Developing Collaboration Part 3: Emotional Intelligence and Teamwork

Last week, we looked at what emotional intelligence was and the 5 key characteristics of emotional intelligence. In this blog post, we are going to expand on those principles but talk about emotional intelligence in the context of being a good team worker.

There is a lot of evidence to show that high emotional intelligence makes you a better team worker - all you have to do is google it to find a plethora of studies you can read. They all come to similar conclusions; people who are emotionally intelligent get on better with their teammates, they work together more seamlessly, they are able to solve problems more effectively and most importantly, they are able to manage emotions and conflicts within the team which is often a large issue in dysfunctional teams.

Let’s take a more in depth look at Goleman’s 5 attributes and their relationship to teamwork success:

• Self awareness - being self aware is incredibly important as you understand the impact your emotions have on the team. Emotions and attitudes are contagious, so controlling your negative emotions can have a large positive impact on the mood and therefore productivity of the whole team.

• Self-regulation - Regulating emotions is more important during times of conflict within the team or overcoming obstacles such as stress, deadlines etc. Not only is it important for you not to be overwhelmed by emotions for your own personal mental health, but it is important to build good relationships with teammates. If you have a big argument every time you are stressed, the team will make very little progress.

• Motivation - As mentioned before, this is very important in a group atmosphere, as the ability to motivate not only yourself but your peers is a huge advantage and will make you a much better collaborator. In addition, motivation is about working effectively towards your goals, but in a team environment, it is placing the overall goal above your own personal goals to achieve that win-win scenario which we talked about at the start.

• Empathy - being able to understand what other people are feeling is very useful when working in a group - you are able to reach agreements quicker and work together better. It is also incredibly important in conflict resolution - if you have no idea what others are feeling, resolving conflict will be significantly harder.

• Social skills - Again, this links in to building good relationships with your peers and understanding how other people think. Good social skills also link to good communication skills, being able to work through conflict well and being able to adapt to different kinds of people. The ability to socialise with everyone allows you to work effectively in any amount of groups with lots of different types of people.

As you can tell, there is a large emphasis on being able to bond with your teammates and form personal relationships as well as professional relationships. An emotionally intelligent person would be able to form relationships with their team members and be aware of the impact their emotions can have on the effectiveness and overall success of the team.

Next week will be the last week of the series where we go through common behavioural styles, what they mean and how each category of person behaves in a team, because understanding different types of people is one step further to working well with them.