MGMT 601 Book Review: Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee

This assignment is a book review of 'Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence' by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee. The review summarizes the book's core arguments, emphasizing the critical role of emotional intelligence in effective leadership. It discusses concepts like resonance and dissonance, highlighting how leaders' emotional states influence their followers. The review covers the authors' framework of emotional intelligence, including personal and social competence. It analyzes the book's structure, the contrasting leadership styles, and how to become a resonant leader. Furthermore, it critiques the book based on its purpose, audience, authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, and coverage. The reviewer identifies the most interesting aspects of the book and explains how the concepts learned can be applied in a professional setting. The reviewer also reflects on the book's relevance to their own leadership development, and recommends the book to others, concluding with references to cited works.

Running Head: BOOK REVIEW
Book Review
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Author Note

1BOOK REVIEW
Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence- A Book Review
The author of the book Primal Leadership is Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and
Annie McKee who are Richard’s colleagues. The authors belong to different backgrounds and
educational disciplines and provided their perspectives in a single piece of work. The book
speaks the importance of the emotional intelligence which is a driving factor for the great
leaders. It further shows how the actions and behavior of the leaders puts huge impact on the
surrounding people who follow them. The definition of a good leader is not who leads better,
but lies on the visions, the targets, the audience, their dreams and the performances. The most
essential characteristic of a leader is to share a positive instinct among the people he/she leads
that helps to bring the best out of the people.
As the book defines, the primal leadership is the quality in a leader to engage with the
followers and direct them towards a crucial element within an ideal leadership. The primal
leadership is made unique due to the fact that it talks about the emotional component of the
leadership. Undoubtedly, a leader has a string effect on the group of people. Hence, it is the
responsibility of a leader to move the inner feelings of the followers in a positive direction in
order to nullify the negative ones (Allameh et al., 2015). The process of driving the collective
emotions in a positive manner is referred to as “resonance” whereas when it is lead negatively is
called the “ dissonance”. The author provide a unique perspective on the emotional -intelligence
discourse of leadership. They suggest that the emotional -intelligence is founded on the few
fundamental factors such as vision, dream, targets and performance. As per their observations,
an actual leader is one who can use his abilities to move , stimulate , ignite the emotions of the
followers to get them led in the correct direction.

2BOOK REVIEW
The discourse in the book is commenced by the theory on what constitutes an effective
leader and what characteristics are required for being called the “primal leadership” . Although
they talk about, reams , purposes, goals , values, critical for leadership, it is also admitted that
these are not the core reasons for which a leader can be called a “ primal leader”. Therefore , the
book cannot be called simply the accumulation of the theoretical abstractions but an insightful
analysis of the emotional aspects of a leader which contributes in the leadership and the
performance of the organization as a whole.
In the book, Goleman provides some empirical proofs on the fact that the negative
attitudes of the leaders can influence the attitudes of the followers too and t can be evident in the
outcomes of the performance. A correlation has been built between the emotional condition of
the workers and the performance of the organization as a whole. When the issue was examined
from the medical point of view, it was found that the emotional status of the human brain has a
deep relationship with the activities. The authors further said that this is the reason behind the
leaders’ reflection of the negative or positive behavior on the workers or the followers. The
attitudes of people, the behavior and the attributes are strongly linked to the performance and the
profits of the organizations.
They suggests that the core characteristics of a leader which does not exist in others are
the primal leadership emotional intelligences. This is why the authors elaborate in the entire
book that there is a crucial role of the emotional intelligence in shaping the positive attitudes of
people. They explain the fact saying that “all leaders need enough intellect to grasp the specifics
of the tasks and challenges at hand”. They further explain that “ However intellect alone will not
make a leader, the leaders execute a vision by motivating, inspiring , guiding , listening,
persuading and most crucially through creating resonance”. The resonance is suggested to be the

3BOOK REVIEW
effect of the leader’s emotions which changes the behavior of the followers. The book provides
two contrasting accounts of the leaders which relate the bad message to the employers along with
showing how the results were completely different. They keep on demonstrating that the skills
and competencies are clearly taught in the business schools but nowhere it is taught how to apply
the emotional intelligence (EI) in the business. The importance of the emotional intelligence is
crucial bit it is kept unacknowledged in many areas (Dabke, 2016). They suggest that the leaders
can fail due to the lack of the emotional intelligence even after having everything they need. The
primal task is to have the emotional intelligence which can be transmitted to the group members
as supported by the scholars. The lack of the emotional intelligence can lead to the dissonance-
negative behavior.
While exploring the reasons behind the lack of emotional intelligence, the authors found
distress to be the primary reason. Along with eroding the mental stability, it reduces the
effectiveness of the emotional intelligence. Goleman further highlights that the understanding o
the group members and their emotional state is highly important for the leader because the
attitudes of the leaders is expected to be shaped according to that. Those leaders who lack
empathy leave the negative, angry, resentful effect on the followers. The followers or the
employees might lose their motivation to work with the leader or follow him (Maqbool et al.,
2017). The authors support their argument by saying that it is not a new concept that the leaders
are expected to generate optimism, excitement, and passion along with cultivating an atmosphere
of trust and co-operation. They existence of the emotional intelligence is connected to a broader
perspective of EI highlighting on the relationship with the resonance and the human existence.
This is the reasons why the authors have indicated the use of emotional intelligence by the

