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JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Spring 2002 © 2002 by Daniel Goleman DOI: 10.1002/npr.10020 THE EMOTIONAL REALITY OF TEAMS TEAMS The capabilities that the authors have defined as components of Emotional In- telligence—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relation- ship management—apply to teams as well as individuals. And so, to optimize a team’s effectiveness, its members—and especially its leader(s)—must “tune in” to its emotional state and needs. © 2002 by Daniel Goleman Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee Daniel Goleman is co-director of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. Richard Boyatzis is professor of organizational behavior and chair of the Department of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Annie McKee serves on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, teaches at the Wharton School, Aresty Institute of Executive Education, and consults to business and organization leaders worldwide. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpted from the authors’ book, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. © 2002 by Daniel Goleman. All rights reserved. * * * 55 T he top management team of a manufacturing firm had accepted an important charge: to find ways to address the fact that the firm was perenni- ally locked in what they called “flat growth.” Trans- lation: they were losing their edge. The trouble was, the team simply could not seem to make big deci- sions, no matter how important. In fact, the more urgent the decision, the more the team members would put off making it, careful to avoid topics on which they knew they disagreed. Worse yet, they sometimes acted as if they did agree on key issues, only to leave the meeting and, as one person put it, “quietly sabotage the decision.” Meantime, the manufacturing firm fell more and more behind on implementing crucial strategy. What was going on with this team? Through a leadership audit of the team members, the truth came out: Virtually every one of them was un- comfortable with interpersonal disagreements, scoring low on the conflict-management Emo- tional Intelligence competence. Suddenly, the rea- son for the team’s inability to make decisions was obvious. It had never come to the collective real- ization that open discussion and disagreements about ideas—as opposed to attacks on people who hold disparate views—sharpens decision making. Instead, the team had adopted the habit of avoid- ing all disputes. For this group, recognizing that their shared gap had resulted in inefficient team habits was like a light going on. In fact, what they had discovered was an important, but invisible, force acting on the team: The ground rules around conflict and their collective feelings about it added up to an

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Page 1: The emotional reality of teams

The Emotional Reality of Teams

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Spring 2002

55

JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE / Spring 2002

© 2002 by Daniel Goleman

DOI: 10.1002/npr.10020

THE EMOTIONAL REALITY OF TEAMS

T E A M S

The capabilities that the authors have defined as components of Emotional In-telligence—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relation-ship management—apply to teams as well as individuals. And so, to optimize ateam’s effectiveness, its members—and especially its leader(s)—must “tune in”to its emotional state and needs. © 2002 by Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

Daniel Goleman is co-director of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. RichardBoyatzis is professor of organizational behavior and chair of the Department of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School ofManagement at Case Western Reserve University. Annie McKee serves on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School ofEducation, teaches at the Wharton School, Aresty Institute of Executive Education, and consults to business and organization leadersworldwide. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpted from the authors’ book, Primal Leadership: Realizing thePower of Emotional Intelligence. © 2002 by Daniel Goleman. All rights reserved.

* * *

55

The top management team of a manufacturingfirm had accepted an important charge: to find

ways to address the fact that the firm was perenni-ally locked in what they called “flat growth.” Trans-lation: they were losing their edge. The trouble was,the team simply could not seem to make big deci-sions, no matter how important. In fact, the moreurgent the decision, the more the team memberswould put off making it, careful to avoid topics onwhich they knew they disagreed. Worse yet, theysometimes acted as if they did agree on key issues,only to leave the meeting and, as one person put it,“quietly sabotage the decision.” Meantime, themanufacturing firm fell more and more behind onimplementing crucial strategy.

What was going on with this team? Through aleadership audit of the team members, the truth

came out: Virtually every one of them was un-comfortable with interpersonal disagreements,scoring low on the conflict-management Emo-tional Intelligence competence. Suddenly, the rea-son for the team’s inability to make decisions wasobvious. It had never come to the collective real-ization that open discussion and disagreementsabout ideas—as opposed to attacks on people whohold disparate views—sharpens decision making.Instead, the team had adopted the habit of avoid-ing all disputes.

For this group, recognizing that their sharedgap had resulted in inefficient team habits was likea light going on. In fact, what they had discoveredwas an important, but invisible, force acting onthe team: The ground rules around conflict andtheir collective feelings about it added up to an

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56 Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

emotional reality that paralyzed them. With thatinsight, they could see what they, as a team—andas individuals—needed to change, and further,they recognized that beyond even a behavioral ad-justment, a real solution would require a shift inmindset about conflict.

We’ve seen repeatedly that when teams (andentire organizations) face their collective emo-tional reality, they begin a healthy re-examinationof the shared habits that create and hold that real-ity in place. In fact, for leaders to extend emo-tional intelligence throughout their teams andorganizations, that’s precisely where they need tostart: by taking a hard look at reality, rather thanfocusing first on an ideal vision. Thus the sequenceof reflection and self-discovery is reversed fromwhat we recommend at the individual level.

