The Key to Effective Teams in Schools: Emotional Intelligence

I’m going to share one of my greatest discoveries about developing teams. This understanding has led me to take actions that otherwise would never have occurred to me when working with groups. I also think it might be one of the keys to building effective teams of educators who can collaborate, learn together, and transform our schools.

You’ve probably heard about emotional intelligence (EI)—the ability to recognize when you’re experiencing emotions, to have strategies for managing them, and to recognize other people’s emotions and respond appropriately to them. A team leader’s EI is extremely important, but there’s also such a thing as a group’s collective emotional intelligence. And this, according to researchers, is what sets high-functioning teams apart from average ones.

Why Group Emotional Intelligence Matters

A team’s emotional intelligence might be the most important predictor of what it will do together, what conversations will sound like, and how members will feel about going to meetings—but just because a team is composed of individuals with high EI doesn’t mean that the team will have high EI. Groups take on their own character.

Some indicators of low EI in a group:

Some indicators of high EI in a group:

Further Benefits for the Group

Emotionally intelligent teams have ways of managing the moods that one member is experiencing as well as their moods as a team. This management doesn’t necessarily come from the leader—in fact, an indicator of an emotionally intelligent team is that any member accepts authority to address moods, communication dynamics, and interactions between members.

Much of the time, the ways that teammates manage these interactions feel comfortable and appropriate. In an emotionally intelligent team, members welcome insights, observations, and suggestions for improving their work and team dynamics. When one person starts talking too much, another might lightheartedly say, “OK, James! We get it—you love this idea and hope we start working on it right away. I appreciate your enthusiasm and want to make sure we hear from others, so zip it for a while!” And in an emotionally intelligent team, James would laugh, motion the zipping of his lips, and sit back to listen to others.

The concept that a team has emotional intelligence can significantly affect how we facilitate groups and can help us address myriad challenges in our teams. But the purpose is not just that we feel good. Teams need to develop emotional intelligence so that members can engage in conversations that push each other’s thinking—not each other’s buttons.