Management and leadership concepts and distinctions

Primal Leadership vs. Getting Things Done

"Primal Leadership" by Daniel Goleman applies the concepts of emotional intelligence to leadership. The book postulates that a leader must spread positivity and radiate energy and enthusiasm and not negativity and dissonance in order to lead an organization towards success.

Indeed, the emotional task of a leader is primal, according to Goleman. Leaders in today's organizations must "drive the collective emotions in a positive direction" and clear the smog created by toxic emotions. If the organization's members' emotions are pushed towards enthusiasm, performance will accelerate. If, however, people are driven towards "rancor and anxiety," performance will suffer as the people are thrown off stride.

The trick for leaders to push their organization's members in a positive direction emotionally is emotional intelligence. How leaders handle themselves and their own relationships is the leading controller of top organizational performance: "Leaders who maximize the benefits of primal leadership drive the emotions of those they lead in the right direction."

More specifically, resonant leaders know when to collaborate and when to be visionary; in other words, they know when to listen to others and when to simply command. This knowledge comes from emotional intelligence. Resonant leaders with emotional intelligence naturally nurture relationships within their organizations, air latent or simmering issues and crate the human synergies of a group in harmony. That is how they build fierce loyalties within their organizations, and that is how they drive their organizations towards success.

In "Getting it Done," David Allen postulates that it is indeed possible to have an overwhelming number of tasks to accomplish but still function in a productive, stress-free manner.

Specifically, Allen stresses the five stages of mastering work flow. First, there is the Collect stage. One must know what one must do first before one can do it. Allen asks us to process all of our collection of work efforts in several types of in-boxes: physical inbox, paper-based note-taking devices, electronic note-taking devices, voice-recording devices and email. The trick is to minimize your inbox collection devices so you only have a few places to look for tasks to be completed.

The second stage is process. What do you actually do with the collected info that comes in? It is simply not good enough to collect properly; you need to triage and have a process for defining what to do with each piece of information.

Then you organize. For nonactionable items you processed, categorize them as trash, incubation tools and reference storage. For the actionable items, there are more categories: list of projects, storage of files for project plans or materials, a calendar, a list of reminders for next actions, and a list of reminders for things you're waiting on.

Then you actually do the work. Allen recommends that we take the organization we've just performed, and according to our priorities, do the work by looking at context, time available, energy available and priority.

Finally, review. Look at the positives and negatives that erupted from the task and work flow just completed so the five stages can be improved upon the next time you categorize the work that must be completed.

The two works, "Getting Things Done" and "Primal Leadership" deal with success and success achievement, but take entirely different routes. Primal Leadership focuses on the intangibles: emotional intelligence that guides an organization towards success. The focus is on relationships outside self. Getting Things Done, on the other hand, focuses on self. The book isolates the reader from his or her peers and forces him or her to structure priorities to get work done.

Getting Things Done looks inward and Primal Leadership looks outward. However, closer examination of the two works reveals that one outlook cannot survive without the other. If a leader wants to radiate positive emotionality and help her organization succeed, she must be organized herself and be able to cope with a large and varied workload. The image she portrays to her subordinates, peers and bosses must be one of calm in the storm. Then, and only then, will she be able to lead with success.

Take real estate property development, for instance. A property management firm's executive will have on his plate several properties -- perhaps a shopping center, office complexes and warehouses. In order to motivate his employees -- for instance, the on-the-ground managers at each of the sites -- the leader must be organized himself. He must follow the five stages detailed by Allen in Getting Things Done.

In other words, he must be able to prioritize the work that needs to get done after effective collecting and categorizing the assignments. For instance, if there are tenant problems in the shopping center and utility contract disputes in the warehouse, he must know which to tackle first and inwardly set his goals and priorities. That is how he will put forth an air of productivity and enthusiasm and positivity to inspire his subordinates to remain positive too.

Take the direct link between decision catalysts in Allen's book and the concept of emotional intelligence in Goleman's book. In Getting Things Done, Allen stresses that once in a while there may be a significant decision you need to make but cannot (or do not want to) right away. This is actually fine, contrary to popular thinking, as long as you've concluded that the additional information that you need that is holding up the decision-making process is to come from an internal and not external source. If you need to sleep on it, then it is fine to wait.