Emotional Intelligence and Virtual Teams

Emotional Intelligence and Virtual Teams There are many articles discussing emotional intelligence in teams, and a couple that are specific to virtual teams. Key to understanding the role that emotional intelligence plays on virtual teams is knowing the differences between virtual teams and normal work teams, and knowing how emotional intelligence might affect a normal team, then being able to extrapolate how the differences might affect things. Jordan and Troth (2004) discuss the role that emotional intelligence plays in problem solving.

They found that emotional intelligence is positively indicated with team performance and problem solving. Their study was in-person, so they were able to observe participants directly, and they were able to accurately compare subjects because everybody was given the same problem to solve. The study is valuable because it clearly establishes the link between emotional intelligence and team performance. Feyerhem and Rice (2002) broke down the different components of emotional intelligence and team performance. They found correlations between understanding emotion and managing emotion and some measures of team performance.

They did not find correlation between identifying emotions and team performance. EI was mainly associated with measures relating to customer service – they studied customer service teams – but not to continuous improvement. A team leader with low EI is likely to have a negative or neutral relationship to team performance. This study has significant value.

While it is more narrow in only studying one kind of team, and has a weakness in that some of the performance measures are actually just perception scores, rather than hard numbers, the study seeks to test the hypothesis that emotional intelligence correlates to positive outcomes, by breaking down the individual components of both emotional intelligence and team performance, and evaluating each pairing individually. Pitts, Wright and Harkabus (2012) directly examined the role of emotional intelligence in virtual teams.

They tested students, which is a little bit different than a real world situation where differences between team members can be vast – they might be on different continents, with both intercultural and time zone issues, for example. So with that weakness in mind, this study did show that emotional intelligence is a driver of team viability, and that quality of communication is a means by which influence can be created in the virtual team environment.

The study is valuable in the sense that it was one of the first (and only) to directly study emotional intelligence in virtual teams. It focused heavily on computer-mediated communication, which is the primary means by which virtual teams communicate, though there are things like video conferencing that can be provide something closer to an in-person experience. The downside is that the study used students, and not real virtual teams.

The study therefore had more homogenous participants that a real world virtual team would have, they knew that they were participating in the study and the "project" they were working on did not have any actual stakes. So several key dimensions that might characterize a virtual team's project were not present in this study. These studies focused both on qualitative and quantitative measures, as mixed methods is essential for studies involving virtual teams.

Emotional intelligence is typically measures using qualitative assessments that are then codified, and team performance in these studies is a mixture of output measures and qualitative assessments. Output measures can only really be comparable in a controlled study, where other variables can be minimized, but qualitative assessments of team performance can be used more universally. There are definitely some questions that can arise from these studies. The first is to explore how modern virtual teams work.

For example, videoconferencing technology is much better than it has been in the past, allowing teams to see each other face-to-face more. Furthermore, MS Teams, Slack and other tools allow for better instantaneous communication, and team members can be looped into these communications from anywhere, including during off-hours, and there is a physical record, much more organized than, say, an email chain. Also, the advent of task management tools like Trello or Asana also helps virtual teams manage their work.

The second question for this study might be more in the direction of the use of virtual team concepts in a non-virtual setting, sort of a hybrid team idea. What we are seeing now is that even among employees who work for the same company, if they are in multiple floors or multiple buildings, they will often function mainly as a virtual team, even though theoretically they could meet face-to-face, and may do so occasionally. Does the mediating effect of occasional meetings influence how emotional intelligence affects team performance, in.