• Standards for how we’re going to communicate in and outside meetings

• Keeping us on track if we get off

• Facilitating group members’ input

• Permission for bringing feelings out in open and dialoguing about how they affect team’s work

It’s leader’s job to instill a sense of responsibility in individuals for well-being of team. In self-aware, self-managing teams, members hold each other accountable for sticking to norms.

The third spoke is comprised of communication on issues related to control, which range from resolving issues of leadership style, decision-making and conflict management processes, as well as agreement on operating practices that support development, production and/or implementation.

Lastly, to build fourth spoke, group must address and agree on overarching team goals, addressing questions of: “What do I want to see happen? What do we want to accomplish? And how will we know when we’ve accomplished it?”

These spokes comprise a series of developmental stages that high-performing teams negotiate effectively. Lack of team alignment and high performance indicate that group has not adequately addressed and clarified questions in one or more of stages of membership, control, or goals. If you find yourself on a team that’s not delivering to it’s potential, it’s time to do a team assessment to uncover and bring to light unresolved issues. When you do that, assuming you have right players, your team can go from good or even very good to GREAT.

With complexity of problems facing health care leaders, collaboration and ability to synthesize divergent points of view are needed more than ever if we are to solve these problems. Because most work in organizations today is done by teams, there is a pressing need to make teams work together better.

Research has demonstrated superiority of group decision-making over that of even brightest individual in group, except when group lacks harmony or ability to cooperate. Then decision-making quality and speed suffer. When people feel good, they work more effectively, and are more creative. Common sense tells us that workers who feel upbeat will go extra mile to please customers and therefore improve bottom line.

To be most effective, team needs to create emotionally intelligent norms that support behaviors for building trust, group identity and group efficacy - three conditions essential to a team’s effectiveness. Norms that foster group EI involve: courageously bringing feelings out in open and dialoguing about how they affect team’s work, using humor to defuse tense situations, willingness to explore and expose unhealthy work habits in order to build more effective group norms and performance, and behaving in ways that build relationships both inside and outside team. In self-aware, self-managing teams, members hold each other accountable for sticking to norms.

However, it is leader’s job to instill a sense of responsibility in each person for well-being of team. It takes a strong emotionally intelligent leader to hold team to such responsibility. An emotionally competent leader who is skilled in creating good feelings can keep cooperation high. Good team leaders know how to balance focus on productivity with attention to members’ relationships and their ability to connect.

How Do You Build an Emotionally Intelligent Organization?

In addition to specific emotional competencies, there are certain Rules of Engagement that help to create a resonant, emotionally intelligent, and effective culture: 1. Discover emotional reality of organization.

2. Slow down in order to speed up – talk to people at all levels and find out about systems and culture.

3. Start at top with a bottom-up strategy, engaging all representative stakeholders who in any way impact patient-customer interface, and learn about what’s working and what’s not working. Then create a whole-system conversation in which all stakeholders who need to be in conversation are in room and talk about what needs to happen to move things forward.

4. Create a preferred future, with an energizing vision to which employees can bring their best selves.

5. Sustain emotional intelligence by turning vision into action, creating systems or processes that promote emotionally intelligent behavior.

Matters of emotion are typically dismissed as “soft” stuff, yet in reality emotional competence is “hard” stuff. Developing EI is well worth effort, for emotional competence is what sets best leaders and best teams apart from rest.

(c) Copyright 2003 Manya Arond-Thomas All Rights Reserved.