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Team Effectiveness

The need for Social Emotional Learning in Team Development

In my last article written on January 16th, 2020 I wrote about the importance of Human Connection both to our work and all other parts of our lives and the science behind it. This week I am following up with an article on the importance of Social Emotional Development in teams.

Human connections are critical to business results and employee engagement and workplace contentment. Daily I speak with leaders about the joys and challenges of the workplace. All of the joys and challenges boil down to successes or failures that at the root have a human component. You would be hard pressed to find a success or failure that was not at some level due to connection between people.

Working with teams over the last 30 years I have accumulated hundreds of experiences assessing and creating developmental opportunities for teams. One constant is that the human connection factor has been at the root of all of those experiences and the strength of those connections has been the key to current success or frustrations.

In my experience both as a consultant and as a Senior Organizational Development Practitioner inside of organizations, Emotional Intelligence is a standard Learning opportunity/course offered, BUT I usually see it offered only to leaders of the organizations. If it is a fundamental skill for all employees we should not just offer it to leaders but should instead offer Social Emotional Development to all employees. Most people have their main interactions throughout their day with teammates and other people they work with to complete the organizations work, not their leader.

Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making Skills are skills we all need in order to maximize our connections with others. Studies on human development would say that we should be learning and honing these skills from an very early age and should be part of our early education curriculum in the classroom. School Bullying is rampant and Teen suicides are up 47 percent in the past two decades. This is getting schools and parents attention that SEL must be integrated into our youth experience. Based on the research, these skills are fundamental to successful Teams as well. Instead of only training leaders in one day intensive EQI principles, healthy organizations of the future will make Social Emotional Learning part of an ongoing developmental strategy for teams and not just a 3-6 hour course. Ongoing Social Emotional Learning as a team is a great way to build trust and develop strength and understanding of team connections.

This attached article by Marc Brackett & Diana Divecha addresses the need for SEL as they celebrate the “30th anniversary of the first scholarly publication on emotional intelligence. In it, Peter Salovey of Yale University and John D. Mayer of the University of New Hampshire challenged the proposition that emotions mostly cloud judgment and get in the way of rational thought. Instead, Salovey and Mayer said, when we use emotions wisely, we make better decisions and have improved mental health and relationships.” https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/01/22/sorry-theres-no-easy-toolkit-for-social-emotional.html?cmp=eml-contshr-shr