What are primal emotions? They are the first, strongest feelings that come to mind when you think about a particular topic. They can be difficult to harness and control, but they’re also powerful motivators.
The relationship between emotional intelligence and leadership pdf is a PDF document that discusses the power of primal emotions. It also discusses how to harness those emotions in order to become a great leader.
Whether or whether you run a company, Jackie Barretta’s book “Primal Teams” is a fantastic place to start if you’ve been looking for answers to the issue of how to create the most successful and happy teams.
You’ll receive a highly fleshed-out version of how to assist the people you work with accomplish excellent outcomes since it’s jam-packed with valuable material, references to research, examples, and well-thought-out analyses.
The notion is that by tapping into your team members’ basic emotions, you can motivate them to accomplish great things.
Because outlining all Jackie discloses would take a book, I’ve just gone through the first couple of chapters, intending to give you a foundation on which to build, and, of course, to urge you to read the remainder of the book, which genuinely inspired me!
You’ll be well on your way to creating happy, creative, and inspired teams even if you can simply absorb these few ideas and practices.
Enter the contest below if you’d like to win a copy of the book; otherwise, keep reading.
Book Giveaway for Primal Teams
But first, a little context and background knowledge.
Jackie Barretta, who is she?
Jackie Barretta is a prominent Fortune 500 C-level executive and Big Four consultant in the Information Technology sector with a 25-year track record. She has managed big companies with hundreds of people through difficult periods and significant changes. She is a founding partner of Nura Group, a consulting company focused on improving team creativity and performance. She specializes in identifying the super-energy of top teams and assisting companies in developing it in their own teams.
I’d want to establish a small company; is Primal Teams the right fit for me?
I had the same thought at the start. Many of our Bplans readers are sole proprietors or have a small staff. Before I offered the book as a gift, I wanted to check in with Jackie to get a response to this specific issue. Below you’ll discover her responses to this and a few additional questions:
1. Is this book useful to me, or is it just for people in charge of big corporations?
Smaller businesses are just as concerned about team dynamics. And one thing I’ve seen is that more startup-type companies, particularly those attempting to bring something new and unusual to market, need a lot of innovation. There’s also a lot of creativity.
Everything I speak about is based on the idea that teams need to be more creative everywhere, not just in startups, but in every situation where they need to be more innovative.
How can you encourage teams to think more creatively? This is the central question of the book.
2. Should I read this book before starting my company or after I’ve tried my hand at it?
It applies to both entrepreneurs and managers at all stages of their careers. For both small and big businesses.
If you’re establishing a company, one of the first things you should consider is the composition of your staff. Another important factor is a team’s emotional vitality. Hiring the proper individuals is what makes this happen. We don’t always have the chance to bring in the perfect individuals who have that enthusiasm, who will work well together, and who will have that unique connection. However, having the capacity to build that from the start and being aware of the kind of individuals you hire and their emotional energy is very helpful. I believe that the more prepared you can be with this sort of information, the better off you will be.
3. Does the advice in the book, as well as the methods described in it, applicable to all industries?
I believe that all sectors, in general, have a need to be more innovative.
One of the studies that I like to reference in my book and when I talk is one conducted by IBM in 2010. “What is the number one thing your teams need to accomplish or have in order to be more successful in the future?” they asked CEOs all around the world. “Creativity,” said the majority of the CEOs.
They essentially said: Every day, our businesses are confronted with fresh and varied circumstances. As a result, our consumers have grown more demanding, we’re operating in areas with new government laws, and we’re being bombarded with so much data that we can’t even understand it all.
Again, these are very difficult circumstances. And these are CEOs from a variety of industries speaking. They claim that the most important thing they can do to be really effective in these types of settings is to develop individuals who can adapt and solve issues on the go.
They must be very quick on their feet. Teams must respond to client requirements so fast that there isn’t enough time for a team member to float an idea or an issue all the way to the top of the business, receive a response, and then have it come back down. They must be able to come up with solutions quickly and on the spot. The capacity to be more innovative is required at all levels of the business.
That is, after all, what it is all about. The quotes, suggestions, and methods listed below are all drawn from Primal Teams. Please leave a comment if you have any questions regarding the book, and we will try our best to answer them or find out more from Jackie.
The first ground guideline is to be creative.
When you open the book, you’ll find that we get straight down to business. Creativity is at the heart of everything.
“An organization’s success is dependent on critical times when teams come up with new methods to provide value to consumers and perform better in more demanding circumstances. Too frequently, a team under duress succumbs to negative emotions like fear and worry and devises a clumsy solution that barely gets the job done, takes an eternity to execute, and requires continuous maintenance.”
The first thing you’ll need to accomplish is maximize your team’s creative potential before you start working through the methods outlined in the book. “You must encourage creativity at every level,” Jackie adds. And the quickest way to do so is to tap into happy feelings.
