Leadership Development – Page 11 – STL

Emotional Intelligence enables teams to reach their full potential.

What is it?

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an individual’s ability to recognise their emotions and understand how these emotions impact on others. An emotionally intelligent team relates to the ability of a group to manage and harness emotions for positive outcomes. However, an emotionally intelligent team is not simply a combination of individual emotional intelligence and self-awareness, but rather, the result of active team development.

As noted by Daniel Goleman in his 1998 work, Working with Emotional Intelligence, each of us only has part of the information and skills we need to do our jobs. We depend on the group mind – the collective experiences, skills, and knowledge within the team – to complete tasks, making collaboration essential to project and organisational success.

Group mind, as Goleman explains, helps to save time when seeking new solutions and amplifies individual capability. However, tapping into this cumulative knowledge is only possible if the team trust each other and work well together. The team must be emotionally intelligent.

At the core of every team are the relationships that make that team great or contribute to its demise. Here are five signs of an emotionally intelligent team:

1 They create, communicate and monitor ‘The Rules’

‘The Rules’ refer to the spoken and unspoken standards of work, behaviour and attitude team members expect from each other. They closely represent team values and apply to everyone. The team will not only clarify ‘The Rules’ for newcomers but will also monitor each other’s adherence to them.

An emotionally intelligent team will recognise the impact of their actions on others and so will choose to work and behave in a cohesive way, thus creating a sense of identity.

2 They pay attention

Emotionally Intelligent team members will pay attention to the needs and feelings of others. Demonstrating empathy and recognising the impact of your words or actions on the feelings of another is a sign of high EI. Listening attentively is important for building rapport and relationships, both of which are crucial for an emotionally intelligent team. Staying focused in discussions, questioning to understand, encouraging input, and accepting different perspectives is key to being able to make high quality team decisions.

3 Their work environment is psychologically safe.

Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake; that it’s okay to speak your mind and to question the status quo. Open and honest communication has a snowball effect for building emotional intelligence. This is because the more you question and the more you learn, the more aware you become. This type of team behaviour creates enormous breakthroughs for a company in terms of new ideas. It also builds the level of confidence and trust that defines high performing teams.

4 They are aware of their strengths and weaknesses

Emotionally Intelligent teams have a collective awareness of each other’s strengths and can use them to the benefit of the team as a whole. They have a strong desire to improve and will actively seek and provide feedback. They will also prioritise team learning, conducting post action reviews to identify learning points.

An emotionally Intelligent team is attuned to their own feelings while working and will step back from the work to address situations that are driving unproductive emotions, while low EI teams will just plough ahead.

5 They work as one

Members of teams with high EI feel part of a worthwhile group. They recognise that they work better together than apart and are likely to reach higher levels of collaboration and productivity. High EI team members know how to keep each other inspired and motivated. They are better able to deal with stressful situations as a result.

Emotionally intelligent teams build good relations with other teams and will function as a group across organisational boundaries.

Conclusion

It’s easy to identify teams with high emotional intelligence: They are likely to be your highest-performing teams. They lift each other up and give everyone a chance to shine. Naturally, that translates into real results for the business.

As we begin planning for 2023, we hope you’ll consider setting aside the time and resources to develop the emotional intelligence of your team.

With an increased focus on self-responsibility, most organizations expect their employees to make decisions. Consequently, decisiveness is a key competence for those in leadership positions and beyond.

Decisiveness is different to decision making. Decision making is the ability to make quick, confident, and effective decisions. Decisiveness is the willingness to make the decision. High quality decisions require both decision-making skills and decisiveness.

So, What Gets in the Way of our Willingness?

The willingness to make decisions is closely linked to our personality type and thinking style. When you better understand how you behave in different decision-making situations, you can start to work on your strong and weak points.

Based on the principles of Myers-Briggs in the MBTI, our decision making style can fall into four preferences. Each preference has its own obstacles.

Analytical

Analytical people are likely to say, ‘Have we thought of everything? ‘Do we have all the information?’ or ‘I need to think about it’.

They will be reluctant to decide until they are sure that all of the information has been logically analysed and considered. They are happier when a structured process has been followed.

Driver

Drivers are likely to say, ‘Just do this,’ ‘I don’t care what you do just make a decision,’ or ‘Let me know when you have made a decision’ (while I get on with more important things).

They are confident to make practical and quick decisions in ambiguous situations based on common sense, experience, and the facts they can see and know right now. If the situation requires more long range analysis, they will leave that to others but will be impatient and push them to make a decision.

Team Player

Team Players are likely to ask, ‘What will others feel about it?’

They will always consider their personal values and the impact of the decision on people. They may be happy to go along with the group consensus and will rarely criticise the opinions of others. When left to themselves they will be reluctant to make an unpopular decision.

Intuitor

An Intuitor will ask ‘What if we did this?’ or say ‘We could do this’

An Intuitor will focus on an objective and produce a lot of ideas of their own as well as build on the ideas of others to achieve it. They will find in depth analysis of ideas frustrating. Rather than make a firm decision they will prefer to experiment and try things until they find a solution that works.

Ask yourself, which type seems most like me? Is there another type that could be a backup? Do I change my style if I am under pressure?

The Ideal Team for Decision Making

In an ideal world we would have a decision-making team including all four types but unfortunately, we don’t often have that luxury. Usually, we are on our own and feeling pretty stressed. This is when we need to take the time to ask ourselves the questions others would.

Our Analytical partner would ask, Is there a logical conclusion? Can we list the pros and cons of each option? Do we know what the costs of each option are? Can we prioritise options?

A Driver would ask, What do we know about the situation? What are the facts? Do we have all the facts? What have we done so far and what were the results? What do we need to accomplish next?

Our Team Player would ask, Do these answers support or violate our values? How will people (ours, customers, vendors) react to the outcome? Who will commit to putting in the sacrifice needed to accomplish these goals?

And an Intuitor would ask, Where are we trying to go? What should the end results be? Have we considered multiple possibilities? What does the data seem to imply?

Conclusion

Having answered our imaginary team, we will be better placed to have the willingness to make that decision and the confidence to stand by it.