Cultivating Emotionally Intelligent Teams for Organizational Success

1. Part III: Building Emotionally Intelligent Organizations

2. The Emotional Reality of Teams • When Teams Fail: The Power of Norms • Group decision making is superior over that of even the brightest individual in the group EXCEPT if the group lacks harmony or the ability to cooperate • Leader sets the tone • Leaders must be skilled in collaboration to keep resonance high • Norms of the group help to determine whether it functions as a high-performing team or becomes simply a loose collection of people working together • People automatically sense the ground rules • Group emotional intelligence may determine a team’s ability to manage its emotions in a way that cultivates trust, group identity, and group efficacy to maximize cooperation, collaboration, and effectiveness

5. The Emotional Reality of Teams • Maximizing the Group’s Emotional Intelligence • Requires self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management • Groups act collectively exhibiting their moods and needs • Self-aware Teams • Acknowledgment of individual feelings and emotions • Contributions from within the team from emotionally intelligent members

6. The Emotional Reality of Teams • Self-managed Teams • Clearly stated core values, expectations, and mission • Groups members are accountable for managing how they work together • Positive norms with be maintained only if the group puts them into practice over and over again • Group members instill and reinforce resonant norms and hold each other accountable for sticking to them

7. The Emotional Reality of Teams • The Empathic Team • Triggers feelings or team pride • Identifies other key groups in the organization contributing to the team’s success and takes consistent action to foster a good working relationship with those groups • Uncovering a Team’s Emotional Reality • Leaders should start by helping the team raise its collective self-awareness – monitor the motional tone of the team and help members to recognize any underlying dissonance • Leaders should listen for what is really happening within the group and observe the group for important signals • Leaders should model and encourage team members in self-awareness, empathy and a focus on others

10. The Emotional Reality of Teams • Discovering the Team’s Emotional Intelligence • Look for signs that reveal whether team habits, and the systems that support them, work well • Get top executive teams together to have honest discussion about what is working and what is not • New and healthy legitimacy develops around peaking the truth and honestly assessing both the behavioral and the emotional aspects of culture and leadership • New habits are created in the process • When truth seeking comes from the top, others are more willing to take the risk

12. Reality and the Ideal Vision: Giving Life to the Organization’s Future • When Leaders Don’t Listen – what can happen • Uncovering the truth and an organization’s reality to avoid being out of touch and out of tune • Rigid and commanding styles prevent people from telling them the truth • The Toxic Organization • Leader with dissonant styles results in a toxic corporate culture • Leaders in toxic organizations often rely on threats and coercion to get things done

14. Reality and the Ideal Vision: Giving Life to the Organization’s Future • Where Change Begins • When emotionally intelligent leaders actively question the emotional reality and the cultural norms underlying the group’s daily activities and behavior • Leaders must pay attention to the hidden dimensions: people’s emotions, the undercurrents of the emotional reality in the organization, and the culture that holds it all together

15. Reality and the Ideal Vision: Giving Life to the Organization’s Future • Discovering the Organization’s Reality through Dynamic Inquiry • Employee evaluations rarely measure subtle layers of feelings and complex norms • Dynamic Inquiry – enable leaders to begin to address underlying cultural issues preventing growth • Focused conversations and open-ended questions • Uncover root causes of problems in the culture and true sources of inspiration around them • Enables people to discuss what works and what doesn’t • Promotes open discussion in small group format • Process tends to snowball

16. Reality and the Ideal Vision: Giving Life to the Organization’s Future • The Critical Shift: Moving from Dissonance to the Ideal Vision • Define an ideal vision for the organization • Companies who share a common vision: • Employees share extraordinary experiences which bond them together as a group • Degree of cohesion can be a good indication of how well the ideal vision has been identified and aligned employees around that common purpose • Emotional leaders need to move beyond a solo scrutiny of an organization’s vision to draw upon the collective vision of the followers • Be the Change You Want to See (Walk the talk) • Create common ground and understanding by focusing people’s attention on the underlying issues and solutions on what needs to change and why • Focus on the ideal, • Move from talk to action

17. Reality and the Ideal Vision: Giving Life to the Organization’s Future • Lessons: Building an Emotionally Intelligent Organization • Emotional Intelligence is key to the success of any organization • Emotionally intelligent leaders must: • Create resonant organizations, involving people in discovering the truth about themselves and the organization • Help people to name what is harmful and to build on the organization’s strengths • Bring people together around a common vision • Create and demonstrate new ways for people to work together • Build resonance • Ensure that resonance can be sustained through the systems that regulate the ebb and flow of work and relationships

18. Reality and the Ideal Vision: Giving Life to the Organization’s Future • Discovering the Emotional Reality • Respect the group’s values and the organization’s integrity • Slow down in order to speed up • Start at the top with a bottom-up strategy • Visualizing the ideal • Look inside • Don’t align – attune • People first, then strategy • Sustaining Emotional Intelligence • Turn vision into action • Create systems that sustain emotionally intelligent practices • Manage the myths of leadership

19. Creating Sustainable Change • Ensure that the entire fabric of the enterprise is interwoven with emotionally intelligent leadership • Cultivate leaders who will create emotionally intelligent groups • Understand that organizations thrive on routine and the status quo  • When Leadership Building Fails • The top leader must drive mandates for change personally • Top management needs to demonstrate commitment  

20. Creating Sustainable Change • Succeed with a Process – Not a Program • Design a process that continually builds leadership that gets results • Create a safe space for learning, challenging, but not too risky • Focus on emotional and intellectual learning • Build on active, participatory work where people use what they’re learning to diagnose and solve real problems • Create processes that are multifaceted • Mixture of learning techniques • Conducted over a period of time • Take the culture head on

21. Creating Sustainable Change • Build Culture Change into Leadership Development • Create Buzz • Get Bullish on Leadership • Maximize the Half-Life of Learning • Tie-in training to culture within the organization • Seminars built around the philosophy and practice of individual change • Make learning relevant • Creative and potent learning processes with a purpose • Relationships that support learning, such as learning teams and executive coaching

22. Summary: Toward Resonant Work and Resonant Lives • Emotions MATTER for leadership • EI offers the essential competencies for resonant leadership • Create processes that make the group, team, or the entire organization more resonant • The best leaders lead not by virtue of power alone, but by excelling in the art of relationship

23. Summary: Toward Resonant Work and Resonant Lives • Resonant leaders know: • When to be collaborative • When to be visionary • When to listen • When to commence • How to nurture relationships • When to surface simmering issues • How to harmonize the human synergies of a group • To care about the careers of those who work for them • How to inspire people to give their best for a mission that speaks to shared values • How to create a climate of enthusiasm and flexibility

24. Summary: Toward Resonant Work and Resonant Lives • Leaders with EI are: • Values-driven • Flexible • Informal • Open and Frank • Connected to people and to networks • Exude resonance with a genuine passion for their mission