Emotional intelligence, communication, and team performance

We consider the degree to which the Emotional Intelligence (EI) characteristics of individual interpersonal skills are predictive of the overall performance of teams. This paper describes an extension of a pilot study, which was undertaken to identify which EI main scales of students were linked to success in a team-based undergraduate construction-engineering course, over a six-year period. The outcome demonstrated that interpersonal skills were not significant to an engineering project team's performance; therefore further investigation was required based on this inconsistency within the team literature. Additional variables were collected to examine this discrepancy, verbal communication and non-verbal communication through the use of computer-interaction. Verbal communication is monitored with respect to the number of utterances and the durations of each utterance. Non-verbal communication use was collected based on the types of media chosen to assist with graphical imaging as a form of non-verbal communication. Several structural equation models are considered to examine the direct and indirect effects of interpersonal skills on team performance. The current results contribute to the literature by adding further understanding of the mediating variables that exist within the emotional intelligence-performance team dynamic.