Team EI: Emotional Awareness (Part One)

Over the years, many of us have explored the idea of Emotional Intelligence – learning what it says about our ability to notice and regulate our own emotions. But what if we consider team EI? Join us in as we begin a 3-part series on this important topic – starting with – how do we notice the emotional state of the team?

Team EI: Emotional Awareness (Part One)

 

Alicia Davis
So Stacie, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence, and we talk about it from the individual perspective.

Stacie Watson
Right.

Alicia Davis
Today, we want to take a little bit of a different perspective and talk about it from the lens of a team, right?

Stacie Watson
Yes, absolutely. In fact, this is part one of three on this topic, because it’s a big topic, and we are inspired by the book Team Emotional Intelligence 2.0.

Alicia Davis
That’s right.

Stacie Watson
Written by Dr. Jean Greaves, and today we want to focus on noticing. So for anyone who’s watching this, who’s done any kind of study around emotional intelligence, you know that it all starts with noticing, right?

Alicia Davis
That’s right.

Stacie Watson
And often we’re thinking about noticing within ourselves, noticing if we’re having a reaction, noticing our feelings. And so, when we think about team emotional intelligence, what does noticing look like for the team, Alicia?

Alicia Davis
Well, there are a number of ways to do it, Stacie, and a couple of ways are literally just checking in with each other, like literally not just passing each other, you know, in the hall, or just saying how you’re doing on a Zoom call, right? Like it’s literally just like really looking at someone and saying, “How are you doing today? What’s going on?” That’s just one simple way. Another way is… one of the things she describes is “catch the mood in the room”. So you walk into a meeting, or you get on a Teams call, and you just kind of, you know, we all get a sense of…

Stacie Watson
Sure.

Alicia Davis
Right, like what’s going on. And so, that’s just another possibility, and I’ll just offer one more, because she has a lot of these kinds of awareness strategies. But another one is very related to your team’s values. We thought that was really interesting, right? Because we do a lot of work with teams and their values.

Stacie Watson
Yes, we absolutely do. And if you have not had or taken the opportunity to go through a values exercise with your team, we very much invite you to do that. Reach out, we’ll be glad to give you a values worksheet and give you a little coaching on how to do it. It’s a very powerful experience for the team, and our invitation to anyone watching this week is just to think about how we notice, on our team, how we’re doing, and sort of, you know, what kind of intention can you, as a leader or you as a team member, bring to noticing. So, tell us what you notice – we’d love to hear it, right?

Alicia Davis
That’s right. And you can always reach us at info@TLStransforms.com. And I’m Alicia Davis…

Stacie Watson
I’m Stacie Watson…

Alicia Davis
And look forward to part two.

Stacie Watson
Thank you.