How to Build Emotionally Intelligent Teams
What if everything you believed about building great teams was completely backwards?
The “Jane Goodall of teams,” Vanessa Druskat spent 30 years infiltrating team cultures to discover that emotional intelligence isn’t about hiring the right people—it’s about creating the right environment.
After studying top-performing teams from Johnson & Johnson labs to professional sports, she uncovered nine behavioral norms that separate champions from everyone else. These norms cluster around understanding individuals, continuous learning, and external awareness, but here’s the shocking twist: they must be intentionally cultivated by leaders willing to let go of control and create psychological safety.
Her work with everyone from angry engineers to federal agencies proves that when people feel they truly belong, they stop playing it safe and start unleashing their best ideas.
The game-changing lesson: Great teams aren’t born from great hiring—they’re forged through great norms that make everyone feel valued enough to share their wildest innovations without fear.
Listen to Vanessa’s episode here!
Mahalo,
Guy