Why the reversal? It’s a matter of motivation.As individuals, we feel most motivated to changewhen we tap into our dreams and ideal visions ofour lives. That vision of our personal future givesus the energy and commitment to change our be-havior. The ideal vision for a group, however, isoften a much more distant concept, so it simplydoesn’t provide enough motivation to instigatechange. A good example is the lofty languagefound in company mission statements, which of-ten feels light years away from employees’ day-to-day experience at work.

Groups begin to change only when they firsthave fully grasped the reality of how they func-tion, particularly when individuals in the grouprecognize that they’re working in situations thatare dissonant or uncomfortable. It is critical thatthey understand this reality on an emotional, evenvisceral, level. Yet recognizing discomfort doesnot, in itself, enable change either. Group mem-bers must discover the source of discontent—anemotional reality that usually goes beyond suchobvious sources as “a bad boss.” The root of theproblem often lies with long-established and

deeply imbedded ground rules, or habits that gov-ern the group. We call those rules norms when wetalk about teams, and culture when we refer to thelarger organization.

Once there’s an understanding of the emotionalreality and norms of teams and the culture of ourorganizations, it can be used as a basis from whichto develop the ideal vision for the group which, tobe truly captivating must also be in tune with eachindividual’s personal vision. With the reality andideal vision understood, things are in position toidentify and explore the gaps between them andplan consciously to align what’s happening todaywith the vision of tomorrow. The more aligned thereality is with the ideal, the more we can count onthat change to stick over the long term. That typeof “attuning” ideals with reality is what createsthe framework for moving away from dissonanceand toward an emotionally intelligent, resonant,and more effective group.

Before exploring how to make change hap-pen, however, we’ll look more closely at theconcept of emotional reality. We’ll explore thisin the context of teams, which provide an im-mediate venue for change—while at the sametime offering a reflection of the larger organi-zational reality.

WHEN TEAMS FAIL: THE POWER OF NORMS

In the last few decades much research has proventhe superiority of group decision making over thatof even the brightest individual in the group.1 Thereis one exception to this rule. If the group lacksharmony or the ability to cooperate, decision-mak-ing quality and speed suffer. Research at Cam-bridge University found that even groupscomprising brilliant individuals will make baddecisions if the group disintegrates into bicker-ing, interpersonal rivalry, or power plays.2

In short, groups are smarter than individualsonly when they exhibit the qualities of emotionalintelligence. Everyone in the group contributes tothe overall level of emotional intelligence, but theleader holds special sway in this regard. Emotionsare contagious, and it’s natural for people to payextra attention to the leader’s feelings and behav-ior.3 So, very often, it is the group leader who setsthe tone and helps to create the group’s emotional

… even groups comprising brilliant individualswill make bad decisions if the group disinte-

grates into bickering, interpersonal rivalry, orpower plays.

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reality—how it feels to be part of the team.4 Aleader skilled in collaboration can keep resonancehigh, and thus ensure the group’s decisions willbe worth the effort of meeting. Such leaders knowhow to balance a team’s focus on the task at handwith attention to the relationships among the teammembers. They naturally create a friendly, coop-erative climate in the room, a climate that fostersa positive outlook on the future.5

Accordingly, a leader who isn’t emotionallyintelligent can wreak havoc in a team situation.Consider the following:

• A division of a healthcare company waslosing money hand over fist, providinginferior service while employing too manypeople at every level. The managementteam was headed by a shortsighted leaderand held endless meetings to seek consen-sus before it would make changes aroundcritical issues like cutting staff. Unable tocome to any decisions, within a few yearsthe ailing division pulled the entire com-pany into financial disarray.

• Janet, a brilliant leader in a large insurancecompany, stepped into a sleepy divisionwith the force of a tornado—and absoluteintolerance for the old ways of doingthings. For people on the team who didn’tagree with her plans, she had one clear andvery public message: There’s no room foryou here; find something else to do. Littledid Janet realize she had mobilized a forcefor a new cause in her team—to see herfail at any price. Within a matter of months,what had been a reasonably successful di-vision began performing miserably, andwithin a year it was dismantled.

Unfortunately the above scenarios are all-too-familiar to many of us. At the root of bothsituations was a problem related to how theleader managed the silent language of bothemotion and norms. We take norms for granted,but they are immensely powerful. Norms repre-sent implicit learning at the group level—thetacit rules that we learn by absorbing day-to-day interactions and that we automatically adoptso we can fit in smoothly.

When all is said and done, the norms of a grouphelp to determine whether it functions as a high-performing team or becomes simply a loose col-lection of people working together.6 In some teams,contention and heated confrontation are the orderof the day; in others a charade of civility and in-terest barely veils everyone’s boredom. In stillother, more effective teams, people listen to andquestion each other with respect, they support eachother in word and deed, working through disagree-ments with openness and humor. Whatever theground rules, we automatically sense them andtend to adjust how we behave accordingly. In otherwords, norms dictate what “feels right” in a givensituation, and so govern how we act.

