Enhancing Team Performance: A Report on Emotional Intelligence

This report delves into the critical role of emotional intelligence in fostering high-performing teams. It argues that while individual emotional intelligence is important, the collective emotional intelligence of a team is equally vital for success. The report explores three key conditions for team effectiveness: trust, group identity, and group efficacy, and explains how emotionally intelligent norms can support these conditions. It examines the three levels of emotional interaction: individual, group, and cross-boundary, highlighting how emotional incompetence at any level can hinder team performance. The report offers practical strategies for building emotional intelligence, including fostering interpersonal understanding, perspective-taking, and establishing norms for confrontation and caring within teams to improve performance and cohesion. It emphasizes the importance of creating an environment where team members feel supported, valued, and understood, ultimately leading to greater engagement and commitment to team goals.

When managers first started hearing about the concept of emotional
intelligence in the 1990s, scales fell from their eyes. The basic message, that
effectiveness in organizations is at least as much about EQ as IQ, resonated
deeply; it was something that people knew in their guts but that had never
before been so well articulated. Most important, the idea held the potential for
positive change. Instead of being stuck with the hand they’d been dealt,
people could take steps to enhance their emotional intelligence and make
themselves more effective in their work and personal lives.
Indeed, the concept of emotional intelligence had real impact. The only
problem is that so far emotional intelligence has been viewed only as an
individual competency, when the reality is that most work in organizations is
done by teams. And if managers have one pressing need today, it’s to find
ways to make teams work better.
It is with real excitement, therefore, that we share these findings from our
research: individual emotional intelligence has a group analog, and it is just as
critical to groups’ effectiveness. Teams can develop greater emotional
intelligence and, in so doing, boost their overall performance.
Why Should Teams Build Their Emotional
Intelligence?
No one would dispute the importance of making teams work more effectively.
But most research about how to do so has focused on identifying the task
processes that distinguish the most successful teams—that is, specifying the
need for cooperation, participation, commitment to goals, and so forth. The
assumption seems to be that, once identified, these processes can simply be
imitated by other teams, with similar effect. It’s not true. By analogy, think of
it this way: a piano student can be taught to play Minuet in G, but he won’t
become a modern-day Bach without knowing music theory and being able to
play with heart. Similarly, the real source of a great team’s success lies in the
fundamental conditions that allow effective task processes to emerge—and
that cause members to engage in them wholeheartedly.
Our research tells us that three conditions are essential to a group’s
effectiveness: trust among members, a sense of group identity, and a sense of
group efficacy. When these conditions are absent, going through the motions
of cooperating and participating is still possible. But the team will not be as
effective as it could be, because members will choose to hold back rather than
fully engage. 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.
The outcome is complete engagement in tasks. (For more on how emotional

intelligence influences these conditions, see the sidebar “A Model of Team
Effectiveness.”)
A Model of Team Effectiveness
Study after study has shown that teams are more creative and productive
when they can achieve high levels of participation, cooperation, and
collaboration among members. But interactive ...
Three Levels of Emotional Interaction
Make no mistake: a team with emotionally intelligent members does not
necessarily make for an emotionally intelligent group. A team, like any social
group, takes on its own character. So creating an upward, self-reinforcing
spiral of trust, group identity, and group efficacy requires more than a few
members who exhibit emotionally intelligent behavior. It requires a team
atmosphere in which the norms build emotional capacity (the ability to
respond constructively in emotionally uncomfortable situations) and influence
emotions in constructive ways.
Team emotional intelligence is more complicated than individual emotional
intelligence because teams interact at more levels. To understand the

