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Primal Teams

Primal Teams

by Jackie Barretta
Publisher: AMACOM
Release Date: October 2014
ISBN: 9780814434413
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Book Description

Emotion, more than anything else, spells the difference between stellar and mediocre team performance. Fear, anger, frustration, and other negative feelings, can en danger a group’s dynamic. But positive emotions have the power to transform it into a high-performance engine, where everyone operates at their peak. Their minds sharpen. They find creative solutions. They get great results.

Thanks to discoveries in neuroscience and psychology, we now know that emotions operate independently from our logical minds. They can’t be reasoned away. They must be dealt with directly. Drawing on the latest research, Primal Teams shows how any one can control potentially damaging emotions, while triggering the kind of passion and energy that supercharge performance. Illustrated with compelling examples, this groundbreaking guide reveals how to:

Transform fear and negativity • Energize primal emotional systems • Activate insight and intuition • Foster emotional bonds and team spirit • Connect the team to a deeper purpose • And more

Emotions determine whether a group works with energy and enthusiasm or just goes through the motions. With the array of insights and practical tools in this book, anyone can inspire an unprecedented level of performance.

Table of Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Prologue: “Since Feeling Is First …”
  7. 1 Hidden Energy: Unleashing Maximum Potential
    1. Sparking the Creative Brain
    2. Deepening the Impact
    3. Dampening the Energy
    4. Going to the Source
    5. Using an Emotional Savvy Gauge to Measure Your Team’s Emotional Proficiency
  8. 2 Primal Emotion: Shifting Emotions at the Source
    1. Using Novelty to Reignite Drive
    2. Playing for the Fun of It
    3. Sounding Off
    4. Laughing Out Loud
    5. Letting Your Face Do the Talking
    6. Using the Emotion Shape Shifter to Modify Emotions at Their Source
  9. 3 The Scary Stuff: Processing Fear and Negativity
    1. Accommodating Negativity
    2. Shining a Light on Fear
    3. Creating a Diversion from Negative Thoughts
    4. Desensitizing Your Team to Fear
    5. Using a Fear Release Guide to Reduce Fear and Negativity
  10. 4 Emotional Contagion: Spreading Coherence in a Team
    1. Spawning Good Cheer
    2. Becoming the True Leader
    3. Making Coherence a Competency
    4. Using the Emotional Contagion Do’s and Don’ts to Spread Optimal Emotions
  11. 5 The Sixth Sense: Detecting Emotions
    1. Getting a Feel for Feelings
    2. Making Your Team More Attractive
    3. Enhancing Integrity
    4. Using the Emotion Detector to Detect Moods and Emotional Signatures
  12. 6 The Engaged Heart: Connecting to a Deeper Purpose
    1. Inspiring Your Team
    2. Resonating with Your People
    3. Defining Team Membership
    4. Using the Five Why’s to Define an Inspiring Purpose
  13. 7 Primal IQ: Activating Insight and Intuition
    1. Learning to Work Creatively
    2. Incubating an Insight
    3. Tapping Intuition
    4. Mixing It Up
    5. Using the Hunch Detector to Sense Intuition
  14. 8 Team Spirit: Building Emotional Bonds
    1. Tightening the Connections
    2. Avoiding Common Bonding Pitfalls
    3. Broadening Perspectives
    4. Using the Team Bonder to Provoke Deep Connections
  15. 9 The Balanced Culture: Restraining Runaway Egos
    1. Moderating Egotistical Behavior
    2. Balancing Competition and Cooperation
    3. Tapping the Beginner’s Mind
    4. Using a Team Agreement to Keep Egos in Check
  16. Epilogue: When the Going Gets Tough
  17. Notes
  18. Index
  19. About the Author
  20. Free Sample Chapter from A Team of Leaders by Paul Gustavson and Stewart Liff