findings, it was found that "leaders who used styles with a positive emotional impact saw decidedly better financial returns than those who did not."

The research was able to uncover and determine the different leadership styles extant in most organizations today. Mainly, leaders are categorized as either having the visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, or commanding leadership styles. Among these, only pacesetting and commanding were assessed to be less effective than the other leadership styles. However, the authors also noted that these styles were not used by effective leaders constantly. In fact, the effectiveness and efficiency of the leader is determined by his/her ability to adapt and shift from one style to another, if the problem calls for a shift or change in leadership style. Thus, more than knowledge and utilization of these leadership styles, Goleman et. al. emphasized the importance of the leader's flexibility and capability to adapt to his/her "social environment" -- that is, the current state of interactions and relations among members of the organization s/he belongs to.

Another important insight discussed in the book is not only the importance of how a leader should be aware of his/her social environment, but also on how s/he must be aware of his/her own performance in the organization. This is perhaps most important, mainly because one cannot know if a leader is effective and efficient if s/he does not receive honest feedback from his co-executives and subordinates. The authors identified this problem as the "CEO Disease," an occurrence wherein there is "information vacuum around a leader created when people withhold important (and usually unpleasant) information." The CEO Disease is a manifestation of a leader's lack of emotional intelligence, losing his/her 'touch' not only on the people s/he leads, but also on herself/himself as well. This dilemma resulted from lack of self-awareness, and can be as detrimental as one leader's lack of awareness of the cultural and social environment of the organization s/he manages.