October is Emotional Intelligence Awareness month and we here at TalentSmartEQ are delighted there is a whole month dedicated to celebrating the power of EQ. When most people think of emotional intelligence, they think of the skills that individuals use to be effective. Individual EQ is absolutely foundational, but TalentSmart is also passionate about team emotional intelligence or the collective skill that takes good teams and makes them great. I was recently working with a sales team, and we talked about mastering EQ for teams and how to balance conflict and dissenting opinions along with positivity. When we mine for conflict, rather than skate over potential disagreement, this balance ensures the group is surfacing quieter thoughts and feelings and also creates a norm around the importance of poking holes in perspectives and decisions that will best serve the team.
Try this!
When your team is in full agreement on a specific issue or decision, consider what perspectives you haven’t heard or thought through. If everyone agrees, you might even consider requiring 1 member of the group to take the opposing perspective or the “issue miner” so there is more of a balance in the group. It doesn’t have to take long–we aren’t suggesting you delay important decisions–but consider “slowing down to speed up”. Sometimes, that small pause as a group can make all the difference.