differences, let’s first look at the concept of individual emotional intelligence
as defined by Daniel Goleman. In his definitive book Emotional
Intelligence, Goleman explains the chief characteristics of someone with high
EI; he or she is aware of emotions and able to regulate them—and this
awareness and regulation are directed both inward, to one’s self,
and outward, to others. “Personal competence,” in Goleman’s words, comes
from being aware of and regulating one’s own emotions. “Social competence”
is awareness and regulation of others’ emotions.
A group, however, must attend to yet another level of awareness and
regulation. It must be mindful of the emotions of its members, its own group
emotions or moods, and the emotions of other groups and individuals outside
its boundaries.
In this article, we’ll explore how emotional incompetence at any of these
levels can cause dysfunction. We’ll also show how establishing specific group
norms that create awareness and regulation of emotion at these three levels
can lead to better outcomes. First, we’ll focus on the individual level—how
emotionally intelligent groups work with their individual members’ emotions.
Next, we’ll focus on the group level. And finally, we’ll look at the cross-
boundary level.
Working with Individuals’ Emotions
Jill Kasper, head of her company’s customer service department, is naturally
tapped to join a new cross-functional team focused on enhancing the
customer experience: she has extensive experience in and a real passion for
customer service. But her teammates find she brings little more than a bad
attitude to the table. At an early brainstorming session, Jill sits silent, arms
crossed, rolling her eyes. Whenever the team starts to get energized about an
idea, she launches into a detailed account of how a similar idea went nowhere
in the past. The group is confused: this is the customer service star they’ve
been hearing about? Little do they realize she feels insulted by the very
formation of the team. To her, it implies she hasn’t done her job well enough.
When a member is not on the same emotional wavelength as the rest, a team
needs to be emotionally intelligent vis-à-vis that individual. In part, that simply
means being aware of the problem. Having a norm that encourages
interpersonal understanding might facilitate an awareness that Jill is acting
out of defensiveness. And picking up on this defensiveness is necessary if the
team wants to make her understand its desire to amplify her good work, not
negate it.
Some teams seem to be able to do this naturally. At Hewlett-Packard, for
instance, we learned of a team that was attempting to cross-train its

members. The idea was that if each member could pinch-hit on everyone
else’s job, the team could deploy efforts to whatever task required the most
attention. But one member seemed very uncomfortable with learning new
skills and tasks; accustomed to being a top producer in his own job, he hated
not knowing how to do a job perfectly. Luckily, his teammates recognized his
discomfort, and rather than being annoyed, they redoubled their efforts to
support him. This team benefited from a group norm it had established over
time emphasizing interpersonal understanding. The norm had grown out of
the group’s realization that working to accurately hear and understand one
another’s feelings and concerns improved member morale and a willingness
to cooperate.
Many teams build high emotional intelligence by taking pains to consider
matters from an individual member’s perspective. Think of a situation where a
team of four must reach a decision; three favor one direction and the fourth
favors another. In the interest of expedience, many teams in this situation
would move directly to a majority vote. But a more emotionally intelligent
group would pause first to hear out the objection. It would also ask if everyone
were completely behind the decision, even if there appeared to be consensus.
Such groups would ask, “Are there any perspectives we haven’t heard yet or
thought through completely?”
Perspective taking is a team behavior that teamwork experts discuss often—
but not in terms of its emotional consequence. Many teams are trained to use
perspective-taking techniques to make decisions or solve problems (a
common tool is affinity diagramming). But these techniques may or may not
improve a group’s emotional intelligence. The problem is that many of these
techniques consciously attempt to remove emotion from the process by
collecting and combining perspectives in a mechanical way. A more effective
approach to perspective taking is to ensure that team members see one
another making the effort to grapple with perspectives; that way, the team
has a better chance of creating the kind of trust that leads to greater
participation among members.
An executive team at the Hay Group, a consulting firm, engages in the kind of
deep perspective taking we’re describing. The team has done role-playing
exercises in which members adopt others’ opinions and styles of interaction. It
has also used a “storyboarding” technique, in which each member creates a
small poster representing his or her ideas. As team members will attest, these
methods and others have helped the group build trust and increase
participation.
Regulating Individuals’ Emotions

