How a Founder CEO can use social intelligence to improve team performance

A team’s social intelligence is key to its performance.
Founder CEOs can facilitate team engagements to foster social intelligence, build cooperation, improve resilience, and create a healthy company culture.

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Founder CEOs must find 'stretch' opportunities for the team that create connection between them.

First published in January 2021. UPDATED: April 2022.

The Choose Your Focus model

By using David Rock's 'Choose Your Focus' model, you can steer a team conversation into positive and creative territory and away from negative sticky areas.

What is social intelligence?

Social intelligence is an extension of emotional awareness. It’s a team’s social sensitivity, which translates to the quality and distribution of conversation: watching for social cues, taking turns to speak and share their thinking, being heard, acknowledged, not being spoken over.

These behaviours link to a person's ability to empathise and cooperate with others.

We empathise when a person is 'like us' and we feel we can relate to them. If an idea comes from someone we don’t consider to be like us, we won’t always recognise it as a good idea.

Encouraging a sense of relatedness between team members is critical to effective performance. Give team members opportunities to connect over things they have in common and their cooperation and productivity will improve.

Advocate for those not yet considered part of the 'in-group' by acknowledging and crediting them with contributions to team discussions, ensuring their voice is heard.

As important as encouraging your team to connect, is finding ways for you to relate to each of your team members.

Improving performance with positivity

If a team is looking to positively change the way they work, the level that the group thinks and communicates from is important.

A positive approach that builds on others’ ideas and gives positive feedback and encouragement will enhance creativity and cooperation within a team. This is because it reinforces an individual’s status within the team. Team members will see challenges as just that, a problem within their capabilities to solve, not obstacles they’re unable to overcome.

Maintaining a positive tone within team meetings is imperative to productivity.

David Rock’s ‘Choose Your Focus’ model from his book “Quiet Leadership” identifies levels of thinking and communicating:

Vision, planning, and action are positive and forward-looking, supporting positive change. Whereas problem and drama are negative influences that stall discussion and progress.

Exploring a vision, challenging norms and boundaries, and experimenting with novel pathways to achieving goals and objectives are examples of stretch or growth opportunities for the team, encouraging creative thinking and creating connection between team members.

Negativity in a group dynamic, whether problems or drama, is contagious and stalls a team. Once the conversation goes into this space the mind can’t easily switch back into creative problem-solving, visionary, and planning again quickly.

Acknowledge the negativity - “that sounds challenging".

Then re-focus on the future, "How can we use this to inform what we do next?"

A team that communicates positively

A connected team who think and communicate on a positive level will work more effectively together to achieve objectives, solve problems and be more resilient when faced with challenges - of which there are many in the start-up world.

As a founder CEO and leader of people, how you lead, facilitate, and structure team meetings, and your wider working environment has huge potential to shape your company’s culture.

Further reading

• ‘SCARF: A Brain-Based Model for Collaborating With and Influencing Others’ by David Rock

• ‘Developmental sequence in small groups’ by Bruce Tuckman Psychological Bulletin (Known as the ‘storming, norming, forming’ model)

• ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ by Patrick Lencioni

• ‘Time to Think’ by Nancy Klein

• ‘Group and Team Coaching: The Secret Life of Groups’ by Christine Thornton

• NeuroLeadership Institute Webinar ‘Coaching Your Team Virtually: Coronavirus and Beyond’.