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The emotionally intelligent team (Understanding and developing the behaviors of success)

by By Marcia Hughes and James Bradford Terrell Copyright ©2009

The world has changed. Once we thought that an MBA and wireless technology would secure the future. It won’t. Marcia Hughes and James Terrell(©2009) maintain that reams of data all point to the need to work together in teams and that the strategy for sustained team success is emotional and social intelligence, or ESI.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Marcia Hughes and James Terrell are co-founders of Collaborative Growth and authors of The Emotionally Intelligent Team, The Emotionally and Socially Intelligent Team Survey® (TESI®) and the Handbook for Developing Emotional Intelligence (2009). They serve as strategic communications partners for leaders and teams in organizations that value high performers. Marcia and James weave their expertise in emotional intelligence throughout their consulting, facilitation, team building, coaching and workshops to help people motivate themselves and communicate more effectively with others. Their keynotes are built around powerful stories of how success can grow when people work collaboratively and when individuals live with emotional and social well being. Their passion is to transform EI theory into sustainable behavioural change. Marcia and James work with many clients including American Express, Medtronic, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Bank. Learn more at http://www.eiteams.com/ and http://www.cgrowth.com/. Collaborative Growth is partnered with JVR Resources in South Africa for distribution of the TESI® and for certification trainings.

Almost every part of our daily experience is related to how well teams function. Whether a product is available on-line or on a shelf depends upon a host of teams performing well. A big backup at a store checkout line reflects a team’s failure to function effectively. Getting projects completed on time and on budget, leading innovation in your industry, and offering top-notch products and services that meet the demands of your customers all come down to team functionality. The fields of neurology and organisational development are advancing so quickly that there is a body of evidence demonstrating which ESI behaviours have a direct correlation with organisational success.

Why ESI is so valuable for teams
We wrote The Emotionally Intelligent Team to help leaders and team members understand what the necessary skills are and to guide them in developing the behaviours of emotional effectiveness. This summary will describe those skills in much the same way that an exploded diagram shows you how all the pieces of a bicycle fit together. The skill in riding comes from practicing the behaviours. Fortunately, ESI is based on behavioural skills that any team can develop and refine. This creates a broad range of ongoing opportunities for your team. Your team can measure their effectiveness in each of the seven skills by using our on-line instrument, the TESI®, the team emotional and social intelligence® survey. When your team practices ESI behaviours individuals on the team feel more satisfied, think more creatively, and act more productively. They enjoy working with their team, which lowers defensiveness and builds synergy. They persevere when tackling challenging tasks and complete them when other teams fail. What exactly is emotional and social intelligence?  Simply put, ESI reflects the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions while responding effectively to those of others. It includes the capacity to appreciate the values that organize the big picture in your workplace and the ability to lead change by flexing with it.

The copyright of this article is held by Marcia Hughes and James Terrell.  None of the text or diagrams may be used without the explicit permission by these authors.

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