Interpersonal understanding and perspective taking are two ways that groups
can become more aware of their members’ perspectives and feelings. But just
as important as awareness is the ability to regulate those emotions—to have a
positive impact on how they are expressed and even on how individual team
members feel. We’re not talking about imposing groupthink or some other
form of manipulation here—clearly, the goal must be to balance the team’s
cohesion with members’ individuality. We’re simply acknowledging that
people take their emotional cues from those around them. Something that
seems upsetting initially can seem not so bad—or ten times worse—
depending on whether one’s colleagues are inclined to smooth feathers or fan
flames. The most constructive way of regulating team members’ emotions is
by establishing norms in the group for both confrontation and caring.
It may seem illogical to suggest that an emotionally intelligent group must
engage in confrontation, but it’s not. Inevitably, a team member will indulge in
behavior that crosses the line, and the team must feel comfortable calling the
foul. In one manufacturing team we studied, a member told us about the day
she selfishly decided to extend her break. Before long, one of her teammates
stormed into the break room, saying, “What are you doing in here? Get back
out on the floor—your team needs you!” The woman had overstepped the
bounds, and she got called on it. There were no hard feelings, because the
woman knew the group valued her contributions.
Inevitably, a team member will indulge in behavior that crosses the
line, and the team must feel comfortable calling the foul.
Some teams also find that a little humor helps when pointing out errant
behavior. Teasing someone who is habitually late for meetings, for instance,
can make that person aware of how important timeliness is to the group.
Done right, confrontation can be seen in a positive light; it’s a way for the
group to say, “We want you in—we need your contribution.” And it’s especially
important when a team must work together on a long-term assignment.
Without confrontation, disruptive behavior can fester and erode a sense of
trust in a team.
Establishing norms that reinforce caring behavior is often not very difficult and
usually a matter of concentrating on little things. When an individual is upset,
for example, it may make all the difference to have group members
acknowledge that person’s feelings. We saw this in a meeting where one team
member arrived angry because the time and place of the meeting was very
inconvenient for him. When another member announced the sacrifice the man
had made to be there, and thanked him, the man’s attitude turned around
180 degrees. In general, a caring orientation includes displaying positive
regard, appreciation, and respect for group members through behaviors such
as support, validation, and compassion.

Interpersonal understanding, perspective taking, confrontation, caring—these
norms build trust and a sense of group identity among members. And all of
them can be established in teams where they don’t arise naturally. You may
ask, But is it really worth all the effort? Does it make sense to spend
managerial time fostering new norms to accommodate a few prickly
personalities? Of course it does. Teams are at the very foundation of an
organization, and they won’t work effectively without mutual trust and a
common commitment to goals.
Working with Group Emotions
Chris couldn’t believe it, but he was requesting a reassignment. The team he
was on was doing good work, staying on budget, and hitting all its deadlines—
though not always elegantly. Its leader, Stan Evans, just got a promotion. So
why was being on the team such a downer? At the last major status meeting,
they should have been serving champagne—so much had been achieved.
Instead, everyone was thoroughly dispirited over a setback they hadn’t
foreseen, which turned out later to be no big deal. It seemed no matter what
happened, the group griped. The team even saw Stan’s promotion in a
negative light: “Oh, so I guess management wants to keep a closer eye on us”
and “I hear Stan’s new boss doesn’t back this project.” Chris had a friend on
another team who as happy to put in a good word for him. The work was
inherently less interesting—but hey, at least they were having fun.
Some teams suffer because they aren’t aware of emotions at the group level.
Chris’s team, for instance, isn’t aware of all it has achieved, and it doesn’t
acknowledge that it has fallen into a malaise. In our study of effective teams,
we’ve found that having norms for group self-awareness—of emotional states,
strengths and weaknesses, modes of interaction, and task processes—is a
critical part of group emotional intelligence that facilitates group efficacy.
Teams gain it both through self-evaluation and by soliciting feedback from
others.
Self-evaluation can take the form of a formal event or a constant activity. At
Sherwin Williams, a group of managers was starting a new initiative that
would require higher levels of teamwork. Group members hired a consultant,
but before the consultant arrived, they met to assess their strengths and
weaknesses as a team. They found that merely articulating the issues was an
important step toward building their capabilities.
A far less formal method of raising group emotional awareness is through the
kind of activity we saw at the Veterans Health Administration’s Center for
Leadership and Development. Managers there have developed a norm in
which they are encouraged to speak up when they feel the group is not being
productive. For example, if there’s a post-lunch lull and people on the team

