Team Emotional Intelligence: The Differentiator

In today's environment, the team holds the key to business success. So, what differentiates the best? That's what we asked. Here's what we found.

We discovered that top performing teams invest time formulating agreements about how they will work together to accelerate their performance as a team. We've labeled these agreements, Emotionally Intelligent Team Norms. We've clustered them into three categories:

1 – How Members Treat One Another. We as human beings have specific emotional needs that emerge whenever we enter a social system such as a team. For example, we each have an emotional need to belong; to feel cared about; to feel that our ideas and contributions are valued, and that the other members care about us.

These needs are predictable triggers of emotion. When they are satisfied, we relax and focus on the task. When these needs are not satisfied, we become anxious. We disengage. We become selfish and hoard important information. We tend not to listen as well. Our relationships with others become dysfunctional.

Much dysfunctional behavior on teams is the result of unfulfilled emotional and social needs that harken back to our membership and survival in a tribe. In fact, evolution has favored people who can think about emotions, feel emotions and use that information for the benefit of the tribe, or in today's world, for the benefit of the team.

We found that one way that top teams help members become more attuned to each others emotional and social needs was to invest time – during team launches, or at the beginning of meetings, or at off-sites – in activities that encourages members to get to know one another.

Our research, as well as the research of our colleagues, has found that these basic tenets are the foundation for building a true high performing team. Perhaps, it's time to tune up your teams and empower them with emotionally intelligent team norms.