High-functioning teams are what make high-performing companies click. Whether the task is to create an innovative service or implement a new system, groups rather than individuals are shouldering more of the burden than ever before. The ideal team merges individual talents and skills into one super-performing whole with capabilities that surpass those of even its most talented member.
Yet, in reality, many teams fail to get close to that utopian ideal. Members do not work together as seamlessly as they could. People disengage, information goes unshared, wires get crossed, and time and money are wasted.
What distinguishes top teams from the rest? High performing teams aren’t the result of happy accident, research shows. They achieve superior levels of participation, cooperation, and collaboration because their members trust one another, share a strong sense of group identity, and have confidence in their effectiveness as a team. In other words, such teams possess high levels of group emotional intelligence (EI).
Like individual EI, group EI has to do with an awareness of emotions and the ability to manage them in a healthy, productive manner, says vanessa urch druskat, an associate professor at the university of new hampshire and a pioneer of the concept. A two-year study in which Druskat and steven b.wolff, a research consultant at hay group (Philadelphia), examined cross-functional drug development teams at johnson & johnson revealed that group EI was the biggest predictor of team success.
Building an emotionally intelligent team requires developing emotional competence for the group as a whole. A team, like any social group, is governed by shared attitudinal and behavioral norms, which, though sometimes unspoken, are understood within the group. Teams that enjoy high levels of groupEI, Druskat and Wolff say, have established norms that strengthen trust, group identity, and group efficacy. As a result, their members cooperate more fully with one another and collaborate more creatively in furthering the team’s work.
“When you create a climate of trust and the sense that ‘We are better together than we are apart,’” says Druskat, “it leads to greater effectiveness.”
Implementing the following three practices will get your efforts to build your team’s EI off to a solid start, say Druskat, Wolff, and other experts:
1. Make time for team members to appreciate each other’s skills
Interpersonal understanding is critical to trust, which, in turn, is critical for the flow of ideas and information. The group must be aware of each member’s skills and personality. When a group is first formed, it’s smart to hold a launch meeting that has time built in for introductions and socializing. Members can get acquainted with one another as they start hammering out team goals and creating a shared vision of success.
Once a team is established, taking five minutes at the beginning of regular meetings for members to share work progress and personal reflections helps fortify the group’s understanding of each individual and how together they all contribute to a common goal. “People on teams where people knew one another better were more efficient and got more work done,” Druskat says.
Some teams, such as the accounting team at Xerox canada in North York, Ontario, tasked with achieving year one adherence to sarbanes-oxley act accounting and disclosure rules with new leadership and only six months remaining to obtain compliance, use more formal mechanisms. To showcase their skills and experiences, members took turns at a weekly meeting sharing a past success or crucial lesson. One member, whom others had discounted because she lacked a finance background, described how in a previous role she had managed the push and pull of providing customers with specific services by persuading internal people–people over whom she had no formal authority–to do the work required to deliver those services.
Her presentation opened her teammates’ eyes to the value she could provide, says Denise Holmes, manager of internal control at Xerox Canada. Achieving compliance meant a lot of additional work on business owners’ behalf and thus her experience, closely related to this task, increased other members’ trust in her and enhanced the group’s emerging sense of itself as a talented, capable collective that would be able to meet the formidable challenges that lay ahead.