are low on energy, someone might say, “Don’t we look like a bunch of sad
sacks?” With attention called to it, the group makes an effort to refocus.
Groups are most creative when their members collaborate
unreservedly. People stop holding back when there is mutual trust,
rooted in emotionally intelligent interactions.
Emotionally competent teams don’t wear blinders; they have the emotional
capacity to face potentially difficult information and actively seek opinions on
their task processes, progress, and performance from the outside. For some
teams, feedback may come directly from customers. Others look to colleagues
within the company, to suppliers, or to professional peers. A group of
designers we studied routinely posts its work in progress on walls throughout
the building, with invitations to comment and critique. Similarly, many
advertising agencies see annual industry competitions as a valuable source of
feedback on their creative teams’ work.
Regulating Group Emotions
Many teams make conscious efforts to build team spirit. Team-building
outings, whether purely social or Outward Bound–style physical challenges,
are popular methods for building this sense of collective enthusiasm. What’s
going on here is that teams and their leaders recognize they can improve a
team’s overall attitude—that is, they are regulating group-level emotion. And
while the focus of a team-building exercise is often not directly related to a
group’s actual work, the benefits are highly relevant: teams come away with
higher emotional capacity and thus a greater ability to respond to emotional
challenges.
The most effective teams we have studied go far beyond the occasional
“ropes and rocks” off-site. They have established norms that strengthen their
ability to respond effectively to the kind of emotional challenges a group
confronts on a daily basis. The norms they favor accomplish three main
things: they create resources for working with emotions, foster an affirmative
environment, and encourage proactive problem solving.
Teams need resources that all members can draw on to deal with group
emotions. One important resource is a common vocabulary. To use an
example, a group member at the Veterans Health Administration picked up on
another member’s bad mood and told him that he was just “cranky” today.
The “cranky” term stuck and became the group’s gentle way of letting
someone know that their negativity was having a bad effect on the group.
Other resources may include helpful ways to vent frustrations. One executive
team leader we interviewed described his team’s practice of making time for a
“wailing wall”—a few minutes of whining and moaning about some setback.

Releasing and acknowledging those negative emotions, the leader says,
allows the group to refocus its attention on the parts of the situation it can
control and channel its energy in a positive direction. But sometimes, venting
takes more than words. We’ve seen more than one intense workplace
outfitted with toys—like soft projectile shooters—that have been used in
games of cube warfare.
Perhaps the most obvious way to build emotional capacity through regulating
team-level emotion is simply to create an affirmative environment. Everyone
values a team that, when faced with a challenge, responds with a can-do
attitude. Again, it’s a question of having the right group norms—in this case,
favoring optimism, and positive images and interpretations over negative
ones. This doesn’t always come naturally to a team, as one executive we
interviewed at the Hay Group knows. When external conditions create a cycle
of negativity among group members, he takes it upon himself to change the
atmosphere of the group. He consciously resists the temptation to join the
complaining and blaming and instead tries to reverse the cycle with a positive,
constructive note.
One of the most powerful norms we have seen for building a group’s ability to
respond to emotionally challenging situations is an emphasis on proactive
problem solving. We saw a lot of this going on in a manufacturing team we
observed at AMP Corporation. Much of what this team needed to hit its targets
was out of its strict control. But rather than sit back and point fingers, the
team worked hard to get what it needed from others, and in some cases, took
matters into its own hands. In one instance, an alignment problem in a key
machine was creating faulty products. The team studied the problem and
approached the engineering group with its own suggested design for a part
that might correct the problem. The device worked, and the number of
defective products decreased significantly.
This kind of problem solving is valuable for many reasons. It obviously serves
the company by removing one more obstacle to profitability. But, to the point
of our work, it also shows a team in control of its own emotions. It refused to
feel powerless and was eager to take charge.
Working with Emotions Outside the Group
Jim sighed. The “Bugs” team was at it again. Didn’t they see that while they
were high-fiving one another over their impressive productivity, the rest of the
organization was paying for it? This time, in their self-managed wisdom,
they’d decided to make a three months’ supply of one component. No
changeover meant no machine downtime and a record low cost per unit. But
now the group downstream was swamped with inventory it didn’t need and
worried about shortages of something else. Jim braced himself for his visit to

