Literature Review #1

Literature review

Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee

I was given the piece of literature by my Dad after discussing with him the nature of my inquiry. I explained that I wanted to explore the tools required to become a head dancer, manager and choreographer within a leisure entertainments facility. You can purchase the book on Amazon or similar sites.

Primal Leadership assesses the importance of emotionally intelligent leadership. Being a head dancer within Parkdean you are a team leader, you run the rehearsals and lead your team to be the best they can be in terms of their performance on stage. I feel the idea of being emotionally connected with your team is especially important within my job at Parkdean as we all live and work together and we are all working away from our families, which can make the job especially difficult. I also have to give constructive criticism to my team and inform them if they are performing well or are falling behind, again dealing with these sorts of issues it is important that as a team leader you are emotionally connected with your team.

Contents

Part 1 The Power of Emotional Intelligence

·         Primal Leadership

·         Resonant Leadership

·         The Neuroanatomy of Leadership

·         The Leadership Repertoire

·         The Dissonant Styles

Part 2 Making Leaders

·         Becoming a resonant leader

·         The Motivation to change

·         Metamorphosis

Part 3 Building emotionally intelligent organisations

·         The emotional reality of teams

·         Reality and the ideal vision

·         Creating substantial change

‘Throughout history and in cultures everywhere, the leader in any human group has been the one to whom others look for assurance and clarity when facing uncertainty or threat, or when there’s a job to be done. The leader acts as the groups emotional guide.’ This small section from primal leadership evokes a lot of ideas about how I should be acting towards my team. Already I feel like this information will help to develop my leadership skills. I hope to acquire skills from this literature and use them on my team to see if I notice a difference in their work ethic, performance and their reactions to constructive criticism.

Primal Leadership also discusses the difference between Resonant leadership and the discordant leader. ‘When leaders drive emotions positively (…), they bring out everyone’s best. We call this effect resonance. When they drive emotions negatively (…) leaders spawn dissonance, undermining the emotional foundations that let people shine.  A s a head dancer I want my team to shine, however it is very difficult always be positive when you work with a team of six people who you also live with and spend most of your time with. This book will give me some tools to help guide my team positively and hopefully help to achieve better scores from our guests who holiday with Parkdean.

In ‘The Neuroanatomy of Leadership’ section of the book there is a break down of ‘Emotional Intelligence Domains and Associated Competencies’, this information provides a practical guideline for building leadership skills.

I believe this piece of literature will help me develop skills in leadership within my role as a head dancer, I also believe it will coincide with the data I receive from my interviews. I will be asking my interviewees ‘What skills are required in the head dancer role?'.