2. Surface and manage emotional issues that can help or hinder the team’s progress
It’s important to establish comfortable, group-sanctioned ways to express the inevitable anger, tension, and frustration that arise in a team endeavor and to positively redirect that energy. “Inevitably, a team member will indulge in behavior that crosses the line, and the team must feel comfortable calling the foul,” Druskat and Wolff write in their Harvard Business Review article, “Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups” (Reprint # R0103E).
Both humor and playfulness can be helpful tools in defusing conflict and relieving tension. One team at the worldwide innovation consultancy ideo (Palo Alto, Calif.), says Druskat, tossed soft toys over cubicle walls when feelings ran high. Besides lightening the mood, this action served as a reminder that the group had established norms for expressing difficult emotions, thereby making them feel less threatening to individuals and to the group as a whole. In another approach, the Xerox team members wrote down their gripes, clipped them to play money in denominations from $1 to $100 depending on how serious they felt the issue to be, and dropped them into an “opportunities” jar. Their gripes were discussed at meetings, starting with problems attached to larger denominations.
The process enhanced the group’s emotional competence in several ways. First, it increased trust by fostering openness and decreasing the temptation for members to express their frustration in destructive ways. “Setting up a place where people can deposit something that bothers them allows them to get it off their chest and continue with their day,” says Linda Lopeke, president and CEO of Lexicorp Services in Mississauga, Ontario, who coached the Xerox team.
Second, those with complaints saw them dealt with fairly and positively. In response to a complaint that an overly gregarious (and unnamed) team member was a distraction, the group developed a good-natured solution: small placards for the backs of their chairs reading “The doctor is in” or “The doctor is out.” Holmes explains that when the doctor was “in,” visiting was OK; when the doctor was “out,” it wasn’t.
Third, the jar truly did offer opportunities by enabling members to expand skills while helping forward the team’s work. For example, the jar revealed that members were unable to get past the Xerox firewall when working offsite. The individual who volunteered to troubleshoot was not an IT specialist but had enough computer knowledge, curiosity, and persistence to find and eliminate the glitch.
3. Celebrate success
Building the EI of a team also requires the expression of positive emotions, such as gratitude for going the extra mile or pride in a job well done. Recognizing individual and group achievements not only strengthens a team’s identity, but it also spotlights its effectiveness and fuels its collective passion for excellence. For instance, Xerox Canada created a “Wall of Fame” to honor members of the Sarbanes-Oxley team.
“Celebrating positive emotions is very easy to do,” says Druskat. Giving each other high fives, toasting one another at dinners, or simply clapping for someone in a meeting– it’s amazing, she says, what such simple acts “can do for building a sense of solidarity, efficacy, and identity.”
An added bonus
Xerox Canada’s Sarbanes-Oxley team achieved its objective of 2004 compliance, attracting positive attention from the entire organization in the process. Its celebration of its members’ accomplishments, its recognition of other teams’ contributions, and–above all–its success at meeting a very challenging goal gained it such widespread attention within the company that it is now inundated with applications when a job is posted.
This is not surprising, says Druskat. “People want to belong to something that they think is effective.”

Myth #1: Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand.

This myth is based on the assumption that human beings are capable of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time. We’re not. Instead, we learn to move rapidly between tasks. When we’re doing one, we’re actually not even aware of the other.

If you’re on a conference call, for example, and you turn your attention to an incoming email, you’re missing what’s happening on the call as long as you’re checking your email. Equally important, you’re incurring something called “switching time.” That’s the time it takes to shift from one cognitive activity to another.

On average, according to researcher David Meyer, switching time increases the amount of time it takes to finish the primary task you were working on by an average of 25 percent. In short, juggling activities is incredibly inefficient.

Difficult as it is to focus in the face of the endless distractions we all now face, it’s far and away the most  effective way  to get work done. The worst thing you can do as a boss is to insist that your people constantly check their email.

Myth #2: A little bit of anxiety helps us perform better.

Think for a moment about how you feel when you’re performing at your best. What adjectives come to mind? Almost invariably they’re positive ones. Anxiety may be a source of energy, and even motivation, but it comes with significant costs.

The more anxious we feel, the less clearly and imaginatively we think, and the more reactive and impulsive we become. That’s not good for you, and it also has huge implications if you’re in a supervisory role.

As a boss, your energy has a disproportionate impact on those you lead, by virtue of your authority. Put bluntly, any time your behavior increases someone’s anxiety — or prompts any negative emotions, for that matter — they’re less likely to perform effectively.

The more positive your energy is, the more positive their energy is likely to be, and the better the likely outcome.

Myth #3: Creativity is genetically inherited, and it’s impossible to teach.

In a global economy characterized by unprecedented competitiveness and constant change, nearly every CEO hungers for ways to drive more innovation. Unfortunately, most CEOs don’t think of themselves as creative, and they share with the rest of us a deeply ingrained belief that creativity is mostly inborn and magical.

