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, applied social psychologist and professor Vanessa Urch Druskat draws on thirty years of research on team development to present a model for building and leading emotionally intelligent teams. She offers practical advice on how to:

• Create a solid team foundation that meets a team’s basic structural needs
• Work with a team to build nine norms that develop an emotionally intelligent team culture
• Support team-member sense of belonging
• Increase team trust, psychological safety, and team identity

By readingThe 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 Druskatis 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."