Sometimes norms that seem helpful, and thatare even rooted in noble goals, can become de-structive. That was the case with the healthcaredivision example recounted above. One of the divi-sion’s most vaunted norms was a commitment toconsensus in the decision-making process. Butwhere consensus usually results in highly com-mitted and motivated team members, in this divi-sion, the leader had come to use it as a way to stalland even hijack decisions—especially decisionsthat would move things in a new direction.

In the case of the new leader of the sleepy insur-ance division, Janet’s failure to identify the team’semotional reality and to comply with its underlyingnorms wrought catastrophic results. She underesti-mated the power of the tribe: the tight cohesion thatpeople feel when there are longstanding collectivehabits and a shared sense of what they hold sacred.

Charged with transforming the division into astate-of-the-art unit, Janet came in with big dreamsand a keen eye for what needed to change. Usinga classic commanding leadership style, she lookedaround, found a few folks who looked liked “lead-ers” (actually they looked just like her), pulledthem close, and began cleaning house—readilysacrificing people with the least power. When her

… the norms of a group help to determinewhether it functions as a high-performing teamor becomes simply a loose collection of people

working together.

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new subordinates objected to her tactics, Janetwasn’t fazed; she was convinced that the seniorpeople would see the need for change and adopther vision—or else get out.

What Janet failed to take into account werethe unspoken but powerful norms that had gov-erned the division long before she came aboard.The most important of those norms was a strongbond of loyalty among the team members, whoprided themselves on taking care of each othereven during hard times. They had also found waysto deal with conflict that insured that few peoplewere hurt. By treating people roughly, Janet vio-lated core cultural norms. The team membersfound their guiding principles—collaboration,kindness, and respect for “face”—under attack,and they fought back. Within a matter of months,as people came together around their shared senseof outrage, key team members openly tried to wrestleadership from her, while many others chose toleave—leading to the division’s eventual demise.

Janet is a good example of one of the biggestmistakes leaders can make: to ignore the realities

of team ground rules and the collective emotionsin the tribe and to assume that the force of theirleadership alone is enough to drive people’s be-havior. Still, it happens in company after company:A leader walks into a new job—often a turn-around situation—ignores the power of the group’snorms, and pretends that feelings don’t matter.Rather than using resonance-building leadershipstyles, the leader employs a steam-rolling combi-nation of commanding and pacesetting styles. Theresult: a toxic and rebellious environment.

Clearly the leaders in the previous exampleslacked the emotional intelligence to address thegroup reality and raise team interactions to moreproductive levels. Leaders who have a keensense of the group’s pivotal norms, on the otherhand—and who are adept at maximizing posi-tive emotions—can create highly emotionallyintelligent teams.

Collective emotional intelligence is what setstop-performing teams apart from average teams,as shown by the work of Vanessa Druskat, a pro-fessor at Case Western’s Weatherhead School of

“Setting Ground Rules: The Leader’s Job”More than anyone else, it is the team leader who has the power to establish norms, maxi-

mizing harmony and collaboration to ensure that the team benefits from the best talents of eachmember. How does a leader accomplish that? By moving the group toward a higher emotionaltone, using positive images, optimistic interpretations, and resonance-building norms andleadership styles, particularly visionary, democratic, affiliative, and coaching.

For example, leaders can model behavior through their own actions or by positively rein-forcing members who do something that builds the group’s emotional capacity. One might dothis by conducting a short check-in session before meetings start, to ensure that anyone whosemood might be “off” can express their feelings and have them soothed. As Kenwyn Smith of theUniversity of Pennsylvania and David Berg, deputy editor of the Journal of Applied BehaviorSciences, noted in their research, such emotions in a group are crucial signals to a leader “thatthe issue or event at hand should be engaged rather than avoided”—short-circuiting the troublerather than letting it magnify.14 Alternatively, a leader might make a point of phoning a memberwhose behavior has been rude and discussing the issue, or he might make sure he asks mem-bers who have been quiet what they think about a particular decision.

Setting the right ground rules requires an emotionally intelligent leader—again, commonsense, but not common practice. The best leaders pay attention, and act, on their sense of whatis going on in the group, and they needn’t be obvious about it. Subtle messages, like quietlyreminding someone not to attack ideas during a brainstorming session, are powerful too. Undersuch leadership, teams over time naturally accumulate a common, positive lore about how tooperate with each other.

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Management, and Steven Wolff, a professor atMarist College’s School of Management. Groupemotional intelligence, they argue, determines ateam’s ability to manage its emotions in a way thatcultivates “trust, group identity, and group effi-cacy,” and so maximizes cooperation, collabora-tion, and effectiveness.7 In short, emotionalintelligence results in a positive—and powerful—emotional reality.

