571: Multi-Award-Winning Researcher Vanessa Druskat on Team Emotional Intelligence

The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

Vanessa Druskat, organizational psychologist and professor at the University of New Hampshire, discusses team emotional intelligence (EI) as a predictor of sustained performance. Building on her foundational work with Daniel Goleman, Druskat focuses not on individual EQ, but on the group-level norms and practices that distinguish effective teams, particularly in complex, high-stakes environments.

Druskat identifies three core team norms essential to cultivating group EI: mutual trust, constructive expression of emotions, and norms that support individual and group self-awareness. These are not “soft” ideals; they function as operational levers for managing conflict, decision-making quality, and adaptability.

Key takeaways include:

High-performing teams are not those without conflict, but those with processes for metabolizing conflict. Druskat emphasizes the role of emotional expression norms in allowing task-related disagreement while mitigating interpersonal friction.

Leaders significantly influence team EI by modeling openness and emotional competence, but sustained performance requires that these behaviors be embedded in team norms, not reliant on individual charisma or authority.

Team emotional intelligence predicts effectiveness beyond technical competence, especially when teams must adapt to ambiguity, pressure, or interdependence. Druskat cites multiple studies where team EI predicted performance outcomes more reliably than IQ or experience.

Psychological safety is necessary but not sufficient. Teams with high EI create an environment where members not only feel safe but are also expected to monitor and manage the group’s emotional climate.

Organizations often undermine team EI unintentionally, through forced competition, misaligned incentives, or ignoring the emotional fallout of change. Druskat suggests that senior leaders regularly audit not just team outcomes, but the emotional processes behind them.

This episode reframes emotional intelligence not as a personal trait but as an institutional capability with measurable consequences for execution, resilience, and organizational learning. The discussion is particularly relevant for senior professionals seeking to institutionalize performance through culture rather than control.

Get Vanessa’s book here: https://shorturl.at/u5KOs

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

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