Team Emotional Intelligence: The Secret to High-Performing Teams

This week on the Squiggly Careers podcast, Sarah and Helen borrow brilliance from Vanessa Urch Druskat’s research on team emotional intelligence, first featured in Harvard Business Review.

While emotional intelligence is often talked about at an individual level, this episode explores what happens when you apply it to teams — and how emotional awareness can build motivation, trust, and high performance together.

Sarah shares how she used AI (Claude) to turn Druskat’s research into a practical team emotional intelligence quiz, helping teams assess their habits and find simple ways to improve.

Episode 508




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⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

01:35 What is team emotional intelligence and why it matters

03:41 Awareness + action: how teams build emotional understanding

06:30 Sarah’s experiment

09:20 The three key dimensions of team emotional intelligence

10:50 Understanding each other better

13:30 Action idea: Challenge & Build feedback ritual

21:40 Action idea: Scenario planning made simple

33:45 Action idea: Mapping and Mattering*to stay connected

38:00 How often should teams check in on their emotional intelligence?

🎯 What You’ll Learn

- What team emotional intelligence means and why it drives performance

- How to assess and improve your team’s emotional awareness

- Practical tools to create more connection, curiosity, and collaboration

- How to use AI to help your team learn and reflect together

- Ways to turn feedback, reflection, and stakeholder mapping into routinely rituals

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