Emotional Intelligence - Benefits for Team Leaders and Teams

I've been helping people enhance their Emotional Intelligence skills for over a decade. The roles of people participating in my Emotional Intelligence (EI) skill-building programs have ranged from executives to administrative staff. While the challenges they face are quite different, the emotions they experience are the same. They all have experienced anxiety, frustration and even anger at times as they are confronted with today's enormous stress and fast-paced change. However, when they develop the EI competency of becoming internally self-managed, they become empowered and make their greatest contributions. And when employees work in that zone of peak performance, so does the organization. Below are a few examples of how development of EI skills can benefit team leaders and teams.

Team Leaders and Project Managers:

Working with diverse and, sometimes, non-local individuals, Team Leaders and Project Managers are accountable for setting and maintaining a positive environment where their team can work together to achieve success on projects of greater magnitude and importance in shorter and shorter time periods. They must eliminate roadblocks and internal and external or organizational barriers so their teams can achieve success. They can experience a great deal of stress brought on by anxiety, frustration, resentment and suspicion as they work in the organization's political environment, deciphering the maze of organizational change. Members may leave the team, causing further delays, and teams and projects fall behind schedule.

As Team Leaders and Project Managers enhance their EI skills, they become more capable of maintaining a positive attitude and eliminating impediments to team success. They motivate their team more effectively to higher sustained levels of performance and achievement when they improve their own internal persistence and motivation. They successfully accomplish major projects of significant importance on time and on budget. Critical talented staff are developed and retained.

Teams:

Teams are shouldering more and more responsibility for major organizational initiatives. They are under pressure to work smoothly with people they may never see face-to-face both inside and outside their organization. Resources are scarce, technology is rapidly advancing, deadlines are tight and team members are constantly changing. As things change and the demands increase, it's easy to feel dejected, overwhelmed and confused. It's normal to feel anxious when resources are taken away, angry when a team member doesn't deliver, and frustrated when, despite all obstacles, you are still expected to meet tight deadlines. Team cohesion and effectiveness break down, progress slows to a creep, product introductions are missed and market share can be lost to competitors.

The storming phase of team formation can be dramatically shortened when the team enhances its EI skills. With enhanced skills, team members can more efficiently and effectively deal with their own and other member's emotional turmoil, using this bond as a source for developing team cohesion and trust. Esprit de corps is developed with a can-do attitude. The organization gains a reputation as a great place to work and grow as major projects of significant importance are completed on time and on budget.

A True Story:

The power of developing EI skills becomes evident through this true story about two team leaders who had a long history of antagonism and unwillingness to work together. For 17 years, Joe and Dan (not their real names) had not supported each other, focusing on their own respective departments, unconcerned whether or not the other's department achieved its goals. Applying the techniques learned during EI training, Joe and Dan transformed the negative emotions they held toward each other into more positive emotions and productive behaviors.

They started by talking to each other in the hallway during the training and then progressed to listening to and talking to each other on a regular basis. A few weeks after the training, during the second coaching, Joe and Dan, independently told me that they started to invite the other's staff to their staff meetings as a means to work jointly in addressing problems occurring in their departments. They were able to eliminate the "silo" mentality by creating team-to-team coordination. They also created a positive trickle-down effect on everyone in the entire organization (about 5000 employees). Of significance is the fact that this change happened within a few days after each had mastered simple EI techniques.

And this example is not unusual. Participants in EI training programs have reported a range of 20% to 35% increase in personal productivity, 15% to 35% increased teamwork, a 20% to 40% reduction in stress and worry, and similar improvements in management of emotional reactiveness, personal motivation, creativity, work/life balance and more. These improvements represent a positive return on investment for the organization.