Igniting Peak Performance: The Secret Lies in the System.

Unlock peak performance by harnessing EQ throughout your organization! It's not just about individual skills - it's about revamping your entire system for success.

Nowadays most CO’s agree that key executives need a personal transformation to succeed in improving their organisation, and doing so is at least as much about EQ (Emotional Intelligence) as IQ.

What do we know about how EQ can enhance team performance?

Harnessing EQ for peak organisational performance is not just about developing individual emotionally intelligent soft skills. An organization is a system; It is the system that creates performance.

If high performance is related to the development of collective competence, then leaders need to become aware of how their behaviours impact performance outcomes. It requires leaders to adopt a system awareness understanding of the energy that flows through their organisation because emotionally intelligent behaviour is carried through an organization like electricity through wires.

Team EQ is also important when building team effectiveness, and so is having emotional awareness of stakeholders. Let’s have a further look into breaking down the meaning and impact of those three levels of EQ perspectives.

The self-perspective is about being aware of your own emotions and how they impact your behaviours and responses toward situations and interactions with others. ?Emotionally intelligent people are able to regulate their emotions, thoughts and reactions; they chose consciously a response with a wider understanding of its impact.

Victor Frankl’s quote summarises this eloquently: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space.?In that space is our power to choose our response.?In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

The self-perspective is directed inward and outward by tuning into other people’s emotional states and perspectives. ?

A Gartner research (2024, HBR - 4 Reasons Why Managers Fail) found that 50% of managers are suffering from work-induced stress and fatigue and 44% are struggling to provide personalised support to their direct reports. Three out of the four most common predictors for managers at risk of failure are linked to EQ competencies, with 1. being - Lack of Self-Awareness, 2. - Empathy being a one-way street, and 3. - Manager-Employee relationships being unproductive due to interaction styles. While managers are predominantly expected to lead with empathy, Gartner states that it is a two-way street and found that lack of team empathy increases the risk of manager failure by 3.7 times.

So far EQ has often been viewed as an individual competency, when in reality, most work is done by teams. And managers must be more than ever focused on enhancing team effectiveness and collaboration.

In the process, it becomes important to foster a team environment of upward spiral of trust, group identity and efficacy. This requires more than a few members to exhibit emotionally intelligent behaviour. Because teams interact at more levels, they need to build emotionally intelligent norms enhancing their capacity and effectiveness.

Team self-awareness starts with being aware of their group's emotional state, as well as strengths and weaknesses. They are able to regulate the influence of their emotions constructively by being mindful of the emotions and moods of their members and as a team. Therefore, they manage their ways of interaction, and task process more efficiently.

Team EQ also known as Groups EQ leads to better performance.

It is about being aware of the emotions at present and how they affect teamwork. The work entails building team norms for communication, decision making and collaboration, which in return strengthens the team when facing challenges and increases performance goal achievement.

EQ-competent teams are able to face difficult information with resilience, seek feedback and develop improvement strategies for the greater good of the team performance goal. Three main outcomes to focus on are:

1.??????? Create resources for working with emotions

2.??????? Foster affirmative environment

3.??????? And encourage problem-solving

The third perspective for leaders and teams is, to also become aware of the emotions of other groups and individuals they interact with, such as other teams, clients, and stakeholder groups. For example, when teams build relationships and collaborate across departments they achieve even higher performance efficiency. This can be facilitated by encouraging teams to recognise the feelings and needs of other working groups. Inter-team awareness requires the understanding of the resources, priorities, and schedules of other teams to support each other with resource allocation.

Where to start?

?DO:

1. Lead by example, practice active listening and empathy, and suspend judgment.
2. Observe communication dynamics in meetings and decision-making processes.
3. Create practices in teams and working groups that encourage the expression of perspectives, thoughts, and emotions.

REFLECT:

1. What do you observe about how your mood impacts others?
2. What have you learned from listening to other people’s perspectives this week?
3. Who is not speaking up in meetings? Who is speaking too much?
4. How can you encourage more open safe discussion of ideas and expression of diverse perspectives?
5. What is the mood in your team/boardroom like?
6. How does the energy feel in your organisation?

What is an emotionally intelligent organisation?

‘When an organization's leaders and employees are skilled at managing their own emotions and those in their relationships with others, researchers find that the company and its people benefit, seeing better performance in every sense: profit and growth, retention and loyalty, higher motivation, and a better emotional climate and overall well-being. Such organisations are emotionally intelligent.

As with individual and team EQ, the organisation exhibits self-awareness, understanding the emotions, needs and motives that course through the networks of people who make up the organisation. They read the emotional climate at the organisational level, applying a systemic perspective to challenges and opportunities and leading with empathy inward and outward. Such forward-thinking organisations bring EQ into the DNA of their culture and data has shown that being an emotionally intelligent organisation enhances performance measured by metrics such as profit, growth, retention and loyalty, increased motivation, and engagement.’

(D. Coleman and C. Cherniss, Optimal,2024)

Embarking on the journey toward emotional intelligence as an organisation requires patience and perseverance, much like any cultural transformation. To truly succeed, it is essential to recognize that top-down leadership development alone is insufficient. Effective organizations prioritize bottom-up training, nurturing emotional intelligence at all levels. Team coaching plays a pivotal role, fostering a dynamic where leaders and followers alike contribute to a symbiotic value exchange. By investing in both leadership development and bottom-up training, organisations create a foundation for sustainable emotional intelligence, fostering a transformative shift that empowers teams and drives lasting success.

Written by Martina Rios, Master Your Mind Coaching.

References:

D. Clutterbuck, Coaching the Team at Work, 2020

D. Goleman and C. Cherniss, Optimal, 2024

S. Basu et al., 4 Reasons Why Managers Fail, HBR, 2024

V. Urch Druskat and S. B. Wolff, Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups - On TEAMS, HBR, 2013