Recommended book to read on my leadership journey. This book had me not only reflecting on myself but all of my previous leaders and managers. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Gave me insight into where I need to grow. Also insight on how I will not allow others to treat me.

If you are looking for some structure and modelling on how leadership can be analyzed and can be nurtured, this book can help.
It starts with providing a model for resonant leadership consisting of self-awareness, empathy, self management and relationship management. If you are a natural born leader, great! You have a set of these skills for sure, but to know that other exists is certainly worth a moment of reflection.
Then Goleman reviews kinds of leadership styles: visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and commanding. That brings the leader to at least reflect which is his/her dominant style and to become aware that there are other styles which can be better suited in particular circumstances.
Lastly Goleman discusses the dynamics of teams or organizations which have their own set of characteristics or 'norms" that a emotional leader better knows in order to steer better.

I liked the approach that Goleman took- clear, concise examples of each form of leadership: affiliative, democratic, visionary, coaching, pacesetting and demanding. However, I wish he would be even more finely detailed. He gives real world scenarios of each, but I would love to hear examples of the actual words said to achieve an affiliative or visionary leadership style.

This book was helpful in categorizing the forms of leadership for me and for making the bid for use of emotional intelligence in the workplace, but it lacks enough specific advice for me to find it immediately helpful in my day to day life.

Self awareness: accurate self assessment. Confidence in your strengths, honesty in your weakness.

Self management: Self control, transparency, adaptability, initiative, optimism

Social awareness:
Empathy, organizational awareness (cliques, power nodes), Service

Relationship management:
Inspiration (create a vision), influence, develop others, change catalyst, conflict management, teamwork and collaboration

Daniel Goolman is a psychologist who has researched and written extensively on the topic of emotional intelligence. His first book aptly titled “Emotional Intelligence” was written in 1995 and is widely regarded as a pioneering work in the field. This book quickly became a bestseller and the material has been extensively used and quoted in many leadership development courses. Since then, he has written several other books on different areas of emotional intelligence. In another previous book, “ Working with Emotional Intelligence”, Goolman noted it is not enough to have expertise, experience and intelligence – what matters increasingly are personal qualities such as initiative, empathy, adaptability and persuasiveness. These are all components of emotional intelligence (EI). Unlike IQ, which changes little throughout adulthood, however, EI is largely learned and can thus be taught and developed. Specifically Goolman described five major components of emotional intelligence: Personal Competence (self-awareness, emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment and self-confidence); Self-Regulation (self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability and innovation); Motivation (achievement drive, commitment, initiative and optimism); Social Competence (understanding others, developing others, service orientation, leverage diversity, political awareness); and Social Skills (influence, communication, conflict management, leadership, change catalyst, building bonds, collaboration & cooperation, team capabilities).
Some familiarity with Goolman’s previous books is helpful in setting the foundation for Primal Leadership. It however, can be read and understood on its own apart from Goolman’s previous works. In Primal Leadership, Goolman teams up with two other researchers: Annie McKee, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Business and Richard Boyatzis – a professor of organizational behaviour at Case Western Reserve University. The core premise of Primal Leadership is that emotions cannot be kept out of the work environment and that leaders who understand this and who learn how to harness their own emotions and the emotions of their followers are more effective. According to the authors, even if leaders manage to do every other thing right, if they “fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do will work as well as it could or should.” They argue that the emotional task of the leader is the most critical role of the leader – i.e. emotional leadership is primal.
The authors cite research extensively – including research from the fields of psychology and neurology- to explain the importance of leading emotionally. Goolman et al refine Goolman’s earlier expositions of emotional intelligence – distilling it down to identify four core elements: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. In explaining how to lead with emotional intelligence, the authors introduce the concept of resonance – which they define as driving emotions positively. This is contrasted with dissonant leadership, which is more rational and far less influential.
Four resonant leadership styles are described: 1) Diplomatic, 2. Affiliative, 3. Coaching and 4. Visionary. The dissonant leadership styles are pace-setting and commanding. The authors use real life stories and examples to illustrate the various leadership styles and to show the difference between effective and ineffective leadership.
In the second half of the book, Goolman et al outline how to go about becoming a more emotionally intelligent leader. They emphasize that becoming an emotionally intelligent leader is a process that will take time. The suggested plan evolves around setting a vision for oneself, self-reflection, building on strengths while minimizing weaknesses, experimenting and fostering relationships.
Anyone who had worked with people already knows intuitively that emotions are a vital part of leadership. This book, however excels in explaining how best to understand and channel human emotions for maximum effectiveness as a leader. Leaders at all levels are likely to benefit significantly from a careful study of Primal Leadership.

