Why connection beats perfection in the age of AI acceleration
Research shows that teams optimizing for collaborative patterns—not individual star talent—consistently outperform, offering essential guidance for AI teams navigating rapid technological change.
The pace of AI development has me rethinking what makes teams truly effective. Vanessa Urch Druskat's research on team emotional intelligence at Fortune 100 companies challenges many assumptions we make about high performance.
Her findings are interesting: "intelligence, abilities, and personalities are poor predictors of how people behave in teams." The teams that consistently deliver don't optimize for individual star power—they build collaborative patterns that bring out the best work from everyone. These top-performing teams "intentionally create these norms and routines" instead of hoping good collaboration just happens.
But this timing! We're all working with AI tools that can amplify individual capabilities, but they can't replicate the collective intelligence that emerges when teams genuinely work well together. While we focus on compliance frameworks and technical capabilities, the research suggests that we should also invest equally in how our teams actually interact.
In practice, this means being as intentional about emotional intelligence infrastructure as we are about our AI governance frameworks. The technology moves fast, but human trust and collaborative problem-solving remain irreplaceable assets for the teams building what comes next.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91379249/how-successful-teams-build-emotional-intelligence