MAXIMIZING THE GROUP’S EMOTIONALINTELLIGENCE

Not surprisingly, a group’s emotional intelligencerequires the same capabilities that an emotionallyintelligent individual expresses: self-awareness,self-management, social awareness, and relation-ship management. What’s different though, is thatthe emotional intelligence competencies relate toindividuals and the group-as-a-whole.8 Groupshave moods and needs, and they act collectively—just think about the last time you walked into ameeting, late, and you could actually feel the ten-sion in the room. You could tell there had been aconflict of some sort, even before anyone said aword. The group, as a whole, was tense and poisedfor a fight. You also knew that the group, as awhole, needed some action to get back on track—and if it didn’t happen soon, things would spiraldownward. This is what we mean by group moodsand needs.

As is true with individuals, in teams each ofthe emotional intelligence abilities build on oneanother in practice, becoming a kind of con-tinuum. In other words, when team membersbegin to practice self-awareness, noticing thegroup’s mood and needs, they tend to respond toone another with empathy. The very act of show-ing one another empathy leads the team to createand sustain positive norms and manage its rela-tionships with the outside world more effectively.At the team level, social awareness—especiallyempathy—is the foundation that enables a teamto build and maintain effective relationships withthe rest of the organization.

The Self-Aware Team. An engineering firm’smanagement team had scheduled its weekly meet-ing at an offsite location. Just as the meeting was

about to begin, one team member stormed in,mumbling something about the meeting being heldat a place and time that was inconvenient for him.Noticing how upset he was, the leader calledeveryone’s attention to the sacrifice the team mem-ber was making and thanked him for it. The effectof that acknowledgement: no more anger.

A team expresses its self-awareness by beingmindful of shared moods as well as of the emo-tions of individuals within the group. In otherwords, members of a self-aware team are attunedto the emotional undercurrents of individuals andthe group as a whole. They have empathy for eachother, and there are norms to support vigilanceand mutual understanding. So whereas this teamleader’s gesture may have seemed simple, oftenjust such an astute and seemingly subtle move cando more to reduce dissonance and restore reso-nance than an action full of bells and whistles.

Since emotions are contagious, team memberstake their emotional cues from each other, for bet-ter or for worse. If a team is unable to acknowl-edge an angry member’s feelings, that emotion canset off a chain reaction of negativity. On the otherhand, if the team has learned to recognize and con-front such moments effectively, then one person’sdistress won’t hijack the whole group.

That intervention in the engineer’s team pointsto the near-seamlessness between a team’s self-awareness and empathy, which leads to its self-management. It also illustrates how a leader canmodel behavior. The leader in this case modeledan empathetic confrontation of a member’s emo-tional reality and brought it to the group’s atten-tion. That caring attitude builds a sense of trustand belonging that underscores the shared mis-sion: We’re all in this together.

Team self-awareness might also mean creat-ing norms such as listening to everyone’s perspec-tive—including that of a lone dissenter—before a

… a group’s emotional intelligence requiresthe same capabilities that an emotionally

intelligent individual expresses: self-awareness,self-management, social awareness, and rela-

tionship management.

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decision is made. Or it can mean recognizing whena teammate feels uncomfortable in learning a task,and stepping in to offer support.

In their research on teams, Susan Wheelanof Temple University and Fran Johnston of theGestalt Institute of Cleveland point out that veryoften it is an emotionally intelligent team mem-ber—not just the leader—who is able to pointout underlying problems and thus raise the self-awareness of the group.9 Such was the case at astrategic planning session at Lucent Technolo-gies, Inc.

The meeting was going all too predictably. Thereigning executive had asked, as she always did,for a “stretch goal” to set next year’s numbers. Theteam responded with its usual bravado: “Doubledigit!” “We can do anything we set our minds to!”But Michel Deschapelles, currently a regional vicepresident for Latin America, felt frustrated. Heknew that the team’s norm of public bravado hadlong masked underlying patterns of ineffectivegoal setting—which went far to explain thedivision’s slow growth—and reflected people’stendency to avoid accountability by hiding behindvague goals.

He decided to challenge his teammates: “Doyou guys really mean it?” he asked. “Then let’s gofor 400% growth this year! Let’s make that ourgoal!” You could see the reaction on people’s faces:they thought he had gone mad. For a moment theirdismay paralyzed the group. But after a few min-utes, people started to laugh: Deschapelles hadcalled their bluff and shed light on the group’s hid-den norm of empty bravado.

His challenge initiated a frank discussion abouthow the team had hidden the truth of its perfor-mance behind meaningless phrases. Soon the teamwas able to have more realistic conversations aboutmeasurable goals and concrete steps to attain them,holding one another accountable for what they

could achieve as a team. That proved to be a piv-otal moment for business performance, creatingnew clarity about who was responsible for what.For the first time, financial results for the follow-ing fiscal year let the team demonstrate its valueto the corporation by helping to close over $900million in sales.

Deschapelles’ actions sparked collective mind-fulness—awareness of what the team was doing,and why.10 This level of self-awareness in a teamleads to an ability to make decisions about whatto do and how to do it, rather than blindly follow-ing ineffective norms or swaying with the windsof team members’ (or the leader’s) emotions.