Liked the content, disliked the writing.

The book basically covers leadership from the perspective of emotional intelligence - how it relates to our brains, the 18 competencies behind EI, 6 associated leadership styles, and how to develop them personally and in an organization. Quite a few nice frameworks and new ideas, and I particularly liked how they explain EI constructs/leadership with how our brain works, and explain why conventional training & workshops are ineffective.

But the writing was really dry, quite convoluted (hard to understand in several places), with a fair amount of repetition. Words like "primal leadership", "resonant leadership", "resonance", "dissonance", "emotional intelligence" were repeated continuously and interchangeably throughout the book...

The constructs were also not very clear/ properly mapped out. e.g. the 18 competencies listed didn't fully gel with the competencies listed in the 6 leadership styles (I believe they originally had 25 competencies which they reduced to 18 in this book....but they didn't change the corresponding references in the 6 leadership styles!?).

If I was just glossing thru the book, it won't make a difference conceptually. But since I was serious about applying and sharing the content, I found the gaps disappointing.

Had to take quite a while to regroup on the takeaways from the book and how the points link together.

Still, no regrets picking up the book. If I put aside the writing style and loose ends, it would have been a brilliant book.

Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summa...

Originally published in 2002, it is easy for me to think there isn't a lot that is new. The reason being is that much of what this book contains formed the foundation for so much subsequent discussion, writing and thought in leadership and emotional intelligence. The book works through several sections: I. The Power of Emotional Intelligence (discusses how EI traits impact leadership and behavior); II. Making Leaders (how can one improve EI and leadership skills); and III. Building Emotionally Intelligent Organizations.

The book combines anecdote and studies/data (see the 'notes' at the end of the book if you want to learn more about where their claims come from), is well written, and serves as a great primer on how emotional intelligence traits are critical in leadership. It contains several useful paradigms and guidance on how to operationalize emotional intelligence; below I've pulled out what are - for me -many of the key passages.

Overall is well written, useful, well referenced. Most beneficial for someone who hasn't done much reading into EI and leadership, but truly anyone involved with leading or working with others will likely find benefit in reading it (and if not, then perhaps go back to the index listing of 'self-awareness' and start again on those pages).

Excerpts/quotes/ideas developed:

-EI domains and associated competencies: Self-Awareness (emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment, self-confidence); Self-Management (emotional self-control, transparency, adaptability, achievement, initiative, optimism); Social Awareness (empathy, organizational awareness, service); Relationship Management (inspirational leadership, influence, developing others, change catalyst, conflict management, building bonds, teamwork and collaboration).

-On relationship management: 'the art of handling relationships well, then, begins with authenticity.' '...socially skilled leaders...work under the assumption that nothing important gets done alone.'

-Leadership styles outlined in the book: Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting, and Commanding (be careful with use of the last two!). 'When it comes to filling a leadership position, it pays to find someone who has the flexible repertoire of four or more styles that marks the most outstanding leader...Whatever a leader's repertoire of styles today, it can grow wider tomorrow. The key lies in strengthening the underling emotional intelligence abilities that drive a given style.'

-CEO disease: the information vacuum around a leader created when people withhold important (and usually unpleasant) information. 'To become more effective, leaders need to break through the information quarantine around them - and the conspiracy to keep them pleased, even if uninformed' (esp. for negative feedback).

-'Are some people born with certain levels of empathy or do they learn it? The answer is both. There is a genetic component to emotional intelligence, to be sure, but nurture plays a major role...everyone can learn to improve, no matter where he or she starts out.'

-Boyatzis's Theory of Self-Directed Learning: 1. My ideal self (who do I want to be) -> 2. My real self (who am I, my strengths, my gaps) -> 3. My learning agenda (build on strengths, close gaps) -> 4. Experimenting (with new behaviors, thoughts, feelings; practicing) -> 5. Developing trusting relationships (support, help, encourage each step in process). Learning agenda: better than a 'performance improvement plan.' which is less meaningful to you individually and more anxiety producing.

-'Its possible to improve if you do three things: bring bad habits into awareness, consciously practice a better way, and rehearse that new behavior at every opportunity until it becomes automatic - that is, until mastery has occurred...'

-'When it comes to leadership, you've just begun the task when you change a single leader. The rest of the job is to develop a critical mass of resonant leaders and thereby transform how people work together....The most effective leadership development works hand in hand with parallel transformations in the organization.'

-'when teams face their collective emotional reality, they begin a healthy reexamination of the shared habits that create and hold that reality in place...groups begin to change only when they first have fully grasped the reality of how they function...the root of the problem often lies with long-established and deeply embedded ground rules or habits that govern the group. We call those rules norms when we talk about teams, and culture when we refer to the larger organization.'

