Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance

You've heard about the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace--that there's an incontrovertible link between executives' emotional maturity, exemplified by such capabilities as self-awareness and empathy, and their financial performance. Now, new research extends that base. Drawing on two years of research, the authors contend that the leader's mood and his or her attendant behaviors have enormous effects on bottom-line performance. Accordingly, top executives' primal task is emotional leadership. In other words, before leaders can turn to setting strategy, fixing budgets, or hiring staff, they must first attend to the impact of their moods and behaviors. To help them do that, the authors introduce a five-step process of self-reflection and planning. Executives should ask themselves: Who do I want to be? Who am I now? How do I get from here to there? How do I make change stick? And who can help me? Working through this process will help leaders determine how their emotional leadership is driving the moods and actions of their organizations and how to adjust their behavior accordingly.