Primal Leadership.

No, the title “Primal Leadership” is not directly retrieved from Art Janov’s Primal Therapy, but from an article (“Primal Leadership - The Hidden Driver Of  Great Performance”) by David Goleman, R. Boyatzis, and A. McKee. The article is included in the book “HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Managing Yourself.” It was the same Daniel Goleman who with his bestseller “Emotional Intelligence - Why it can matter more than IQ,” made the term Emotional Intelligence widely-known.

The reasons for my reflections on leadership and management, in two areas, seemingly, as diverse as psychotherapy and change-consulting, are because I, virtually simultaneously, was active in niches of the two. After having re-read parts of Daniel Goleman, Peter Drucker and and others, and opened my eyes to Judith Glaser’s “Conversational Intelligence” and her sympathetic approaches, I realize how the experiences and conclusions of the mentioned specialists have significant similarities with the psychotherapeutic innovation; the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse. Art Janov guided me through his revolutionary psychotherapy while I took care of my career, which involved both leadership, management and change-consulting.

My years in the business world taught me to distinguish between the basic characteristics, attitudes and responsibilities of leaders and managers. Leadership is based on, with a credible style of leadership, establish visions and communicate them to (and together with) the company’s employees in an engaging long-term way. Thus, it is the leader’s responsibility to keep the vision and business concept alive, and continually to train and educate new employees who can take over his / her leadership-role. A gifted leader should have ambitions to make him / herself redundant and move on to new tasks. It becomes management’s task to develop products, employees, technologies, markets and financal resources if the leader sets up and communicates stimulating visions. When leadership, for various reasons, stops working, the company becomes quickly over-managed and competitors and / or new paradigms outpaces it. 

According to Robert S. Kaplan’s HBR-article “What To Ask The Person In The Mirror,” a good leader has most certainly early in his / her career, received guidance and support. He / she were closely monitored, coached and mentored. Gradually, as his / her career took off, valuable and honest feedback became rarer, and finally he / she acted largely on their own. The daily behavior is then no longer given much consideration. Therefore, he / she must regularly ask themselves: “What is my vision and my priorities?”, “How do I communicate?”, “How do I use my time in relation to my priorities?”, “Do I give my employees meaningful feedback?” and “How do I behave under pressure?”.

Early in my career I was fortunate to work with a modern, natural leader, B.J..

He promoted me from a management position of predominantly routine nature to help build and develop a new sales and marketing organization on a national level. Within the vision B.J. outlined, I got progessively greater freedom in accordance with my personality to develop a modern organization without ever being exposed to micromanagement. A tansparent discussion during the project developed both me and the organization. This “Primal Management”, advanced for its time (the late 1960-is), which was mediated by B.J., I could benefit from during 30 years in three Swedish groups with international operations. B.J. got me, both practically and theoretically, to understand the importance of having leaders who inspire instead of managers who control.

Controlling management was too dominant in those groups in which I later collaborated. That managementstyle resulted in that many business ideas were worn simultaneously with employees. The subsequent crisis opened opportunities for me to develop a career as a change / crisis consultant, which often meant to establish a short term leadership, contribute to taking the company out of its crisis, hiring and mentoring a new long-term successor  / leader and move on to the next mission. The role as a change-consultant, with relatively short engagements, fit my life-pattern and my personality profile and gave me the opportunity, simultaneously, to be engaged in Art Janov’s psychotherapy / The Primal Principle and to free me from the epileptic stigma being created by birthtrauma.

“Depressed, ruthless bosses create toxic organizations filled with negative underachievers. So the answer, what most influences the success of an enterprise, will both surprice you and make perfect sense: The leaders own mood. New research shows that a leader’s emotional style also drives everyone else’s moods and behaviors - through a neurological process called mood contagion.”  - Daniel Goleman

Jan Johnsson