The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Building Collaborative Groups That Outperform the Rest

The missing link between teams and performance? Emotional intelligence.

Great teams can sometimes feel like magic. It’s hard to pin down just why they work so well. But what seems like magic is explainable, and replicable. It starts with team culture.

Much has been written about the power of emotional intelligence at the individual level, but little has been said about the benefits of this concept for groups. In this book, social and organizational psychologist and professor Vanessa Urch Druskat combines thirty years of research and team development to present a model for building and leading emotionally intelligent teams. She offers practical advice on how to:

• Create a solid foundation of team norms and behaviors
• Understand how team members support one another to reduce toxic conflict, demonstrate caring, and build a sense of belonging
• Support expression, build optimism, and solve problems proactively
• Increase team trust, psychological safety, and innovation

By reading The Emotionally Intelligent Team, leaders and aspiring leaders alike will learn how to develop a strong team culture that motivates and sustains improved team collaboration and performance.

Vanessa Urch Druskat is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of New Hampshire. An applied social psychologist, she has spent thirty years researching team collaboration and performance. Her award-winning research investigating differences between the norms and habits of high-performing and average teams led her to pioneer (with Steven Wolff) the concept of team emotional intelligence. Druskat consults globally with some of the world’s most respected organizations. Graduate students have five times named her ＂best professor of the year.＂