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.

Note that there are four common ways that people can and do influence without integrity. These include: avoiding, manipulating, threatening, and intimidating.

We have personality style preferences for how we perceive and process information that predispose us both to use certain influence strategies naturally and to be more receptive to some than to others. However, each influence tactic requires a unique set of skills, which can be learned if you don’t come by them naturally. In choosing a tactic, you need to know what situation requires as well as how and to what your listener responds. For example, does your listener make decisions based on logic or based on people-centered values? Do they value affiliation and a participatory approach or do they respond more to legitimate authority?

Influence skills include a number of verbal skills such as asserting, probing, persisting, speaking conversationally, and willingness to ask for favors. Yet, equally important are non-verbal skills such as conveying energy and enthusiasm, using a compelling tone of voice, using authority without appearing heavy-handed, sensitivity to others’ feelings and needs, and building rapport and trust.

As a leader, it behooves you to have an accurate assessment of your influence effectiveness. You can do this best through a formal 360-degree assessment or short of that, ask your colleagues and friends for feedback, both positive and constructive, on how they perceive your influence skills.

(c) Copyright 2003. Manya Arond-Thomas, all rights reserved.