Team Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and leadership are essential for successful collaboration, problem-solving, and the overall team performance. It involves recognizing, understanding, and managing team emotions while also handling both internal and external relationships effectively. These core Team EQ skills are challenging to master, but they can be developed with practice and are vital for both individual and organizational success. Try these proven strategies to enhance your team’s emotional intelligence.
4 Strategies to Enhance Your Team Emotional Intelligence and Leadership
Notice and acknowledge discomfort
Signs of discomfort are valuable bits of information. During meetings, scan the room to recognize how others are feeling by observing their verbal and behavioral cues. Do you see eyes rolling or disengaged posture? Do you hear sighs of frustration, interruptions, or erratic speech patterns? Are you starting to notice more frequent withdrawal or absenteeism? These and more can be early warning signs that someone is struggling. Acknowledging discomfort helps the team see the whole picture, address unfinished business, support teammates, and enhance overall performance.
Go ahead and vent, briefly and with purpose
Organizational changes, personal pet peeves, or other issues will inevitably disrupt smooth teamwork. When distractions arise, brief and purposeful venting can have a positive impact if done effectively. Productive venting raises awareness of the team’s emotions by expressing honest feelings, preventing them from festering. Addressing issues directly with your team builds trust and encourages support. First, share how the situation makes you feel and how this impacts the team and its work. Next, identify and discuss the deeper issue or context behind the feeling. Finally, share your ideas on how to proceed and invite others to share their perspectives.
Have fun and laugh (more)
Laughter is nourishment for a team. With little effort and time, we can lighten the mood of a room, connect with others, learn more about teammates, and refresh our perspectives. Research shows that laughter is contagious, reduces stress, and boosts happiness and productivity in teams. The key is to get to know your teammates well enough to know a bit of their sense of humor and what works to lighten their mood when needed. Remember, the research-backed benefits of laughter can give you and your team permission to have fun at work.
Own your mistakes
Team emotional intelligence is not about being perfect. Mistakes happen, and Team EQ Is about what your team does next. Panic, blame-shifting, or covering up mistakes shows distrust and harms team relationships. This makes it hard to build the supportive external partnerships that every team needs for success. Owning mistakes is challenging because of the fear associated with making unfavorable impressions on others. However, owning a mistake openly costs much less and earns more social capital for you and your team because it builds respect, compassion, and appreciation. When you own a mistake as a team, rather than point fingers and blame individuals, you demonstrate that you have each other’s backs. This not only helps shed the fear associated with making mistakes, but it also model the type of high team EQ behavior you would expect in return.
Bringing It All Together
Keep in mind, teams rely on all types of data to be successful. Emotions, feelings, and moods are high-quantity and high-quality data available to every team, however few master this type of data collection and assessment. In part, this is because they believe these data points are less impactful on the bottom line, however nothing can be further from the truth. Try these simple behavioral strategies, and with practice, your team’s emotional intelligence can make all the difference in how successful you can be, together.
By Josh Rosenthal, Director of Training for TalentSmartEQ. For more information, please check out our additional resources.
These strategies were adapted from the new book, “Emotional Intelligence Habits” by Dr. Travis Bradberry. To order, click here. For more strategies that can help you improve engagement at your organization, check out our training programs or contact us.