The Self-Managed Team. Cary Cherniss,Chair of a well-known research group, puts teamself-awareness front and center, and holds teammembers accountable for managing how they worktogether. At the beginning of a day-long meetinghe passes out the day’s agenda—along with a listof “process norms” that outlines how the team willcarry out that agenda. For example:

“Everyone, not just Cary, should take respon-sibility for:

• Keeping us on track if we get off;• Facilitating group input;• Raising questions about our procedures

(e.g., asking the group to clarify where itis going and offering summaries of the is-sues being discussed to make sure we havea shared understanding of them);

• Using good listening skills: either build onthe ongoing discussion or clearly signalthat we want to change the subject, andask if that is OK…”

Members of this group, who come fromaround the world, say these meetings are amongthe most focused, productive, and enjoyable of anythey’ve attended.

That example offers an excellent lesson in howa team led by an emotionally intelligent leader canlearn to manage itself. Of course, Cherniss shouldknow what he’s doing—after all, he heads theConsortium for Research on Emotional Intelli-gence in Organizations at Rutgers University. Butnone of the process norms that Cherniss passed

This level of self-awareness in a team leads toan ability to make decisions about what to doand how to do it, rather than blindly followingineffective norms or swaying with the winds of

team members’ (or the leader’s) emotions.

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around, in and of themselves, were out of the or-dinary. What was unusual was that Cherniss madesure he reminded the team of its collaborativenorms—making them explicit so that everyonecould practice them.

This raises an important point about team self-management: Positive norms will stick only if thegroup puts them into practice over and over again.Cherniss’s group continually maximized its po-tential for interacting with emotional intelligence,raised its level of effectiveness, and produced apositive experience for all of the team memberseach time they met. Being so explicit about normsalso helped to socialize newcomers into a groupquickly. At one point, the consortium doubled itssize, but did so smoothly because people knewhow to mesh.

When core values and norms are clear topeople, a leader does not even need to be physi-cally present for the team to run effectively—thisis of special importance to the thousands of man-agers who work with ‘virtual teams’, and whoseteam members are located all over the globe. Inself-aware, self-managing teams, members them-selves will step up to the plate to instill and rein-force resonant norms and to hold one anotheraccountable for sticking to them. At one researchlaboratory, for example, no one can remember whostarted what has become a tradition during meet-ings of R&D groups. Whenever someone voicesa creative idea, the person who speaks next musttake the role of an “angel’s advocate,” offeringsupport. That way the prospects are better for thesurvival of the fragile bud of an idea, insulatingthe innovative thought from the inevitable criti-cisms. The “angel’s advocate” norm does two im-portant things: it helps to protect new ideas and itmakes people feel good when they are creative.As a result, people are more creative, and reso-nance is continually reinforced in the team.

So, team self-management is everyone’s re-sponsibility. It takes a strong, emotionally intelli-gent leader to hold the group to the practice ofself-management, especially for teams not accus-tomed to proactively handling emotions and hab-its. When core values and the team’s overallmission is clear, however, and when self-manage-ment norms are explicit and practiced over time,team effectiveness improves dramatically, as does

the experience of team members themselves. Be-ing on the team becomes rewarding in itself—andthose positive emotions provide energy and moti-vation for accomplishing the team’s goals.

The Empathic Team. A team in a manufac-turing plant knew that its success depended inpart on getting the maintenance team to givetheir equipment top priority. So the manufac-turing team members nominated that team for a“Team of the Quarter” award, and they wrotethe letters that helped the maintenance team win.That relationship polishing helped the manufac-turing team maintain its record as one of theplant’s top producers.

The effect was clear: By helping to trigger afeeling of team pride in the maintenance group,the manufacturing team created goodwill betweenthose two parts of the organization—and a desireto help the other succeed. The team used its skillsto try to understand another part of the organiza-tion and how the two groups affected one another,thereby cultivating a mutually beneficial relation-ship. As a result, both teams succeeded better thaneither one would have on its own.

An emotionally intelligent team, then, has thecollective equivalent of empathy, the basis of allrelationship skills. It identifies other key groupsin the organization (and beyond) that contributeto the team’s success, and it takes consistent ac-tion to foster a good working relationship withthose groups. Being empathic at the team leveldoesn’t just mean being nice, though. It meansfiguring out what the whole system really needs,and going after it in a way that makes all involvedmore successful and satisfied with the outcomes.11

The manufacturing team’s proactive stance workedon two levels: It built resonance between the twogroups, and it helped shine a spotlight on the good

When core values and norms are clear topeople, a leader does not even need to be

physically present for the team to run effec-tively—this is of special importance to the

thousands of managers who work with ‘vir-tual teams’ …

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62 Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee

work of the maintenance team when it was recog-nized as the plant’s top performer.

Empathy across organizational boundaries—team to team, for example—is a powerful driverof organizational effectiveness and efficiency.Moreover, this kind of empathy goes far to createa healthy emotional climate organizationwide, aswell as creating a positive emotional environmentin teams themselves.

