Getting people to voluntarily share their best information and act in the best interest of their team are two of the biggest challenges leaders face. In an insecure economy, it can be more difficult to get people on a team to demonstrate prosocial behavior, however, Dr. Vanessa Druskat’s research proves that emotionally intelligent teams that are supportive of each other - by listening deeply, offering help, and celebrating the successes of others - will offer superior results.

In this interview, Dr. Druskat shares how leaders can build collaborative groups that outperform the competition. She says that healthy teams emerge when norms are created that allow everyone on the team to be heard and to contribute in their roles. She goes on to discuss how to create a sense of belonging when so many people revile DEI, how AI is going to influence the desire to work collaboratively, and how her research on team effectiveness can be applied to create more unified communities. 

Dr. Vanessa Druskat is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of New Hampshire. She is an internationally recognized leadership and team performance expert who advises leaders and teams in some of the world's most respected Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 organizations. Her thirty-year research career examining differences between team cultures (i.e., social norms and routines) in high-performing and average-performing work teams led her to pioneer the concept of team emotional intelligence. She has published award-winning research articles in her field's top academic and practitioner journals and serves on the executive board of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Her popular Harvard Business Review article (with S. Wolff) on emotionally intelligent teams has been reprinted four times in collections of HBR’s most valued articles. Her book “The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Building Collaborative Groups that Outperform the Rest” was released in July of 2025.