May 18, 2010 at 17:14Emotional Leadership
In the search for literature about motivation, this book - “Emotional Leadership” fell into my hands. (Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyacis, Annie Mackey)
It is written by people who are involved in researching various management techniques, and of course, consultations, trainings and more.
As one would expect, a decent volume of the book is devoted to ideas, the implementation of which the authors are actually engaged in. Where there really is a positive application experience, and where marketing is sometimes difficult to figure out. In general, the whole book is written in my opinion in a very advertising language, which makes reading for a technical person not the easiest task. It is painfully hard for the brain to remove marketing sparkles and other embellishments from the text that hide the true meaning of what is written. But overall, the density of information is very good. I even reread some chapters, because I could not immediately understand all the logical chains.
The main benefit of the book is an understanding by the authors of the problem of motivating people to work. The problem of spherical motivation in a vacuum is not badly painted, which many modern companies suffer that believe that a person wants to work well, is for granted. It is similarly shown how the interests of employees can radically diverge from the interests of the company, and that it is very dangerous for top management to score such things. It is shown that with competent personnel management, the risk of such situations can be significantly reduced. Examples are given from rather slippery in terms of motivating an honest person, types of business as advertising.
The book itself is divided into three parts.
The first talks about what emotional intelligence is, how it relates to leadership styles. Further, what is resonance in communication and explains why it is good. The methods that can be used in certain situations to achieve the goals set for the leader are described. It also describes aggressive management styles that are based on the suppression of communication, describes their area of applicability, although it is felt that the authors clearly do not like these styles. The problem of informational noise, which surrounds any boss who is walking in subordinate courtiers or simply does not like when bad news is brought to him, is not badly described. The problems of such people in self-esteem and in the fact that it is almost always inadequate, with all the ensuing problems in management, based on a misunderstanding as the situation as a whole, are shown
The second part discusses how to learn the correct, from the point of view of the authors, management techniques. On the whole, a very correct idea was expressed that anyone who already has experience in management should at the beginning develop to a good level those styles that he already instinctively uses, and then master the adjacent ones. It is explained that management styles are associated with character traits and that an intelligent person takes advantage of what is well maintained at the level of his character, because then everything turns out sincerely, which is important when managing strong employees who are extremely dangerous to deceive. The problem of the person’s internal motivation during training, i.e. It is shown that it is useless to just learn the method, that it is necessary for the trainees to understand that the old control method is not very effective.
In the third part there is a story about building the climate in the organization as a whole. Those. the application of these techniques is already at the level of large units. The difference in motivation for changes at the level of personality and at the level of a group of people is shown. It is shown what difficulties usually arise when trying to change the leadership style, what dangers are fraught with the programs launched from above, without the real support of ordinary employees. From the interesting it is shown that even such difficult processes as restructuring, mergers associated with layoffs and other bad consequences for ordinary employees can be carried out without serious harm to the working climate in the organization, if you properly manage the emotions of people using this same Emotional Leadership. Everything is described quite clearly, using examples, so that the sensation of a “spherical leader in a vacuum” is not created.
To summarize.
The main minus of the book is the language it is written in. The density of advertising turns and phrases just rolls over, whole paragraphs are just about anything. Sometimes because of this, isolating the meaning is rather difficult.
The advantage of the book is the abundance of all kinds of examples in which the stories from their own work experience are quite recognizable. This greatly facilitates the understanding of the problems described.
In general, the book is worthy of attention, although to a technical person, before reading it is necessary to stock up with a fair amount of patience.
It is written by people who are involved in researching various management techniques, and of course, consultations, trainings and more.
As one would expect, a decent volume of the book is devoted to ideas, the implementation of which the authors are actually engaged in. Where there really is a positive application experience, and where marketing is sometimes difficult to figure out. In general, the whole book is written in my opinion in a very advertising language, which makes reading for a technical person not the easiest task. It is painfully hard for the brain to remove marketing sparkles and other embellishments from the text that hide the true meaning of what is written. But overall, the density of information is very good. I even reread some chapters, because I could not immediately understand all the logical chains.
The main benefit of the book is an understanding by the authors of the problem of motivating people to work. The problem of spherical motivation in a vacuum is not badly painted, which many modern companies suffer that believe that a person wants to work well, is for granted. It is similarly shown how the interests of employees can radically diverge from the interests of the company, and that it is very dangerous for top management to score such things. It is shown that with competent personnel management, the risk of such situations can be significantly reduced. Examples are given from rather slippery in terms of motivating an honest person, types of business as advertising.
The book itself is divided into three parts.
The first talks about what emotional intelligence is, how it relates to leadership styles. Further, what is resonance in communication and explains why it is good. The methods that can be used in certain situations to achieve the goals set for the leader are described. It also describes aggressive management styles that are based on the suppression of communication, describes their area of applicability, although it is felt that the authors clearly do not like these styles. The problem of informational noise, which surrounds any boss who is walking in subordinate courtiers or simply does not like when bad news is brought to him, is not badly described. The problems of such people in self-esteem and in the fact that it is almost always inadequate, with all the ensuing problems in management, based on a misunderstanding as the situation as a whole, are shown
The second part discusses how to learn the correct, from the point of view of the authors, management techniques. On the whole, a very correct idea was expressed that anyone who already has experience in management should at the beginning develop to a good level those styles that he already instinctively uses, and then master the adjacent ones. It is explained that management styles are associated with character traits and that an intelligent person takes advantage of what is well maintained at the level of his character, because then everything turns out sincerely, which is important when managing strong employees who are extremely dangerous to deceive. The problem of the person’s internal motivation during training, i.e. It is shown that it is useless to just learn the method, that it is necessary for the trainees to understand that the old control method is not very effective.
In the third part there is a story about building the climate in the organization as a whole. Those. the application of these techniques is already at the level of large units. The difference in motivation for changes at the level of personality and at the level of a group of people is shown. It is shown what difficulties usually arise when trying to change the leadership style, what dangers are fraught with the programs launched from above, without the real support of ordinary employees. From the interesting it is shown that even such difficult processes as restructuring, mergers associated with layoffs and other bad consequences for ordinary employees can be carried out without serious harm to the working climate in the organization, if you properly manage the emotions of people using this same Emotional Leadership. Everything is described quite clearly, using examples, so that the sensation of a “spherical leader in a vacuum” is not created.
To summarize.
The main minus of the book is the language it is written in. The density of advertising turns and phrases just rolls over, whole paragraphs are just about anything. Sometimes because of this, isolating the meaning is rather difficult.
The advantage of the book is the abundance of all kinds of examples in which the stories from their own work experience are quite recognizable. This greatly facilitates the understanding of the problems described.
In general, the book is worthy of attention, although to a technical person, before reading it is necessary to stock up with a fair amount of patience.