Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy and Team Performance

Teams’ emotional skills can be more than the sum of their individual parts. Although theory emphasizes emotion as an interpersonal adaptation, emotion recognition skill has long been conceptualized as an individual-level intelligence. We introduce the construct of team emotion recognition accuracy (TERA) – the ability of members to recognize teammates’ emotions – and present preliminary evidence for its predictive validity. In a field study of public service interns working full-time in randomly assigned teams, taken together positive and negative TERA measured at the time of team formation accounted for 28.1% of the variance in team performance ratings nearly a year later. CAN TEAMS HAVE EMOTIONAL SKILLS? THE CASE OF RECOGNIZING OTHERS’ EMOTIONS Emotion plays a central role in organizational life (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Ashkanasy, 2003; Barsade & Gibson, 1998; Putnam & Mumby, 1993). Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 87–119 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03004-0