UNCOVERING A TEAM’S EMOTIONALREALITY

The leader who wants to create an emotionallyintelligent team can start by helping the teamraise its collective self-awareness. (See SettingGround Rules: The Leader’s Job on page 58.)As some of the examples above illustrated, thisis the true work of the leader: to monitor the emo-tional tone of the team and to help its membersrecognize any underlying dissonance. Only whena team can confront that emotional reality will itfeel moved to change. By acknowledging a sharedsentiment as simple as, “don’t like how it feelsaround here,” a team makes a critical first stepin the change process.

How does a leader help initiate that process?By listening for what’s really going on in the group.That means not only observing what team mem-bers are doing and saying but also understandingwhat they are feeling. Then, once a leader hashelped the team uncover its less-productive norms,the group can come together around new ways ofdoing things.

Strategies for exposing a group’s emotionalreality can take myriad forms. For example, a vicepresident at a financial services company told us:“I always start by looking not at how I see things,but at how my team members see things. I askmyself, ‘What’s happening with that person? Whyis he doing those awful things? What is he afraid

of or angry about? Or, what is she excited about,and what makes her feel secure and happy?’”

By modeling and encouraging in her team thekey competency of self-awareness, that vice presi-dent made her division a center of excellence.Moreover, since its group norms included empa-thy and a focus on others—rather than on its ownwants and needs—the division was able to lookbeyond itself and identify leadership and manage-ment issues that the company as a whole neededto address. As a result, the division has hit severalhome runs in the programs and initiatives it haslaunched, including a management-assessmentcenter that’s known in the industry as best in class.

Another senior manager pays attention to thegroup as a whole. Aware that teams often behavedifferently at different points in their ‘life cycle,’this manager creates ways for members to talkabout issues that are problematic in new teams.12

When convening a project team, she’ll routinelyget people to talk about their strengths, and aboutwhat they can contribute to the effort. Subtly, thisleader is making team members aware of two as-pects of the team’s emotional reality: inclusiondynamics (who’s in and who’s out) and people’sroles (who does what, and why). The openness sheestablishes with these team start-ups helps to cre-ate ‘good’ norms—habits that will enable the teamto deal with the inevitable conflicts later on.

Another way that leaders can uncover the emo-tional reality of the group is by observing impor-tant signals. For example, during a recent mergerbetween two European pharmaceutical giants, onemanager checked an easy barometer of herdivision’s collective emotions: she monitored thenumber of cars in the parking lot.

When the merger was first announced, thismanager noticed that the parking lot was alwaysfull, and that many cars remained well into theevening. She knew that people were working ex-tra hard because they were excited about the po-tential opportunities that the merger represented.Then, as the change process began to hit one de-lay after another, the manager noticed fewer andfewer cars in the parking lot. Clearly, manypeople’s initial excitement and commitment wasdwindling—and their anxiety increasing.

But what about the cars that continued to ap-pear in the parking lot, day after day? Several pock-

By acknowledging a shared sentiment assimple as, “don’t like how it feels around

here,” a team makes a critical first step in thechange process.

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ets of people were apparently managing to remainproductive and relatively happy even during thatsluggish process. At this division it was discov-ered that while many of those people were moti-vated internally—either by a deep commitment tothe work itself, such as the R&D scientists, or be-cause they were otherwise skilled in emotionalself-management—most people who weatheredthe change were protected from the turmoil byeffective leaders. Those emotionally intelligentleaders made sure that they engaged their teamsin the change process, giving them as much infor-mation and as much control over their destiny aspossible. They noticed how their team memberswere feeling, acknowledged that those feelingswere important, and gave people opportunities toexpress those emotions.

For example, one R&D manager recognizedearly on that morale was tanking after a favoriteleader left the company. Rather than ignoring theproblem (after all, he couldn’t change the situa-tion), he talked to each of his team members indi-vidually about their sorrow and concerns. Thatkind of personal attention enabled him to thenbring the team together so that it could refocus itsenergy on the more positive changes surroundingthe merger. Another manager held “team closedowns.” Instead of simply shuffling people on totheir next job as new positions were announced,on several occasions he brought the old team to-gether to celebrate the past, mourn the end of anera, and discuss hopes for the future.

These managers are good examples of leaderswho managed their own feelings and the collec-tive feelings in their units so that people spent aminimal amount of emotional energy decipher-ing—or fighting—the changes. By keeping theireyes open and monitoring the tone of their groups,the leaders captured positive energy and foundconstructive outlets for negative feelings.