“Most companies today are focused on allowing data-driven choices and simplifying procedures, but these approaches will never ignite the innovation required to get and remain ahead of the competition. The proper mindset is required for creativity and innovation.”
The issue then becomes: how can you really encourage your staff to be more creative in their work? What techniques can you, as the team leader, use to assist with this?
1. Start with optimism and arousal levels that are suitable for you.
Remember that you’re attempting to change people’s feelings. You can’t make someone be creative if they are miserable, after all. When individuals are comfortable and at ease, they are more likely to be creative.
“Primal team leaders take particular measures to assist individuals feel the right degrees of arousal and the ideal amount of pleasant emotions because they know that this state promotes the highest level of creativity. They pay careful attention to the emotions that flow through their team, and they take measures to modify less-than-ideal sentiments when required. While they can’t make someone or a group think creatively, they may assist them in opening the door.”
The strategies and methods discussed in this book all help to make creativity a more natural element of day-to-day activities in the workplace. Continue reading to learn more, and if you have time, visit Jackie’s blog. It’s jam-packed with helpful tiny tidbits that you can put to use right away.
2. Make it a practice to draw from “heartfelt emotion.”
It’s not only about keeping things upbeat when you draw on your own real feelings. It deepens the effect of good encounters in the end. Creativity will be a lot easier to come by.
“Unlike relatively moderate sentiments like relief, pleasure, or gratitude, strong genuine emotions may stop our logical thinking processes and link us to others in a far more deep manner.” Heartfelt emotions make our hearts sing, and they light a fire under our cognitive and perceptive skills, which are qualities that every company values.”
Heartfelt emotion should, at least in my opinion, generate more good emotions and therefore fuel innovation, but few of the businesses I’ve worked with have adopted this approach, most likely due to ignorance.
“When team members are moved by genuine emotion, their creative potential soars. That’s why primal team leaders strive to elicit strong emotional responses from their followers.”
Have you ever worked for someone who was so expressive of their feelings?
3. You’ll have to pull off the unimaginable…
“Explode the illusion of the pleasant workplace,” Jackie says, since the reality is, you can’t make everyone happy. You’ll only disappoint yourself if you work under the false assumption that you can. Everyone has various desires.
“…leaders should avoid attempting to provide pleasure to a whole team or company. Instead, they should focus on improving the more basic feelings that we all share, such as playfulness and the desire for new experiences. These feelings originate in our brain’s lower regions…and are naturally passed on. They persist independently of our own circumstances… Although happiness may mean various things to different individuals, optimum genuine feelings do not.”
We still react best to emotional encounters as emotional creatures. It’s hardly surprising. However, in the corporate sector, we frequently still believe that leading by logic and reason is the best way to go.
“Those who follow a logic-based approach to leadership make the error of believing that reasoning drives emotion. In fact, dealing directly with emotion may help you develop the frame of mind you want more quickly.”
So, what’s the takeaway? By appealing to basic impulses, you can take the lead.
Do you believe it’s better to lead with reasoning or with emotion?
4. Take time to appreciate the wonderful things in life.
“Let the wonderful emotions roll,” as Jackie puts it.
“Our tendency to order events comes so easily to us that we seldom think about it.” Primal leaders are aware of this human propensity and seek for ways to inspire their teams to enjoy the satisfaction of achievement. Rejoice, exult, and shout when your team does something fantastic!”
Palo Alto Software’s customer support staff accomplishes just that. Teri Epperly, the team’s leader, seems to know precisely how to create a balance between work and play, and is adept at stepping aside to let her colleagues to have some fun. While they work hard for the most of the day, you can frequently hear people laughing, bringing out nerf guns, and generally having a good time throughout the office. We don’t have table tennis or a rock climbing wall, but it hasn’t prevented anybody from having a good time, and I can always tell which team is having the most fun! All it takes is a little laughing, a boss who recognizes the necessity for such an outlet, and the opportunity to enjoy yourself!
By mastering emotional self-management methods, you may learn to shift, or assist your team shift, into an optimum emotional state. If a team has been overwhelmed by dread and negativity, no amount of cold, hard reasoning will be able to reverse the situation. To boost morale, you must first learn to harness good emotions, which will eventually overcome negative ones.
This leads us to the second skill you should learn: the art of changing emotions at the source.
If shifting emotions at their source is the first ground rule, then shifting feelings at their source is the second. But how do you go about doing it?
In this part, we’ll go over a few strategies for instilling positive feelings in your team and boosting motivation. It all boils down to finding a method to inspire people on a deeper level. Knowing some of the methods that make it easier to transition into these good, genuine feelings may help.
1. Laughter and play may help you feel more energized.
Bringing genuine pleasure back into the workplace is a simple approach to shift emotions into a more positive direction. And what better way to do so than by focusing on the activities we love and our natural reactions to them?
