|
Daniel Goleman, author of Working With Emotional Intelligence is back, and this time he's brought two of his friends Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee with him to help us understand the keys to leadership and find some answers to those questions and then some. I'm a great believer in people's ability to become what ever they want to be provided they are mentally and physically capable of becoming it. (If you can think it and act it you will become it - NLP- Neuro-Linguistic Programming.)
We are to a great extent a by-product of our environment. We tend to take on the look of our surroundings. If you have been exposed to one particular style of leadership then most likely that is the style you'll adopt. (Common sense is not all that common. We aren't born with it, we learn it thought the people we meet, the books we read and the things we see.) Most adults learn by observing and attending the school of hard knocks.
Primal Leadership - Realizing The Power of Emotional Intelligence is a must have book for anyone having aspirations of taking on a management or leadership role. "Great Leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. No matter what leaders set out to do - if leaders fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do will work as well as it could or should". (You know you're reading a good book when you use up a new marker hi-lighting passages like that.) Be sure to check out page thirty-nine. Goleman and Company have put together a leadership competency template. It's a virtual road map to primal leadership built around four traits that all good leaders should have. (1) Self Awareness, (2) Self Management, (3) Social Awareness, and (4) Relationship Management.
Primal Leadership goes on to discuss in detail six different leadership styles and under which situation each style is most suited. Whether you use a Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, Democratic, Pace-Setting or Commanding style each style has its strengths and limitations. Strengths overused can become weaknesses. Great leadership comes in knowing when to use what style under what situation. Think of a flock of geese in flight. The lead goose knows when it is time to drop back into the flock and let someone else lead.
I hope you find this book as interesting and enlightening a read as I did. Daniel Goleman and company bring us a fresh perspective on all the important issues of the day, Making Leaders, Motivation, Sustaining Change, Teams and Giving Life to the Organizations future. Treat yourself, read this book and then go out and become the kind of leader that you would want to follow.
|