DISCOVERING THE TEAM’S EMOTIONALINTELLIGENCE

The CEO of a midsize company asked us to workwith three members of an executive team who werenot cooperating well together. The CEO thoughtthe cure would be simply a matter of doing someteam building to get things back on track. We de-

cided to get more information. In our coachingconversations with team members, we looked forthe emotional reality of the team and its norms, aswell as themes around the leader’s impact. We alsotook a snapshot of the team’s emotional intelli-gence using the Emotional Competence Inventory(ECI), and we assessed management style and theexecutives’ impact on the climate of their organi-zation.13 What we found surprised this CEO. True,the team wasn’t working well together, but what itneeded wasn’t team building. The results of ourinterviews and the picture the 360-degree feed-back painted about the team showed several un-derlying problems that required a very differentkind of solution.

Not surprisingly, there were a few problemswith specific team members. One team member,for example, measured very low on self-aware-ness. He was completely missing the clues peoplegave him about his style of interaction. In meet-ings, he would express strong viewpoints and notunderstand how his aggressive manner was com-ing across to others. When people tried to getthrough to him about these issues, his body lan-guage said, “Lay off.”

Another team member, recently arrived froma plant halfway around the world, exhibited littleunderstanding of organizational politics in thecorporate center, and was alienating teammatesand subordinates alike with his counterculturalbehavior. What made it even more difficult for hiscoworkers (and the man himself) to understandwas that, on the interpersonal level at least, he dis-played excellent empathy and relationship-build-ing skills—he just couldn’t read the team’semotional reality, and he was always out of synch.

Most of the time, these problems and otherinterpersonal issues become the focus of teambuilding. When we looked deeper, however, wefound that the real problem was a combination ofineffective norms and a negative emotional toneof the team. There was little self-awareness on thepart of individuals or the team as a whole about

… the team wasn’t working well together, butwhat it needed wasn’t team building.

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their own group process; they did not manage in-dividual team members’ emotions or the group’smoods very well; and they spent a lot of time andenergy managing the team’s negative emotions.In essence, it did not feel good to be part of theteam, and people were avoiding working together.

Part of the underlying problem was that theteam had established some ineffective norms inresponse to the CEO’s pacesetting leadership style.The CEO’s high drive for achievement and his in-ability to show empathy were creating adysfunctionally competitive environment withinthe team. Moreover, while this leader thought hisvision and strategy were apparent to everyone, ourdata showed us that wasn’t the case at all: The rea-son the team members were moving in differentdirections was because they were unsure of wherethe larger organization was supposed to be headed.

Obviously, off-the-shelf team buildingwould have done little to help this executivecommittee. By recognizing that its collective“gap” in emotional intelligence had created un-productive habits of interaction, the team couldthen see what it really needed to change. Equallyimportant, the team recognized that in order forit to change as a group, each member also wouldhave to commit to change as an individual.Armed with accurate information, we were ableto target change processes for both the team andits individual members.

This team snapshot illustrates the importanceof getting a clear picture of the emotional realityof an environment—before launching into a so-lution. Part of understanding the emotional real-ity is uncovering the particular habits ingrainedin a team or organization that can drive behav-ior. Often these habits make little sense topeople—and yet they still act on them, seeingthem as “just the way we do things around here.”Emotionally intelligent leaders look for signs thatreveal whether such habits, and the systems thatsupport them, work well. By exploring and ex-posing unhealthy group habits, leaders can buildmore effective norms.

The previous example of the executive teamunearthing its unproductive norms and unhealthyemotional reality points to a critical requirementfor larger organizational change. Getting people

in the top executive team together to have an hon-est conversation about what is working and whatis not, is a first critical step to creating a moreresonant team. Such conversations bring to life thereality of what an organization feels like and whatpeople are actually doing in it.

The problem is, these conversations are ‘hot’and many leaders are afraid to start the dialogue—fearful of taking it to the primal dimension. Toooften, unsure of their ability to handle the emo-tions that do arise when people talk honestly aboutwhat is going on, leaders stick to the safe topics:alignment, coordination of team members’ func-tional areas, and strategy-implementation plans.While these safer conversations can set the stagefor the next discussion—about the team itself, theorganization, and the people—most teams stop thediscussion at the level of strategy and functionalalignment. They find it too difficult to be honestwith one another, to examine the emotional real-ity and norms of the team. And this causes disso-nance on the team—after all, everyone can feelwhen the norms are dysfunctional and the emo-tional climate is unproductive. By not taking iton, the leader actually magnifies the problem. Ittakes courage to break through that barrier, and ittakes an emotionally intelligent leader to guide ateam through it.

The benefits of such a process at the top arethreefold. First, a new and healthy legitimacy de-velops around speaking the truth and honestly as-sessing both the behavioral and the emotionalaspects of culture and leadership. Second, the veryact of engaging in this process creates new habits:When people in the organization see their leaderssearching for truth, daring to share a dream aloud,and engaging with one another in a healthy man-ner, they begin to emulate that behavior. And third,when truth-seeking comes from the top, others aremore willing to take the risk, too.

