The Practices That Strengthen Team Emotional Intelligence (Part 2)

Introduction

In part one, I explored the conditions that make team emotional intelligence possible: rhythm, fairness, purpose and psychological safety. These conditions create the emotional climate – the shared backdrop against which behaviour plays out. But climate alone is not enough. Without repeated practices, even psychologically safe teams slide back into old habits under pressure. Once the environment supports it, teams need practices that build the muscles of emotional intelligence in action.

This second part looks at the deeper practices that help teams read one another more accurately, regulate collective emotions and make better decisions under pressure. It builds on the Squiggly Careers episode, but extends it using insights from organisational psychology, neuroscience and collective intelligence research.
Team emotional intelligence is not a soft skill. It is a performance system. Druskat and Wolff describe team emotional intelligence as the set of norms that shape how a team becomes aware of, understands, and responds to emotions within the team and in its environment. Crucially, it is emergent: something the team does together, not the sum of individual traits.

The Science
Research on team emotional intelligence shows that high performing teams do three things exceptionally well:

1. They manage emotions inside the team
2. They manage emotions between the team and stakeholders
3. They use emotional information to improve thinking, not avoid it

This builds on the work of Vanessa Druskat and Steven Wolff, whose studies show that team EI is not the sum of individual EI. It emerges from shared norms that guide how people express emotion, confront tension, repair breakdowns and stay connected.

Other strands of research support this:

Emotion Regulation (Gross)
Teams that know how to reduce unhelpful emotional spirals do better under stress. Naming emotions, reframing challenges and slowing the pace of discussion improve accuracy and reduce conflict. Gross’s process model of emotion regulation shows that reappraisal and response modulation change how emotions are experienced and expressed; at team level, shared re-framing and pacing serve the same function under pressure.

Collective Intelligence (Woolley et al.)
Teams with higher collective intelligence tend to have higher levels of turn-taking, social sensitivity and equitable voice distribution. In other words, emotional intelligence improves the team’s ability to think as a group.

Team Effectiveness (Hackman)
Hackman found that successful teams use norms to protect time, attention and relationships. Emotional intelligence supports these norms by reducing unnecessary interpersonal friction.

Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner)
Teams that cultivate a strong shared identity interpret ambiguity as a collective challenge rather than a personal threat. This strengthens resilience and reduces blame. Social identity work suggests that when people experience a strong, valued in-group identity, ambiguity and setbacks are interpreted as ‘our challenge’ rather than personal threat, which buffers stress and blame spirals.
Together, these insights show that team emotional intelligence is a set of practices that support stability, clarity and joint problem-solving.

Key Findings
1. Teams become emotionally intelligent when they learn to regulate emotions together
Emotion regulation is often discussed at an individual level, but teams can regulate emotion too. Effective teams slow down when tension rises. They acknowledge discomfort rather than suppress it. They name what feels difficult so it can be worked with rather than worked around.
This shared regulation keeps thinking clear and reduces defensiveness. It also mirrors what happened in the Chilean rescue, where open acknowledgement of fear helped teams stay grounded under extreme pressure.

2. Social sensing improves performance
Research on collective intelligence shows that social sensitivity predicts team performance more than individual IQ. Emotionally intelligent teams consciously practise tuning in to one another. They pay attention to who has not spoken. They ask clarifying questions. They track group energy. These small acts reduce misinterpretations and help people feel seen.

3. Teams build emotional intelligence by strengthening repair, not avoiding rupture
High trust does not mean the absence of conflict. It means teams repair quickly and respectfully. Repair includes acknowledging hurt, clarifying assumptions and resetting expectations.
Repair was a core part of the miners’ underground resilience. It is also central to Edmondson’s work on teaming. Teams that repair well recover faster, collaborate better and show higher long-term performance.

4. Shared identity amplifies resilience
A team identity gives people emotional anchors when work becomes difficult. Druskat’s research shows that rituals and shared stories increase belonging and help teams regulate stress. The miners called themselves the 33 Musketeers. That story held them together. In workplaces, team identity can reduce siloed thinking and reinforce collective responsibility.

5. Teams need boundaries that protect attention and relationships
Hackman noted that team performance improves when teams protect their time and avoid unnecessary task switching. Emotionally intelligent teams are disciplined about what they say yes to. They protect their attention so they can protect the quality of their interactions. This is not emotional softness. It is emotional strategy.

What This Means

Leaders often ask how to build emotional intelligence in teams. The answer is found in repeated practice, not personality traits.
In practice, emotionally intelligent teams do the following:

• Regulate tension together by naming emotions early, especially when pressure rises. e.g. ‘It feels like we’re getting tense – let’s pause for a minute and check what people are worried about.’
• Increase social sensitivity by protecting equal voice and pacing discussions
• Repair ruptures quickly instead of avoiding difficult conversations. e.g. a 10-minute follow-up where someone says, ‘That meeting felt off – did I miss something or step on a toe?
• Strengthen shared identity through rituals, stories and consistent ways of working
• Protect attention by setting boundaries that reduce noise and preserve connection

These practices help teams sustain clarity, compassion and cohesion. They move teams from individual performance to collective effectiveness. These practices do not remove all conflict or stress, nor do they replace structural fixes where workloads or incentives are misaligned. They do, however, give teams a way to stay connected and think clearly while those systemic issues are being addressed.
Emotional intelligence becomes something teams do together, not something individuals are expected to carry alone.

A Quote to Reflect On
“Teams do not become emotionally intelligent by accident. They do so by shaping norms that help them notice, interpret and respond to emotion in ways that strengthen performance.” Druskat and Wolff

A Question to Reflect On
Which shared practice would make the biggest difference to your team: regulating tension, strengthening repair, increasing social sensitivity or reinforcing team identity? What is one small experiment you can run in your next meeting to strengthen that practice?

​Further Reading
Druskat, V. and Wolff, S. Building the Emotionally Intelligent Team
Woolley, A.W. et al. Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups
Edmondson, A. Teaming
Hackman, J. Leading Teams
Gross, J. Emotion Regulation Theory

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