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Teams as well as individuals need to develop emotional intelligence skills that help enhance teamwork, improve group dynamics, and ultimately, increase performance. Stimulate this development by using these activities with your team.
Affirmative introspection - taking a look inside
Team members can create synergy and nurture one another's creative spirit. Or they can maintain rigid, stereotypical perspectives about one another that prevent the team's overall effectiveness. Identifying team members' stereotypes and hot buttons will encourage growth and productive work relationships.
Helping the team know what makes it tick. Developing a team atmosphere where curiosity and nondefensive attitudes dominate is a desirable goal for most leaders. You can help the team establish norms that enable it to become more introspective and affirming by using the following techniques:
* Begin staff meetings by checking with each member to see how the person is doing and feeling at work. You can use quick warm-ups such as a word or phrase that expresses how each person feels about the week's accomplishments and that expresses where the person is at the moment. Or you might ask team members to share the best and worst thing that has happened to them during the past week
* Have members share their work challenges in an introspective way. Ask team members to indicate why the challenge is important, what some impacts of the challenge are, how they feel about it, and what have they learned from dealing with it.
* Make time on a routine basis for the team to assess its own effectiveness, and be willing to comment on the team's dynamics or processes in a nonjudgmental way. For example, ask them to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 low and 5 high) their satisfaction with their process in completing a recent project. Have team members share their ratings and discuss their perceptions. End by having each team member suggest one thing that could improve both product and process next time.
Helping the team be more comfortable in its own skin. Work teams become more synergistic and effective when trust among the members allows for risk taking and creativity. You can help the team develop comfort among themselves in the following ways:
* Establish ground rules that...