Primal leadership sounds rather frightening at first blush. It conjures up notions of Hobbes' conception of nature being red tooth and claw. However, authors Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, in their book Primal Leadership, mean something quite different. To borrow their words, Primal Leadership means to "prime good feelings in those we lead." Put differently, the primary job of leaders is an emotional one.
Goleman and colleagues have spent many years researching the role of emotions in leadership. To be more precise, the scientific evidence they gathered strongly indicated that a leader's emotional competencies have a significant impact on their overall leadership ability and ultimate success. So what are they competencies they have identified? There are four categories with upwards of 27 competencies involved. The categories are:
1. Self awareness: comprised of the ability to be attuned to one's emotional self and the signals you give to others, an accurate self assessment (not over or under inflated), and a level of self assurance that puts people at ease.
2. Self management: comprised of a number of competencies including self control, transparency, adaptability to fluid and changing situations, taking initiative when needed and a healthy level of optimism.
3. Social awareness: comprised of empathy, organizational awareness, and a strong commitment to service.
4. Relationship management: comprised of a number of competencies, including inspiration, the ability to influence, helping to develop others, being a catalyst for change, dealing with conflict effectively, and building effective teams.
As you can visualize, there is a lot that goes into effective primal leadership and only the very few are truly proficient at most of these. And what about all of this and how it relates to negotiation?
The history of emotions in negotiation is an interesting one. Back in the 1950s, when scholarly work really began about negotiation, theorists primarily came from an Economics background and worked off of a Rational Actor model. The prevailing sentiment was that emotions should be kept out of negotiation. However, that all changed as a myriad of voices from varied disciplines started pointing out that keeping emotions out of negotiation was essentially impossible (for a great read see Beyond Rationality by Fisher and Shapiro). So how does all of this fit with the notion of primal leadership?
Quite well actually -- to the point where the primal concept applies equally to negotiation. Starting at the highest of levels, effective negotiators understand the importance of their counterparts coming away from a negotiation feeling primed about the process and ultimate outcome. We see this time and again where one successful negotiation sets up the next process.
The four categories mentioned in primal leadership are essential for negotiators as well. Taking them one at a time, self awareness in negotiation is fundamentally important since we communicate a significant amount through our non verbal behaviors and our ability to put others at ease.
Self awareness leads to self management and knowing how to control ourselves, when to share different kinds of information, and having the ability to adapt to different situations that emerge during what is an often unpredictable process. Since much of negotiation is about managing oneself in the face of the other, this category is critical for success.
Social awareness and knowing when to empathize, how to deal with the organizational challenges that might be part of any negotiation, and the desire to serve others all come into play in different negotiation processes. If I empathize well, for example, the other negotiator comes away feeling as if I truly understand their needs and interests.
Finally, effective negotiation requires inspiration and the ability to influence others. In fact, there may be no more important skillset than that combination. These skills also help negotiators to address conflicts as they come up and to work with a broad array of people and teams constructively.
In summary, primal leadership connects directly with primal negotiation. A negotiator's job is, in large part, an emotional one. While negotiators may not be leading people in the traditional sense, many of the abilities discussed are critical for effective negotiation. Having both parties leave a negotiation satisfied to a large degree is the objective of most negotiations and being primal leads us clearly in that direction.
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