Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups (HBR)

Question 1

What have most executives accepted about emotional intelligence by now?

Answer 1

That EI is as critical as IQ to an individual’s effectiveness.

Question 2

Does individual EI have a group analog?

Answer 2

Yes, and it is just as critical to groups’ effectiveness.

Question 3

To make teams more effective, is it useful to focus on the task processes that distinguish the most successful teams?

Answer 3

No, identifying the need for cooperation, participation, commitment to goals is not that useful! These processes cannot be simply imitated by other teams with similar effects.

Question 4

What does the real source of a great team’s success lie in?

Answer 4

The fundamental conditions that allow effective task processes to emerge, and that cause members to engage in them wholeheartedly.

Question 5

What are the three conditions essential to a group’s effectiveness?

Answer 5

• Trust among members
• A sense of group identity
• A sense of group efficacy

Question 6

What do teams need to create, to be most effective?

Answer 6

Emotionally intelligent norms, attitudes and behaviors that eventually become habits, that support behaviors for building trust, group identity, and group efficacy.

Question 7

What is the outcome of the creation of EI norms?

Answer 7

Complete engagement in tasks.

Question 8

Does a team with EI members make for an EI group?

Answer 8

No! A team, like any social group, takes on its own character.

Question 9

What does creating an upward, self-reinforcing spiral of trust, group identity, and group efficacy require?

Answer 9

More than a few members who exhibit EI behavior!

It requires a team atmosphere in which the norms build EMOTIONAL CAPACITY and INFLUENCE EMOTIONS IN CONSTRUCTIVE WAYS.

Question 10

What is emotional capacity?

Answer 10

The ability to respond constructively in emotionally uncomfortable situations.

Question 11

Why is team emotional intelligence more complicated than individual emotional intelligence?

Answer 11

Teams interact at more levels.

Question 12

What are the chief characteristics of someone with high EI?

Answer 12

They are AWARE of emotions, and able to REGULATE them. This awareness and regulation are directed both inward, to one’s self, and outward, to others.

It consists of both PERSONAL competence and SOCIAL competence.

Question 13

What is the additional level of awareness and regulation required by a group?

Answer 13

Mindfulness of the emotions of its members, its own group emotions or moods, and the emotions of other groups and individuals outside its boundaries.

Question 14

What is the importance of having a norm that encourages interpersonal understanding?

Answer 14

When a member is not on the same emotional wavelength as the rest, a team needs to be emotionally intelligent vis-a-vis that individuals, BEING AWARE OF THE PROBLEM.

This, for instance, includes picking up on someone’s defensiveness.

Question 15

What does a norm that emphasizes interpersonal understanding consist of?

Answer 15

Working together to accurately hear and understand one another’s feelings and concerns, to improve member morale and a willingness to cooperate.

Question 16

How does individual member’s perspective have to do with team EI?

Answer 16

Many teams build high EI by taking pains to consider matters from an individual member’s perspective.

This considers: “Are there any perspectives we haven’t heard yet or thought through completely?”

Question 17

What is the more effective approach to perspective taking?

Answer 17

Ensure that team members see one another making the effort to grapple with perspectives.

This creates the kind of trust leading to greater participation among members.

Question 18

When there are high levels of ______, teams are more creative and productive.

Answer 18

When there are high levels of PARTICIPATION, COOPERATION, and COLLABORATION AMONG MEMBERS, teams are more creative and productive.

Question 19

What is at the heart of the conditions of trust, identity, and efficacy, in teams?

Answer 19

Emotions! Groups need to build their emotional intelligence.

Question 20

What is group emotional intelligence about?

Answer 20

• Bringing emotions deliberately to the surface, and understanding how they affect the team’s work
• Behaving in ways that build relationships, both inside and outside the team
• Behaving in ways that strengthen the team’s ability to face challenges
• Exploring, embracing, and ultimately relying on emotion in work that is deeply human

Question 21

What are the components to the Model of Team Effectiveness?

Answer 21

1. Group Emotional Intelligence
2. Trust, Identity, Efficacy
3. Participation, Cooperation, Collaboration
4. Better Decisions, More Creative Solutions, Higher Productivity

Question 22

What are the two ways that groups can become more aware of their members’ perspectives and feelings?