As we have seen, leaders cannot lead with reso-nance if their team’s norms hold them captive. Andthey can’t change the team’s norms, unless theyare willing to take on the leader’s primal task—working with people’s emotions, and the team’semotional reality. That truth is even more appar-ent at the organizational level, when norms ex-tend to entire corporate cultures. �

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NOTES

1. Alan Blinder’s experiment: Alan B. Krueger, “Economic Sense,” The New York Times, December 7, 2000, p. C2.2. Brilliant teams with bad decision: R. Meredith Belbin, Team Roles at Work, Butterworth-Heineman, London, 1996.3. Limbic regulation and paying attention to people who can affect our lives: Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A GeneralTheory of Love, New York, Random House, 2000.4. The leader’s role in creating the emotional reality of the group: Some of the most extensive work on authority dynamics has been done byassociates of the A.K. Rice Institute. For a thorough review of the foundational research, see Arthur D. Colman and W. Harold Bexton, GroupRelations Reader 1, A.K. Rice Institute, 1975, and Arthur D. Colman and Marvin H. Geller, Group Relations Reader 2, A.K. Rice Institute,1985. For a brief, more recent review of the leader’s impact in a business setting, see Michel Deschapelle, “The national conference has helpedmy career”, in Speaking of Authority, A.K. Rice Institute, Volume 7, Number 1, 2000. For a discussion of the impact of a minority leader onthe emotional reality of groups see Kathy E. Kram and Marion McCollom Hampton, “When woman lead: the visibility-vulnerability spiral” inThe Psychodynamics of Leadership, edited by Edward B. Klein, Faith Gabelnick, and Peter Herr, Psychosocial Press, Madison, Connecticut,1998.5. The leader’s role in creating a climate that supports healthy relationships and a positive focus on the future: Rosamund Stone Zander andBenjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts,2000.6. High performing teams: Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams. Harvard Business School Press, Boston,Massachusetts, 1993.7. Group emotional intelligence: Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff “Group emotional intelligence and its influence on groupeffectiveness,” in Carey Cherniss and Daniel Goleman (eds.), The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace: How to Select For, Measure, andImprove Emotional Intelligence in Individuals, Groups, and Organizations. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2001. See also Vanessa Urch Druskatand Steven B. Wolff “Building the emotional intelligence of groups, Harvard Business Review, March 2001.8. Group-as-a-whole: Leroy Wells, The group-as-a-whole perspective and its theoretical roots, in Arthur D. Colman and Marvin H. Geller(eds.), Group Relations Reader 2, A.K. Rice Institute, 1985.9. When a group member leads: Susan Wheelan and Francis Johnston, “The role of informal member leaders in a system containing formalleaders”, Small Group Research, Vol. 27, No. 1, February 1996. See also Susan A. Wheelan, Creating Effective Teams, Sage Publications,Thousand Oaks, CA, 1999.10. Mindfulness: this term, used to describe a heightened attention about self, others and the environment one lives in, is not often used in thebusiness press. It is, however, considered fundamental for emotional/psychological health and effective interpersonal relationships, andfoundational in our conceptualization of self-awareness. At the team level, mindfulness is a set of shared norms, manifested in behaviors suchas, attending to group moods, articulating unspoken concerns or hopes, or calling the group’s attention to dysfunctional patterns. Forinteresting perspectives on the subject, see Robert Quinn, Change the World: How Ordinary People Can Accomplish Extraordinary Results,Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2000; Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart, Harmony Books, NewYork, 2001; His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, Riverhead Books, Penguin, New York, 1998, and PhilNuerenberger, The Quest for Personal Power: Transforming Stress into Strength, Perigee, 1996.11. Empathy and the systems perspective: emotionally intelligent individuals and teams pay attention to the whole system: self, interpersonalrelationships, teams, intergroup relationships, organization, outside environment, the interactions of stakeholder groups, etc. A systemsperspective enables people and teams to judge how their actions will affect multiple stakeholders; this is empathy for the different parts of thesystem, as well as the individuals involved. The concept is well documented in the organizational literature. See Peter Senge, The FifthDiscipline: The art and practice of the learning organization, Doubleday, New York, 1990.Also, see Anthony J. Dibella and Edwin C Nevis,How Organizations Learn: an integrated strategy for building learning capability, Jossey-Bass, 1998.12. Behavior and the team life cycle: The notion that teams go through stages of development is the basis for a primary stream of research ongroup dynamics and team effectiveness. For a review of the theory and guidance on application in business settings, see Susan Wheelan, GroupProcesses: A Developmental Perspective, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1994.13. Team results using the Emotional Competence Inventory: While the ECI is generally used as a 360-degree feedback instrument forindividuals, we have found that when aggregated, individual scores on the competencies present a very interesting and useful ‘picture’ of theteam’s overall strengths and weaknesses. We are currently researching this method of measuring a team’s emotional competence; at this point,anecdotal evidence (i.e. the many conversations we have had with executives and their teams about their data) suggests that aggregate scorespoint to underlying team norms as well as team competencies.14. Paying attention to the undercurrents in the group: Kenwyn Smith and David Berg, Paradoxes of Group Life, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco,1990.