Feeling Good:
The Importance of Emotionally Intelligent Teams
When Daniel Goleman wrote his landmark books on emotional
intelligence in the 90’s (Emotional Intelligence, 1995,
Working with Emotional Intelligence, 1998), managers in
organizations everywhere nodded heads in agreement. Finally,
what they knew to be true about dealing with people had a name
and was clearly articulated. For the past decade, important
research has been done in organizations to show that feelings
and emotions have a direct impact on effectiveness, efficiency
and ultimately the bottom line.
Most importantly, this concept has great potential for
creating positive change. Instead of feeling stuck, people can
now take steps to enhance their emotional intelligence and
increase their effectiveness in both their work and personal
lives. Currently, the concept is often applied to teams.
Looking at the emotional intelligence of teams is important
because most of the work in organizations today is done by
teams. Leaders have a pressing need today to make teams work
together better.
Modern businesses thrive when using teams to organize the
work. Teams have more talent and experience, more diversity of
resources, and greater operating flexibility than individual
performers. Research in the last decade has proven the
superiority of group decision-making over that of even the
brightest individual in the group. But the exception to this
rule is when the group lacks harmony or the ability to
cooperate. Then decision-making quality and speed suffer.
The important difference between effective teams and
ineffective ones lies in the emotional intelligence of the
group. Teams have an emotional intelligence of their own. It
is comprised of the emotional intelligence of individual
members, plus a collective competency of the group. Everyone
contributes to the overall level of emotional intelligence,
and the leader has more influence. The good news is that teams
can develop greater emotional intelligence and boost their
performance.
Most research has focused on identifying the tasks and
processes that make teams successful. But just learning a
script won’t make a good actor great; the actor has to be able
to deliver the lines with real feeling. A piano student can
learn the music of Bach, but she has to be able to play with
heart to be really good. Successful teams can apply the
principles of effective task processes, but they must also
work together wholeheartedly.
Trust, Identity and Efficacy
In an article entitled “Building the Emotional Intelligence of
groups,” Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff (Harvard
Business Review, March 2001) identify three conditions
essential to a group’s effectiveness:
- Trust among members
- A sense of group identity
- A sense of group efficacy
To be most effective, the team needs to
create emotionally intelligent norms – the attitudes and
behaviors that eventually become habits – that support
behaviors for building trust, group identity and group
efficacy. Group identity is described as a feeling among
members that they belong to a unique and worthwhile group. A
sense of group efficacy is the belief that the team can
perform well and that group members are more effective working
together than apart.
Group emotional intelligence is not a question of catching
emotions as they bubble up and then suppressing them. It
involves courageously bringing feelings out into the open and
dialoguing about how they affect the team’s work. If emotions
are avoided, there is a false or superficial tone that
“everything’s just fine.” Groups cannot work together without
having personalities that butt up against each other.
Admitting to this is the first step in clarifying and finding
common ground upon which to move forward.
Group emotional intelligence is also about behaving in ways
that build relationships both inside and outside the team.
Building relationships strengthens the team’s ability to face
challenges. In order to strengthen relationships, the group
must feel safe to be able to explore, embrace and ultimately
to rely on emotions in work. Emotions must be considered for
the good of the group. Feelings count, but then there are the
tasks at hand and the work that needs to be done. Team leaders
must constantly balance harmony with productivity.
Feeling good and the bottom line
When people feel good, they work better, are more creative,
and are more productive. Good feelings are like lubrication
for the brain – mental efficiency goes up, memory is
sharpened, people can understand directions and make better
decisions. Studies have shown this to be especially true when
it comes to teams. This is because emotions are contagious.
When one or two people are in a good mood, it spreads easily
to other members.
A team’s effectiveness can depend on how well it works
together in harmony. A leader skilled in creating good
feelings can keep cooperation high. Good team leaders know how
to balance the focus on productivity with attention to
member’s relationships and their ability to connect. There is
even research that shows that humor at work can stimulate
creativity, open lines of communications and enhance a sense
of trust. Playful joking increases the likelihood of
concessions during a negotiation. Emotionally intelligent team
leaders know how to use humor and playfulness with their
teams.
Creating good moods in employees may be even more important
than previously thought. It is common sense to see that
workers who feel upbeat will go the extra mile to please
customers and therefore improve the bottom line. There is
research to show that for every 1 percent improvement in the
service climate, there’s a 2 percent increase in revenue. New
research from a range of industries now reaffirms the link
between leadership and climate and to business performance.
According to Daniel Goleman in Primal Leadership (2002),
how people feel about working at a company can account for 20
to 30 percent of business performance.
Part of understanding the emotional reality of a team is
uncovering the particular habits ingrained in a team or
organization that can drive behaviors. A prime example is the
notion of “It’s just the way we do things here.” The team
leader is effective when he or she looks for signs that reveal
if such habits are working or not. It is the leader’s job to
explore and expose unhealthy work habits in order to build
more effective group norms.
How is emotional intelligence
developed?
One of the ways groups can create better
self-awareness is through the use of assessments such as the
Meyers-Briggs or the DISC. These tools show individuals how
they have natural preferences for taking in information,
organizing their work, communicating, and making decisions. A
better understanding of one’s own style leads to acceptance
and understanding of how team members are different – not
better or worse, just different in the ways they organize
their work and their world.