4BOOK REVIEW
company Johnson and Johnson. It is the part of their managerial activities and the leadership to
which influences their profit levels.
In the next half of the book, the authors put forward the features of the emotional
intelligence in a visual platform. There are two major parts of the emotional intelligence such as
the personal competence and the social competence. The personal competence is classified from
two different perspectives such as the self-awareness and the self management. On the other
hand, the social competence is classified into two parts such as the social awareness and the
relationship management. The feelings of own strength and weaknesses is dealt with in the self-
awareness (Parrish, 2015). The self-management looks at the self-control, the honesty, the
transparency displaying the integrity every-time. The other part of the emotional intelligence is
the social competence covering the social awareness and the relationship management. The
social awareness deals with the understanding of others’ feelings having read the current
situation in the organization. The relationship management looks at the inspiration leadership
that motivates and guides the followers or the employees.
It is a tactical approach in the human relation emphasizing on the art of persuasion. The
relationship management develops other, changes the catalysts and manages the new directions
such as the conflict management, the bond building and team building approaches. It is to be
noted as the authors pointed out that the second part of the emotional intelligence is captured by
the social awareness, and the management too (Reisel, 2016). The boundaries of responsibilities
need to be understood properly. The second part of the book also highlights the bad outcomes of
bad behavior. They show that a leader has to function in an effective way in a particular point of
time. At one point if the book, they argue that the style of a leader is based on the performance
targets. Among the three authors, Goleman quotes that the “Initiative, in the commanding style,

5BOOK REVIEW
often takes the form not just of seizing opportunities, but also of employing an unhesitating
‘command’ tone, issuing orders on the spot rather than pausing to ponder a course of action”.
Many examples are provided to show how the tone of the leader initiates anger, frustrations and
resentments. Hence, the commanding style must be used with seriousness and caution.
In chapter six of the book , the authors talk about how to become a resonant leader. A “
CEO disease “ has been captured in this chapter suggesting that the CEO of a European company
wanted their employees to give information but found struggle in understanding what the
employees sought. The book is a well structured document and must be followed by the leaders
of every organization. The top level management of the large companies should recognize that
changing nature of the business can lead to success only if the people are encouraged to behave
in different way and flourish their various talents (Tyczkowski et al., 2015). It will definitely
earn them a competitive advantage. They must put all their efforts on the managers and modify
them rather than changing the entire workforce one by one. Such a different approach is a
realistic way of charting a process of changing the whole organizational culture. The authors
well captured another instance where they saw open resistance to change. An employee schemed
a plan to dismiss the leader from the job just because he has expressed his disagreement on a
certain topic. It must come as a surprise that the leadership must not intellectualize a particular
issue and implement it on the followers to become solely committed to it. Therefore, the only
way is to make the leaders undergo the leadership training and education for addressing the
organizational change.
On a concluding note, the Primal leadership provides insight into the process of the
establishing the emotional intelligence within the team and the organizations. It requires reversal
from the personal change which begins with the identification of the groups and the ideal vision

6BOOK REVIEW
to itself prior to taking a strong look into the “emotional reality”. The author argue that during
the operation with resonance among a particular team, it is crucial in the unlocking of the
potential. Overall, the authors have given a brief bit brisk insights including the notes which will
help the leadership practitioners upto greater extent in understanding their roles and
responsibilities (Cooper, 2018). It is an effective guide for the leaders, the managers, the
educational practitioners responsible for caring for the people.
I have become much inspired by the characteristics of an effective leader as pointed out
by the authors. The book is reliable as it is based on various empirical studies and draws
examples from various relevant corporations. They have reviewed the literature and based their
theory on that. The authors have fulfilled the objective of their book which was to reflect on the
importance of primal leadership or the emotional intelligence in the leaders. I have learnt the
value of emotional intelligence over the artificial intelligence in the business context and in other
contexts too. In future, I will focus on the application of the emotional intelligence within myself
as I am also a leadership practitioner. I will try my best to encourage my followers and drive a
positive sense among them. They will not feel forced to follow the way I will lead hem but they
will love to do so. I have learnt a lot from this book and it justifies its title to the core. It is full of
examples from the past as well as from the time of its publication. I will recommend this book
definitely to my friends and my co-mates because anyone can read this for the easy language it is
written in and gather knowledge on the topic.

7BOOK REVIEW
Reference
Allameh, S. M., Pool, J. K., Kazemi, R. V., & Mostafavi, M. (2015) The impact of emotional
intelligence on transformational leadership and leader effectiveness. Latin American
Journal of Management for Sustainable Development, 2(1), 83-93.
Cooper, J. N. (2018). The Influence of Emotional Intelligence and Personality Traits on Effective
Leadership.
Crowne, K. A., Young, T. M., Goldman, B., Patterson, B., Krouse, A. M., & Proenca, J. (2017).
Leading nurses: emotional intelligence and leadership development
effectiveness. Leadership in Health Services, 30(3), 217-232.
Dabke, D. (2016). Impact of leader’s emotional intelligence and transformational behavior on
perceived leadership effectiveness: A multiple source view. Business Perspectives and
Research, 4(1), 27-40.
Maqbool, R., Sudong, Y., Manzoor, N., & Rashid, Y. (2017). The impact of emotional
intelligence, project managers’ competencies, and transformational leadership on project
success: An empirical perspective. Project Management Journal, 48(3), 58-75.
Parrish, D. R. (2015). The relevance of emotional intelligence for leadership in a higher
education context. Studies in Higher Education, 40(5), 821-837.
Reisel, W. D. (2016). Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Journal
of Behavioral and Applied Management, 4(2), 1072.

8BOOK REVIEW
Tyczkowski, B., Vandenhouten, C., Reilly, J., Bansal, G., Kubsch, S. M., & Jakkola, R. (2015).
Emotional intelligence (EI) and nursing leadership styles among nurse managers. Nursing
Administration Quarterly, 39(2), 172-180.