As I mentioned in my last post the book Primal Leadership by Daniel Goldman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee is a book that I highly recommend for anyone in a leadership position. Below are a few passages I thought were interesting.
"The more open leaders are, how well they express their own enthusiasm, for example, the more readily others will feel that same contagious passion. Leaders with that kind of talent are emotional magnets; people naturally gravitate to them. If you think about the leaders with whom people most want to work in an organization, they probably have this ability to exude upbeat feelings. It's the one reason emotionally intelligent leaders attract talented people - for the pleasure of working in their presence." page 11
"Without a healthy does of heart, a leader may manage but he does not lead." page 21
"Today, as leaders are called on to build their companies by creating the future rather than investing in the past, vision matters more than ever. Vision requires what looks like to others a leap of faith; the ability to go beyond the data and to make a smart guess." page 43
"Because emotions are so contagious - especially from leaders to others in the group - leaders' first tasks are the emotional equivalent of good hygiene: getting their own emotions in hand. Quite simply, leaders cannot effective manage emotions in anyone else without first handling their own. How a leader feels thus becomes more than just a private matter; given the reality of emotional leakage, a leader's emotions have public consequences." page 46
"When it comes to building leadership skills that last, motivation and how a person feels about learning matters immensely. People learn what they want to learn. If learning is forced on us, even if we master it temporarily (for instance, by studying for a test), it is soon forgotten. That may be why one study found that the half-life of knowledge learned in an MBA course was about six weeks." page 99