the floor. The Bugs didn’t take criticism well; they seemed to think they were
flawless and that everyone else was just trying to take them down a notch.
And what was with that name, anyway? Some kind of inside joke, Jim guessed.
Too bad nobody else got it.
The last kind of emotional intelligence any high-performing team should have
relates to cross-boundary relationships. Just as individuals should be mindful
of their own emotions and others’, groups should look both inward and
outward emotionally. In the case of the Bugs, the team is acting like a clique—
creating close emotional ties within but ignoring the feelings, needs, and
concerns of important individuals and teams in the broader organization.
Some teams have developed norms that are particularly helpful in making
them aware of the broader organizational context. One practice is to have
various team members act as liaisons to important constituencies. Many
teams are already made up of members drawn from different parts of an
organization, so a cross-boundary perspective comes naturally. Others need
to work a little harder. One team we studied realized it would be important to
understand the perspective of its labor union. Consequently, a team member
from HR went to some lengths to discover the right channels for having a
union member appointed to the group. A cross-boundary perspective is
especially important in situations where a team’s work will have significant
impact on others in the organization—for example, where a team is asked to
design an intranet to serve everyone’s needs. We’ve seen many situations in
which a team is so enamored of its solution that it is caught completely by
surprise when others in the company don’t share its enthusiasm .
We’ve seen many situations in which a team is so enamored of its
solution that it is caught completely by surprise when others in the
company don’t share its enthusiasm.
Some of the most emotionally intelligent teams we have seen are so attuned
to their broader organizational context that it affects how they frame and
communicate their own needs and accomplishments. A team at the chemical-
processing company KoSa, for example, felt it needed a new piece of
manufacturing equipment, but senior management wasn’t so sure the
purchase was a priority. Aware that the decision makers were still on the
fence, the team decided to emphasize the employee safety benefits of the
new machine—just one aspect of its desirability to them, but an issue of
paramount importance to management. At a plant safety meeting attended
by high-level managers, they made the case that the equipment they were
seeking would greatly reduce the risk of injury to workers. A few weeks later
they got it.
Sometimes, a team must be particularly aware of the needs and feelings of
another group within the organization. We worked with an information

technology company where the hardware engineers worked separately from
the software engineers to achieve the same goal—faster processing and fewer
crashes. Each could achieve only so much independently. When finally a
hardware team leader went out of his way to build relationships with the
software people, the two teams began to cooperate—and together, they
achieved 20% to 40% higher performance than had been targeted.
This kind of positive outcome can be facilitated by norms that encourage a
group to recognize the feelings and needs of other groups. We saw effective
norms for interteam awareness at a division of AMP, where each
manufacturing team is responsible for a step in the manufacturing process
and they need one another to complete the product on time. Team leaders
there meet in the morning to understand the needs, resources, and schedules
of each team. If one team is ahead and another is behind, they reallocate
resources. Members of the faster team help the team that’s behind and do so
in a friendly way that empathizes with their situation and builds the
relationship.
Most of the examples we’ve been citing show teams that are not only aware
of but also able to influence outsiders’ needs and perspectives. This ability to
regulate emotion at the cross-boundary level is a group’s version of the
“social skills” so critical to individual emotional intelligence. It involves
developing external relationships and gaining the confidence of outsiders,
adopting an ambassadorial role instead of an isolationist one.
A manufacturing team we saw at KoSa displayed very high social skills in
working with its maintenance team. It recognized that, when problems
occurred in the plant, the maintenance team often had many activities on its
plate. All things being equal, what would make the maintenance team
consider this particular manufacturing group a high priority? Knowing a good
relationship would be a factor, the manufacturing team worked hard to build
good ties with the maintenance people. At one point, for instance, the
manufacturing team showed its appreciation by nominating the maintenance
team for “Team of the Quarter” recognition—and then doing all the letter
writing and behind-the-scenes praising that would ultimately help the
maintenance team win. In turn, the manufacturing team’s good relationship
with maintenance helped it become one of the highest producers in the plant.
A Model for Group Emotional Intelligence
We’ve been discussing the need for teams to learn to channel emotion
effectively at the three levels of human interaction important to them: team to
individual member, team to itself, and team to outside entities. Together, the
norms we’ve been exploring help groups work with emotions productively and
intelligently. Often, groups with emotionally intelligent members have norms