Answer 22

• Interpersonal Understanding
• Perspective Taking

Question 23

What is the most constructive way to regulate team members’ emotions?

Answer 23

Establishing norms in the group for both confrontation and caring.

Question 24

What do teams need to work effectively?

Answer 24

• Mutual trust
• Common commitment to goals

Question 25

What norms are critical for group emotional intelligence that facilitates group efficacy?

Answer 25

Norms for GROUP SELF-AWARENESS, of emotional states, strengths and weaknesses, modes of interaction, and task processes.

Question 26

How do teams gain norms for group self-awareness?

Answer 26

Through self-evaluation, and by soliciting feedback from others.

Question 27

What are ways to raise group emotional awareness?

Answer 27

• Articulating the issues
• Norm in which people are encouraged to speak up when they feel the group is not being productive

Question 28

What characterizes emotionally competent teams?

Answer 28

An emotional capacity to face potentially difficult information and actively seek opinions on their task processes, progress, and performance, from the outside.

Question 29

What is a popular method to build a sense of collective enthusiasm?

Answer 29

Team-building outings.

Question 30

What norms do effective teams have that strengthen their ability to respond to emotional challenges?

Answer 30

The norms they favor accomplish three main things:

• Create resources for working with emotions
• Foster an affirmative environment
• Encourage proactive problem-solving

Question 31

When are groups more creative?

Answer 31

When members collaborate unreservedly, when there is mutual trust rooted in emotionally intelligent interactions.

Question 32

What are important resources that teams can draw on to deal with group emotions?

Answer 32

• A common vocabulary
• The practice of making time for a “wailing wall”, a few minutes of whining and moaning about some setback, to acknowledge negative emotions (venting)

Question 33

What does an affirmative environment bring? What norms are associated?

Answer 33

A “can-do” attitude, brought about by group norms that favor optimism, and positive images and interpretations over negative ones.

Question 34

What are norms helpful to make teams aware of the broader organizational context?

Answer 34

• Have various team members act as LIAISONS to important constituencies, to take on a CROSS-BOUNDARY PERSPECTIVE
• Employ norms that encourage a group to recognize the feelings and needs of other groups, for INTERTEAM AWARENESS.

Question 35

What does the ability to regulate emotion at the cross-boundary level consist of?

Answer 35

Developing external relationships and gaining the confidence of outsiders, adopting an AMBASSADORIAL role rather than an isolationist one.

Question 36

What is an example of a ‘closest to the ideal’ emotional intelligent team?

Answer 36

At IDEO!

Question 37

What does IDEO believe great design is best accomplished through?

Answer 37

The creative friction of diverse teams, rather than the solitary pursuit of brilliant individuals.

Question 38

What do IDEO teams do that make them highly emotionally intelligent?

Answer 38

• Awareness of individual team members’ emotions, and adeptness in regulating them
• Confronting each other when they break norms
• Seeking feedback from both inside and outside the organization
• Providing outlets for stress
• Ensure awareness of the needs and concerns of people outside their boundaries, and development of relationships with those individuals and groups

Question 39

What is the key to making teams click?

Answer 39

Norms that build trust, group identity, and group efficacy.

Question 40

Where do norms come from?

Answer 40

Five basic directions:
- Formal team leaders
- Informal team leaders
- Courageous followers
- Through training
- From the larger organizational culture

Question 41

What describes the ways informal leaders or other team members enhance emotional intelligence?

Answer 41

They are SUBTLE, though often just as powerful.

Question 42

Why are training programs helpful in building emotional intelligence?

Answer 42

They sensitize team members to the importance of establishing emotionally intelligent norms.

Question 43

What are the key takeaways from the article “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups”?

Answer 43

“Just like individuals, the most effective teams are emotionally intelligent ones, and that any team can attain emotional intelligence.”

Question 44

Despite having the brightest and most qualified people, access to resources, and a clear mission, how could a team fail?

Answer 44

If it lacks group emotional intelligence.

Question 45

Norms That Create Awareness of Emotions: At the individual level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Interpersonal Understanding?

