Running Head: SINGH M 3.

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Singh M 3.1

Michelle Singh

Medaille College

Author Note

This paper was prepared on February 7, 2017 for Leadership Interactions MOL-624E-12 taught

by Dr. Marianne Sullivan.

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Emotional intelligence is as important to successful teams as other aspects such as skills.

A high emotional team intelligence will lead to stronger and more effective teams with more

motivation and trust. However, in any team there may be members with lower emotional

intelligence or events that cause a slippage in group emotional intelligence. When this happens it

is important for a team leader to help raise the team emotional intelligence through awareness

and activity. Even a team of people with generally high emotional intelligence can suffer from

low group emotional intelligence. (Druskat and Wolff, 2001)

When it comes to individual emotional intelligence, a team leader with high emotional

intelligence should have keen awareness of their groups emotional states and steer them back to

a place of trust and community. Any team member could lack emotional intelligence by lacking

awareness of their own feelings, the feelings of others, or how their actions can impact the

feelings of others. Moods are also contagious and can be vicarious which means that the

negativity of one person can affect the entire group without their even knowing it. (Thompson,

2014) A good team leader will be able to sense when this is happening and intentionally

counteracting it through positive team building and projecting an opposing mood onto the team.

As a team leader you should be prepared to project positivity, accentuate the commonalities

between group members when there may be differences getting in the way, build trust by

abstaining from judgment, and rewarding team members with compliments and recognition, to

name a few. (Thompson, 2014) Elevating team emotional intelligence depends on building a

sense of trust within the team and increasing how much the team members like each other.

There may also be instances where an individual has an innately low emotional intelligence and

must be worked around. In these cases it may actually be necessary to cater to these low

emotional intelligence individuals for the sake of the team. This means the team leader must
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have a great deal of patience to handle people who may get on everyone elses nerves and learn

what keeps them happy or out of the way on a particular topic when their attitude becomes a

distraction.

As much as each individual in a group will have their own emotional intelligence, the

group as a whole will have one as well based on the dynamics of the group within itself and also

in relation to their external relationships. The way a group interacts with their external

environment can be overlooked if the internal workings of the team are one of trust but without

that awareness performance overall may suffer. Ways in which a leader can help to increase

emotional intelligence of the group include through encouraging team members to learn more

about their organization and environment and asking external members to join or speak at team

meetings. (Druskat and Wolff, 2001) If the emotional intelligence of the group is high internally

the team leader should be able to turn that focus to external relations through actively making

these connections happen. It may take a team leader to facilitate such information gathering,

sharing, and relationship building.

In taking the Workgroup Emotional Intelligence Profile (Thompson, 2014, pg. 114) I

learned that I have a very high emotional intelligence. In reading this and the entire chapter I see

that the emotional intelligence I have is well suited to my role as a team leader. I also learned

that the importance of emotional intelligence in leading team plays itself out in how well you get

the other members of the team to work together. The four aspects being measure are awareness

and management of your own emotions and awareness and management of others emotions.

(Thompson, 2014) Not everyone will score high in all four of these variables. The team leader

is responsible for awareness and management of not only their own emotions but those of the

team. If a member of the team comes in with a defensive attitude it can easily spread to others
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on the team. The team leader must be aware of this persons attitude and curtail it before it

spreads by diverting the attention of the team, spreading a more infectious positive attitude, or

possibly addressing the situation with that individual either directly or indirectly. It may be

possible to simply make the person aware of their attitude or you may need to employ other

tactics through team building exercises or individual recognition and rewards. In order to do this

a team leader must have a high emotional intelligence.

To say that emotional intelligence is at the heart of effective teams is really to say that the

leadership of a team must have a high emotional intelligence. With a good leader at the helm

who is not only aware of their own emotions, but able to steer the group emotions, a team can be

successful through any pitfall. It is really about awareness and creating situations for resilience

when faced with emotional challenges on the team. It is the ability to acknowledge the negative,

the problems, and the conflicts and steer them towards trust and community and effectiveness.
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References

Druskat, V. U. and Wolff, S. B. (2001, March). Building the emotional intelligence of groups.

Harvard business review, March 2001, 79-90. Retrieved from

https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/content/59912769.

Thompson, L. L. (2014). Making the team: A guide for managers. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Education, Inc.