like these in place, but it’s unlikely any group would unconsciously come up
with all the norms we have outlined. In other words, this is a model for group
emotional intelligence that any work team could benefit from by applying it
deliberately.
What would the ultimate emotionally intelligent team look like? Closest to the
ideal are some of the teams we’ve seen at IDEO, the celebrated industrial
design firm. IDEO’s creative teams are responsible for the look and feel of
products like Apple’s first mouse, the Crest toothpaste tube, and the Palm V
personal digital assistant. The firm routinely wins competitions for the form
and function of its designs and even has a business that teaches creative
problem-solving techniques to other companies.
The nature of IDEO’s work calls for high group emotional intelligence. Under
pressure of client deadlines and budget estimates, the company must deliver
innovative, aesthetic solutions that balance human needs with engineering
realities. It’s a deep philosophical belief at IDEO that great design is best
accomplished through the creative friction of diverse teams and not the
solitary pursuit of brilliant individuals, so it’s imperative that the teams at
IDEO click. In our study of those teams, we found group norms supporting
emotional intelligence at all three levels of our model.
First, the teams at IDEO are very aware of individual team members’
emotions, and they are adept at regulating them. For example, an IDEO
designer became very frustrated because someone from marketing was
insisting a logo be applied to the designer’s product, which he felt would ruin
it visually. At a meeting about the product, the team’s project leader picked
up on the fact that something was wrong. The designer was sitting off by
himself, and things “didn’t look right.” The project leader looked into the
situation and then initiated a negotiation that led to a mutual solution.
IDEO team members also confront one another when they break norms. This
is common during brainstorming sessions, where the rule is that people must
defer judgment and avoid shooting down ideas. If someone breaks that norm,
the team comes down on him in a playful yet forceful way (imagine being
pelted by foam toys). Or if someone is out of line, the norm is to stand up and
call her on it immediately. If a client is in the room, the confrontation is subtler
—perhaps a kick under the chair.
Teams at IDEO also demonstrate strengths in group-focused emotional
intelligence. To ensure they have a high level of self-awareness, teams
constantly seek feedback from both inside and outside the organization. Most
important, they work very closely with customers. If a design is not meeting
customer expectations, the team finds out quickly and takes steps to modify
it.

Regulating group emotion at IDEO often means providing outlets for stress.
This is a company that believes in playing and having fun. Several hundred
finger blasters (a toy that shoots soft projectiles) have been placed around the
building for employees to pick up and start shooting when they’re frustrated.
Indeed, the design firm’s culture welcomes the expression of emotions, so it’s
not uncommon for someone—whether happy or angry—to stand up and yell.
IDEO has even created fun office projects that people can work on if they need
a break. For example, they might have a project to design the company
holiday card or to design the “tourist stop” displays seen by visitors.
Finally, IDEO teams also have norms to ensure they are aware of the needs
and concerns of people outside their boundaries and that they use that
awareness to develop relationships with those individuals and groups. On
display at IDEO is a curious model: a toy truck with plastic pieces on springs
that pop out of the bed of the truck when a button is pressed. It turns out the
model commemorates an incident that taught a variety of lessons. The story
centers on a design team that had been working for three weeks on a very
complex plastic enclosure for a product. Unfortunately, on the Thursday
before a Monday client deadline, when an engineer was taking it to be
painted, it slipped from his pickup bed and exploded on the road at 70 mph.
The team was willing to work through the weekend to rebuild the part but
couldn’t finish it without the help of the outside fabricator it had used on the
original. Because they had taken the time to build a good relationship with the
fabricator, its people were willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. The
lighthearted display was a way for teammates to show the engineer that all
was forgiven—and a reminder to the rest of the organization of how a team in
crisis can get by with a little help from its friends.
Where Do Norms Come From?
Not every company is as dependent on teams and their emotional intelligence
as IDEO. But now more than ever, we see companies depending on teams for
decisions and tasks that, in another time, would have been the work of
individuals. And unfortunately, we also see them discovering that a team can
have everything going for it—the brightest and most qualified people, access
to resources, a clear mission—but still fail because it lacks group emotional
intelligence.
A team can have everything going for it—the brightest and most
qualified people, access to resources, a clear mission—but still fail
because it lacks group emotional intelligence.
Norms that build trust, group identity, and group efficacy are the key to
making teams click. They allow an otherwise highly skilled and resourced
team to fulfill its potential, and they can help a team faced with substantial

