Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance

Abstract

of emotional intelli-gence at work began toreceive widespread atten-tion, we frequently heardexecutives say – in the samebreath,mind you–“That’s incred-ible,”and,“Well,I’ve known that allalong.” They were responding to ourresearch that showed an incontrovert-ible link between an executive’s emotional maturity,exemplified by such capabilities as self-awareness andempathy, and his or her financial performance. Simplyput, the research showed that “good guys”– that is, emo-tionally intelligent men and women – finish first.We’ve recently compiled two years of new researchthat, we suspect, will elicit the same kind of reaction.People will first exclaim, “No way,” then quickly add,“But of course.”We found that of all the elements affect-ing bottom-line performance, the importance of theleader’s mood and its attendant behaviors are mostsurprising. That powerful pair set off a chain reaction:The leader’s mood and behaviors drive the moods andbehaviors of everyone else. A cranky and ruthless bosscreates a toxic organization filled with negative under-achievers who ignore opportunities; an inspirational,inclusive leader spawns acolytes for whom any challengeis surmountable. The final link in the chain is perfor-mance: profit or loss.Our observation about the overwhelming impact ofthe leader’s “emotional style,”as we call it,is not a whole-sale departure from our research into emotional intelli-gence. It does, however, represent a deeper analysis ofour earlier assertion that a leader’s emotional intelligencecreates a certain culture or work environment. High lev-els of emotional intelligence,our research showed,createclimates in which information sharing,trust,healthy risk-taking, and learning flourish. Low levels of emotionalintelligence create climates rife with fear and anxiety.Because tense or terrified employees can be very produc-tive in the short term,their organizations may post goodresults, but they never last.Our investigation was designed in part to look at howemotional intelligence drives performance–in particular,at how it travels from the leader through the organiza-tion to bottom-line results.“What mechanism,”we asked,“binds the chain together?”To answer that question, weturned to the latest neurological and psychological re-search. We also drew on our work with business leaders,observations by our colleagues of hundreds of leaders,andHay Group data on the leadership styles of thousands ofexecutives.From this body of research,we discovered thatemotional intelligence is carried through an organizationlike electricity through wires. To be more specific, theleader’s mood is quite literally contagious, spreadingquickly and inexorably throughout the business.We’ll discuss the science of mood contagion in moredepth later, but first let’s turn to the key implications ofour finding.If a leader’s mood and accompanying behav-iors are indeed such potent drivers of business success,then a leader’s premier task–we would even say his primaltask – is emotional leadership. A leader needs to makesure that not only is he regularly in an optimistic, au-thentic, high-energy mood, but also that, through hischosen actions, his followers feel and act that way, too.Managing for financial results, then, begins with theleader managing his inner life so that the right emotionaland behavioral chain reaction occurs.Managing one’s inner life is not easy,of course.For manyof us, it’s our most difficult challenge. And accuratelygauging how one’s emotions affect others can be just asdifficult.We know of one CEO,for example,who was cer-tain that everyone saw him as upbeat and reliable; his di-rect reports told us they found his cheerfulness strained,even fake,and his decisions erratic.(We call this commondisconnect “CEO disease.”) The implication is that primalleadership demands more than putting on a game faceevery day. It requires an executive to determine, throughreflective analysis, how his emotional leadership drivesthe moods and actions of the organization,and then,withequal discipline, to adjust his behavior accordingly.That’s not to say that leaders can’t have a bad day orweek: Life happens.And our research doesn’t suggest thatgood moods have to be high-pitched or nonstop – opti-mistic,sincere,and realistic will do.But there is no escap-ing the conclusion that a leader must first attend to theimpact of his mood and behaviors before moving on tohis wide panoply of other critical responsibilities. In thisarticle,we introduce a process that executives can followto assess how others experience their leadership, and we

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