For example, one of the most common sources of conflict in
groups in the workplace is attitude towards rules, regulations
and deadlines. The Meyers Briggs Type Indicator can show how
team members like to make decisions, whether they like to keep
their options open and gather in more information, or whether
they like closure and come to decisions more quickly. A
greater understanding of these fundamental ways of thinking
and behaving can go a long way toward creating greater
understanding and acceptance between members.
Greater interpersonal understanding can also be created
through exercises in perspective formation. Working with a
team coach can facilitate greater understanding and build
trust through role-playing and other techniques.
Just as important as awareness is the ability to regulate
emotions. People take their emotional cues from those around
them. Something that seems upsetting can seem not so bad,
depending on whether colleagues smooth feathers or fan the
flames. The ability to regulate group emotions comes from
establishing norms for both confrontation and caring.
In any group, people will eventually cross lines and
confrontation becomes necessary. There must be a means for
doing this that is firm yet not demeaning. The team leader
sets the tone for this because of the position he or she is
in. Caring confrontation is an art that can be learned and
taught to both leaders and members. The use of humor can be
very effective as a means for bringing errant members back
into the group fold. The message is, “We want you as part of
this group, your contributions are needed.”
These are the group norms that build trust and a sense of
group identity for members: interpersonal understanding,
perspective taking, confrontation and caring. They can be
learned and developed wherever they don’t exist naturally. It
may take some time and attention, but they are too important
to be overlooked. Teams are at the very foundation of
organizational effectiveness and they won’t work without
mutual trust and common commitment to goals.
Building self-managing teams
One of the first tasks of a team leader is to build greater
team awareness. This is the job of each individual member of
the team, as well, but the leader’s job is to instill a sense
of responsibility in individuals for the well-being of the
team. In order to do so, Cary Cherniss, chair of a well-known
research group on emotional intelligence, puts forth ground
rules for teams. Everyone on the team should take
responsibility for:
- Keeping us on track if we get off
- Facilitating group input
- Raising questions about procedures,
asking for clarification about where we are going and
offering summaries of issues being discussed to make sure we
have a shared understanding
- Using good listening skills to build
on the ongoing discussion or to clearly signal that we want
to change the subject, and ask if that is okay
This is an example of how a leader can
create a self-managing team. What is important for the leader,
emphasizes Cherniss, is to remind the group of its
collaborative norms by making them explicit. Everyone can
practice them because they are upfront and repeated at each
meeting.
Clearly the setting forth of core values and operating norms
is important to ensure that a team works smoothly together.
But like most things, they must be repeated again and again.
When values and norms are clear, teams can go about their work
even in the absence of the leader.
In self-aware self-managing teams, members hold each other
accountable for sticking to norms. It takes a strong
emotionally intelligent leader to hold the team to such
responsibility. Many teams are not accustomed to proactively
handling emotions and habits. And many leaders have difficulty
stepping out of the role of director in order to let teams
self-direct.
However, when the values and norms are clear, and
self-management principles are explicit and practiced over
time, teams become not only effective, but also
self-reinforcing. Being on the team leads to positive emotions
that energize and motivate people.
Every company faces specific performance challenges for which
teams are the most practical and powerful vehicle. The
critical challenge for senior managers is how to develop
emotionally intelligent teams that can deliver maximum
performance. Teams have a unique potential to deliver results,
and executives must foster self-managing and emotionally
intelligent teams that will be effective. In doing so, top
management creates the kind of environment that enables teams
as well as individuals to thrive.
By using a coach, each person on a team understands and
leverages the gifts, skills and strengths they naturally
possess. Teams are truly effective when diverse resources and
skills are combined to produce results far greater than those
that could be produced individually.
Working with a coach can facilitate the growth of a group’s
emotional intelligence. It is rare that a group naturally
finds itself working smoothly. Humans are complex and that
complexity is magnified when they try to work together. There
are multiple dynamics and complicated perspectives that come
into play. Managing the interplay between team members can
require the talents of a symphony conductor in order to bring
out the best in people. A masterful coaching experience can
help facilitate the symphony that is possible when people work
together in harmony.
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Four Cluster’s of Emotional
Competency
A group’s emotional intelligence requires the same
competencies as an individual’s: self-awareness,
self-management, social awareness and social or relationship
management. These competencies continue to be researched
extensively by the Hay Group. These are the core dimensions
measured by the Emotional Competencies Inventory, a 360 degree
survey of emotional intelligence.
How the emotional competencies show up on a team level is a
bit different. These competencies relate both to the
individuals and to the group as a whole. Groups have their
moods and needs and they act collectively. They often feel
collectively, because emotions are contagious. Raising the
level of awareness of these core competencies is part of the
work of a coach.
One technique for raising awareness is to have team members
rate the team on a scale of 1 to 10 on each cluster. Then they
rate the team on where they should be in order to maximize
team effectiveness. They then rate themselves individually,
and select one or two behaviors they can commit to improving.
They commit publicly to the team, and ask for regular feedback
on their progress. Using a trained coach to facilitate the
process is recommended.
|
Self-Awareness:
Emotional self-awareness
Accurate self-assessment
Self-confidence |
|
Self-Management:
Self-control
Transparency
Adaptability
Achievement
Initiative
Optimism |
Social
Awareness:
Empathy
Organizational awareness
Service orientation |
|
Relationship Management:
Inspiration
Influence
Developing others
Change catalyst
Conflict management
Teamwork and collaboration |
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