challenges achieve surprising victories. So how do norms as powerful as the
ones we’ve described in this article come about? In our research, we saw
them being introduced from any of five basic directions: by formal team
leaders, by informal team leaders, by courageous followers, through training,
or from the larger organizational culture. (For more on how to establish the
norms described in this article, see the sidebar “Building Norms for Three
Levels of Group Emotional Intelligence.”)
Building Norms for Three Levels of Group Emotional Intelligence
Group emotional intelligence is about the small acts that make a big
difference. It is not about a team member working all night to meet a
deadline; it is about saying thank you for doing so. It is not about in-depth
discussion of ideas; it is about asking a quiet member for his thoughts. It is not
about harmony, lack of tension, and all members liking each other; it is about
acknowledging when harmony is false, tension is unexpressed, and treating
others with respect. The following sidebar outlines some of the small things
that groups can do to establish the norms that build group emotional
intelligence.

At the Hay Group, for example, it was the deliberate action of a team leader
that helped one group see the importance of emotions to the group’s overall
effectiveness. Because this particular group was composed of managers from
many different cultures, its leader knew he couldn’t assume all the members
possessed a high level of interpersonal understanding. To establish that norm,
he introduced novelties like having a meeting without a table, using smaller

groups, and conducting an inventory of team members’ various learning
styles.
Interventions like these can probably be done only by a formal team leader.
The ways informal leaders or other team members enhance emotional
intelligence are typically more subtle, though often just as powerful. Anyone
might advance the cause, for example, by speaking up if the group appears to
be ignoring an important perspective or feeling—or simply by doing his or her
part to create an affirmative environment.
Training courses can also go a long way toward increasing emotional
awareness and showing people how to regulate emotions. We know of many
companies that now focus on emotional issues in leadership development
courses, negotiation and communication workshops, and employee-assistance
programs like those for stress management. These training programs can
sensitize team members to the importance of establishing emotionally
intelligent norms.
Finally, perhaps more than anything, a team can be influenced by a broader
organizational culture that recognizes and celebrates employee emotion. This
is clearly the case at IDEO and, we believe, at many of the companies creating
the greatest value in the new economy. Unfortunately, it’s the most difficult
piece of the puzzle to put in place at companies that don’t already have it. For
organizations with long histories of employees checking their emotions at the
door, change will occur, if at all, one team at a time.
Becoming Intelligent About Emotion
The research presented in this article arose from one simple imperative: in an
era of teamwork, it’s essential to figure out what makes teams work. Our
research shows that, just like individuals, the most effective teams are
emotionally intelligent ones—and that any team can attain emotional
intelligence.
In this article, we’ve attempted to lay out a model for positive change,
containing the most important types of norms a group can create to enhance
its emotional intelligence. Teams, like all groups, operate according to such
norms. By working to establish norms for emotional awareness and regulation
at all levels of interaction, teams can build the solid foundation of trust, group
identity, and group efficacy they need for true cooperation and collaboration—
and high performance overall.