Answer 45

1. Take time away from group tasks
   to get to know one another.
2. Have a “check in” at the beginning
   of the meeting – that is, ask how
   everyone is doing.
3. Assume that undesirable behavior
   takes place for a reason. Find out what
   that reason is. Ask questions and listen.
   Avoid negative attributions.
4. Tell your teammates what you’re
   thinking and how you’re feeling.

Question 46

Norms That Create Awareness of Emotions: At the individual level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Perspective Taking?

Answer 46

1. Ask whether everyone agrees with
   a decision.
2. Ask quiet members what they think.
3. Question decisions that come
   too quickly.
4. Appoint a devil’s advocate.

Question 47

Norms That Create Awareness of Emotions: At the group level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Team Self-Evaluation?

Answer 47

1. Schedule time to examine team
   effectiveness.
2. Create measurable task and process
   objectives and then measure them.
3. Acknowledge and discuss group moods.
4. Communicate your sense of what
   is transpiring in the team.
5. Allow members to call a “process check.”
   (For instance, a team member might say,
   “Process check: is this the most effective
   use of our time right now?”)

Question 48

Norms That Create Awareness of Emotions: At the group level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Seeking Feedback?

Answer 48

1. Ask your “customers” how you are doing.
2. Post your work and invite comments.
3. Benchmark your processes.

Question 49

Norms That Create Awareness of Emotions: At the cross-boundary level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Organizational Understanding?

Answer 49

1. Find out the concerns and needs
   of others in the organization.
2. Consider who can influence the
   team’s ability to accomplish its goals.
3. Discuss the culture and politics
   in the organization.
4. Ask whether proposed team
   actions are congruent with the
   organization’s culture and politics.

Question 50

Norms That Help Regulate Emotions: At the individual level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Confronting?

Answer 50

1. Set ground rules and use them to
   point out errant behavior.
2. Call members on errant behavior.
3. Create playful devices for pointing
   out such behavior. These often emerge
   from the group spontaneously.
   Reinforce them.

Question 51

Norms That Help Regulate Emotions: At the individual level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Caring?

Answer 51

1. Support members: volunteer to help
   them if they need it, be flexible, and
   provide emotional support.
2. Validate members’ contributions.
   Let members know they are valued.
3. Protect members from attack.
4. Respect individuality and differences
   in perspectives. Listen.
5. Never be derogatory or demeaning.

Question 52

Norms That Help Regulate Emotions: At the group level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Creating Resources for Working with Emotion?

Answer 52

1. Make time to discuss difficult issues,
   and address the emotions that
   surround them.
2. Find creative, shorthand ways to
   acknowledge and express the emotion
   in the group.
3. Create fun ways to acknowledge and
   relieve stress and tension.
4. Express acceptance of members’
   emotions.

Question 53

Norms That Help Regulate Emotions: At the group level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Creating an Affirmative Environment?

Answer 53

1. Reinforce that the team can meet a
   challenge. Be optimistic. For example,
   say things like,“We can get through this”
   or “Nothing will stop us.”
2. Focus on what you can control.
3. Remind members of the group’s
   important and positive mission.
4. Remind the group how it solved a
   similar problem before.
5. Focus on problem solving, not blaming.

Question 54

Norms That Help Regulate Emotions: At the group level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Solving Problems Proactively?

Answer 54

1. Anticipate problems and address them
   before they happen.
2. Take the initiative to understand and
   get what you need to be effective.
3. Do it yourself if others aren’t responding.
   Rely on yourself, not others.

Question 55

Norms That Help Regulate Emotions: At the cross-functional level, how can teams facilitate the norm of Building External Relationships?

Answer 55

1. Create opportunities for networking
   and interaction.
2. Ask about the needs of other teams.
3. Provide support for other teams.
4. Invite others to team meetings if
   they might have a stake in what
   you are doing.

Question 56

What are the Norms That Help Regulate Emotions, at the individual, group, and cross-boundary levels?

Answer 56

Individual:
- Confronting
- Caring

Group:
- Creating resources for working with emotion
- Creating an affirmative environment
- Solving problems proactively

Cross-Boundary:
- Building external relationships