Ironically, researchers have developed a surprising degree of consensus about the stages of creativity and how to approach them. Our educational system and most company cultures favor reward the rational, analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking. We pay scant attention to intentionally cultivating the more visual, intuitive, big picture capacities of the right hemisphere.

As it turns out, the creative process moves back and forth between left and right hemisphere dominance. Creativity is actually about using the whole brain more flexibly. This process unfolds in a far more systematic — and teachable — way than we ordinarily imagine. People can quickly learn to access the hemisphere of the brain that serves them best at each stage of the creative process — and to generate truly original ideas.

Myth #4: The best way to get more work done is to work longer hours.

No single myth is more destructive to employers and employees than this one. The reason is that we’re not designed to operate like computers — at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time.

Instead, human beings are designed to pulse intermittently between spending and renewing energy. Great performers — and enlightened leaders — recognize that it’s not the number of hours people work that determines the value they create, but rather the energy they bring to whatever hours they work.

Rather than systematically burning down our reservoir of energy as the day wears on, as most of us do, intermittent renewal makes it possible to keep our energy steady all day long. Strategically alternating periods of intense focus with intermittent renewal, at least every 90 minutes, makes it possible to get more done, in less time, more sustainably.

Want to test the assumption? Choose the most challenging task on your agenda before you go to sleep each night over the next week. Set aside 60 to 90 minutes at the start of the following day to focus on the activity you’ve chosen.

Choose a designated start and stop time, and do your best to allow no interruptions. (It helps to turn off your email.) Succeed and it will almost surely be your most productive period of the day. When you’re done, reward yourself by taking a true renewal break. 

Have you ever worked on a project that produced unexpected results? Unintended consequences are common in business. For example, sometimes when a senior manager makes a request, it causes a cascade of activity that is far beyond what she intended. The classic story (which may be an urban legend) involves a former Chairman of General Motors who casually commented to a staff member that he didn’t like the color of the buildings on campus — and inadvertently triggered an expensive (and totally unnecessary) repainting program.
Anyone who flies regularly experiences this phenomenon firsthand. In order to increase profitability, airlines now charge separately for many previously bundled services — such as checking baggage, providing seats with leg room, eating meals on-board, etc. And indeed these previously free services have generated substantial incremental revenue for the airlines.
What was not intended was that passengers, to avoid the fees, would change their traveling habits. Many now cram more possessions into carry-on bags, bring more food (and smells) on board, and complain over smaller seats. This has made the flying experience even more difficult, particularly for the business travelers that provide most of the revenue. As Aviation Week explains, while charging for checked bags makes dollars and cents, it also costs airlines in customer satisfaction ratings. Carriers also may be affecting the iron-time departure metrics, as passengers seeking bin space for their overstuffed carry-ons cause delays.
All of us are affected by unintended consequences — either as victims or unwitting perpetrators. To minimize their negative impact, there are two steps that managers can take:
Plan ahead (as much as you can). Start all projects or change efforts with the conscious realization that there could be surprising outcomes. One way to reinforce this assumption is to engage in scenario planning before pulling the trigger, preferably by engaging people who will be affected by the change. For example, my firm once worked with the operations executives of a large company that planned to shift some of its factory employees from an hourly to a salaried pay program. From the corporate perspective, there was no downside to this change and they anticipated a smooth transition. However when we invited employees to talk about the transition, the executives learned that many workers would strike over this change because they would have to put in full days during times when they preferred flexible work hours (such as hunting season). Knowing this in advance caused management to modify the plan and present it in a different way, avoiding a strike.
Test the waters. Conduct short, focused experiments to see how various parties will react to the change. For example, a team at another company was developing a new sales forecasting process, and started to apply elements of the new approach to one product in one region early on. This living laboratory for the new process gave them a real-time window into the reactions of their sales people, the lead time needed by supply chain, and the information formats that were easiest to use. This information allowed the project managers to modify their plans before rolling it out to the whole company.
Whenever you change something, it’s impossible to eliminate all of the unintended consequences. But the more you can anticipate the possibilities, and be ready to deal with them, the greater your chances of success.