“Vigorous play and joyful laughter may rapidly revive energy and generate greater vigor for work in the whole team,” Jackie says. Primal leaders integrate play and laughter into their everyday leadership activities rather than waiting until a team approaches burnout to reenergize them.”
Do you ever do anything that has the ability to quickly change your emotions? Is there a way you could apply this to other people?
2. Keep in mind that it’s all about the pursuit.
When it comes to pleasure and vitality, don’t feel obligated to offer a never-ending stream of accolades for a job well done. The true prize is sometimes found in the trip.
“According to Jaak Panksepp’s study, humans receive more pleasure from the pursuit than from the catch. We are far more motivated by the process of following, finding, or pursuing the wild boar than by the act of preparing and eating it.”
“Pursuing or chasing a goal gives you a rush, but once you accomplish it, it loses its appeal.” What does this imply for the team captain? To begin, keep in mind how much pleasure individuals get from engaging their desiring emotional system… Our frontal neocortex is activated when a stimuli arouses our seeking system, pushing us to devise novel methods and solutions.”
As a team leader, what does this imply for you? It’s a lot simpler than you may imagine. It implies that you should utilize novelty to inspire people.
3. It also implies that there will be new chases!
“Now for the fun part: when a stimulus stimulates our seeking system, it also activates our frontal neocortex, pushing us to devise novel methods and solutions. Emotions, not logic, drive us to do so. The neocortex of the brain, which is the wellspring of our analytical intelligence, supports our emotions, not the other way around. A team that is embarking on an exciting new adventure is not only more driven to succeed, but also works more efficiently. We feel as though we can achieve anything when our seeking system joins the celebration. Negativity fades away, and fear takes a break. We are confident in our ability to dominate the globe.”
Switching around your team’s duties is a simple approach to keep things interesting.
“If I were in charge of a warehouse crew, I’d attempt to keep employees fresh by rotating their duties on a regular basis.” I’d switch Don from operating a forklift to manning the shipping/receiving desk, and Tom would take over as a shipment expediter. The change of environment and habit will give you a boost in energy. Yes, everyone must learn a new function, but learning in and of itself satisfies the desire for novelty, and the additional excitement generated by trying something new should more than compensate for any productivity lost while learning the ropes in a new job.”
Another thing you can do is allow employees to participate in the improvement of business procedures. If you don’t think there’s a lot of variety in jobs, this is an excellent option since it still allows them to perform fresh and diverse tasks.
4. Begin to organize your work into creative cycles.
The method you work should follow the same stages as the movie industry—casting actors and constructing sets, followed by shooting, editing, and so on.
This “project-style” method of completing a task keeps things fresh and enables individuals to mix things around to avoid boredom. They aren’t just doing one thing all the time.
Members of a group or team don’t have time to grow bored, so this is another excellent method to keep things new.
5. Be honest with yourself about how much time you spend playing.
Playing for the sake of having fun is a great method to de-stress. “It feeds the seeking system, guaranteeing strong drive and emotional resilience,” she says.
It’s not just any game, however. It’s about playing in a way that doesn’t leave you tired. The game that energises you rather than depletes it. And, most crucially, it isn’t about the outcome. The most competitive players, in fact, may do more damage than benefit. It’s critical that everyone understands that it’s not about winning, but rather about having a good time.
“The most successful form of play includes physical repetitive activities with specific variations, such as throwing or batting, that challenge us enough to capture and keep our attention but without overtaxing our brains and bodies, as does marathon training.” Ideal play should energize us rather than deplete it. Winning isn’t everything, contrary to popular belief. Everything is the simple act of playing the game for the pure joy of it, without any pressure to win.”
Also, be wary of turning work into play, such as offering a team member a day off for being the first to complete a task. Because there are obvious winners and losers, this may have the opposite effect.
Gamification methods, such as giving points or badges for solving issues or coming up with new ideas, are seldom considered games.
“Even though optimum play involves several players, competition for prizes, accomplishment, or status should be avoided. For optimum play to function, the best players should voluntarily put themselves at a disadvantage so that everyone may enjoy playing on an even playing field. When the stronger players don’t reciprocate in this way, the game loses its pleasure for the other players.”
The best thing to do is keep things casual—don’t over-structure things, be spontaneous, and remember that “playing” is just as essential for adults as it is for children.
Continue on!
I’ve just scratched the surface of Jackie Barretta’s book and what it takes to build a primitive team. Other fascinating subjects we haven’t even scratched the surface of—but which the book delves into in depth—include:
- Fear and negativity are being processed.
- Creating a sense of cohesion in a group
- Emotion detection
- Developing a greater sense of purpose
- Activating intuition and insight
- Creating emotional connections
- Keeping rogue egos under check
If you’re interested in learning more, you can either download the first chapter of the book or enter the contest listed above. We have five copies to provide to anybody in the United States.
Leaders that are able to harness the power of primal emotions are able to be more effective in their leadership. Reference: examples of emotional intelligence in leadership.
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