-Collective mindfulness: awareness of what the team was doing, and why. Allows team to make decisions about what to do and how to do it, rather than blindly following ineffective norms; includes using 'process norms.'

-'Setting the right ground rules requires an emotionally intelligent leader...the best leaders pay attention and act on their sense of what is going on in the group, and they needn't be obvious about it. Subtle messages...are powerful too. Under such leadership, teams over time naturally accumulate a common, positive lore about how to operate with each other.'

-'When people have authentic conversations about how they feel about their organization, there tends to be a very high level of agreement about what's working and what's not....they create a language that captures the real truth about the forces that affect people's day-to-day lives in the organization as well as their hopes for the future...Discussions about cultural issues, emotional reality of an organization, and how it feels to work there usually result in people feeling some ownership of the problems, the dream, and the process of getting from the real to the ideal.'

-'Creating organizations that are emotionally intelligent is ultimately the leader's responsibility. It is up tot he leader to help the organization identify its reality - including the cultural norms that hinder it -and then to explore the ideal vision of what could be and help members of the organization uncover their own roles in that vision. And it is leaders who attune people to the vision and begin taking action toward change.

-'Leadership development needs to be the strategic priority of the enterprise...to succeed, top management needs to demonstrate that commitment from the top.' (not just a requirement/initiative from the HR department.

-Reasons leadership development initiatives fail: they don't focus on the whole person or on discoveries that lead to sustainable change, ignore the real state of the organization, attempt to change only the person and not the norms of the group, drive the change pocess from the wrong place in the organization (i.e. it needs to come from the top), and failing to develop a meaningful language of leadership.

-From their conclusion: 'Increasingly the best...lead not b virtue of power alone, but by excelling in the art of relationship....leadership excellence is defined in interpersonal terms...leaders have knack for...articulating a mission that resonates with the values of those they lead. These leaders naturally nurture relationships, surface simmering issues, and create human synergies....they build a fierce loyalty by caring about the careers of those who work for them and inspire people to give their best for a mission that speaks to shared values. An emotionally intelligent leader does each of these at the right time, in the right way, with the right person. Such leadership creates a climate of enthusiasm and flexibility...Such leaders are more values-driven, more flexible and informal, and more open and frank than leaders of old....They exude resonance: they have a genuine passion for their mission, and that passion is contagious.'

Resonant Leader was much more to the point. This book went on and on about the same thing

This book gets full marks in my opinion, but I would mention that it is not for everyone. This book is idea if you 1) already have worked in a few organizations enough to experience a variety of leadership styles 2) you have attempted and both failed and succeeded in some area of leadership. This book is then perfect and provides great examples on how to move forward. At the center of this book is a belief in the plasticity of the human mind.

I disagree that one should just read the first and last chapter, though I can appreciate why that one might feel that way if they have, already, superior leadership skills. For the rest of us, the examples in the middle are instructive on how to be a good leader as well as how to help or improve our reaction to those we follow.

Since I must return this book, below is where I'm keeping the very interesting checklist that is in the final chapter:
Leadership Competencies:
SELF AWARENESS
- Emotional self-awareness (attuned to your inner signals, which allows you to be candid)
- Accurate self-assessment (know your strengths and weaknesses to the point where you can joke about them)
-Self Confidence - knowledge of yourself so that you can play to your strengths

SELF MANAGEMENT
-Self Control
-Transparency - act in a manner that is true to your values
-Adaptability - ability to multi-task
-Achievement - be the type of person people will follow
-Initiative - have a sense of control over your own destiny
- Optimism - allows you to roll with the punches

SOCIAL AWARENESS
-Empathy
-Organizational Awareness
- Service - run your organization the way you want to be treated.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
- Inspiration
-Influence
-Developing Others
- Change Catalyst
-Conflict management
-Teamwork and Collaboration

Read it, filled it with sticky tabs to mark what I found compelling, couldn't tell you a single thing I learned. Let's hope it's all still in there (my brain.)

Book is damn good - good examples about how much social interactions are needed to lead ...

3.5+ stars

Emotional Intelligence has become the new catch-phrase in the working world. But what's it really all about? Is it worth the hype?

Well... there are certainly insightful moments in this book. But perhaps because Emotional Intelligence IS such a by-word in the work world, when I read it, I didn't find anything new or extraordinary about it. Probably because I'd already heard about the aspects of emotional intelligence. And I wanted more than just the plain facts... more about how to APPLY or CULTIVATE emotional intelligence for myself.

But Goldman's style is easy to read and thought-provoking.