A great way to examine social awareness is through scenarios and case studies.

The following thought provoking research is a fine example of the power of social awareness and EI.

A famous research was carried out in the Bell Labs in regard with group behaviour (Kelley & Hanson, 1993). In this research, engineers who were working on sophisticated electronics switch boards where examined. They had to work in teams of 5 to 150 people to solve problems.

The engineers were all academically talented and had high IQs. The researchers wanted to know who does better in the teams and why. Their research showed that 10% to 15% were star performers. Further comparison between these performers and others showed little difference in academic expertise or IQ results. There was something else at play.

Research showed that star performers had a higher emotional intelligence. They were capable of setting up ad hoc informal networks over time that they could rely on when they needed support in a moment of a crisis. In contrast, members who initiated contact with others only after a crisis occurred, inevitably took longer to resolve their problems and performed worse than the star performers.

Following this observation, further analysis was carried out on informal networks and the researchers found that there are mainly three varieties of informal networks:

• Communication Networks. Who talks to who.
• Expertise Networks. Who turns to who for advice.
• Trust Networks. Who places his trust in who.

If someone was a main node on the expertise network, people looked up to that person for technical help and that person was more likely to get promotions as a result. However, there was no relationship between being on the expertise network and being on the trust network where a person is seen as someone people can trust and whom they might share their secrets, doubts or ambitions with. A dominating technical lead with tons of accreditations might want everyone to follow a certain route but he will not be on anyone’s trust or communication network. As a result, he might do very poorly when it comes to managing a group or campaigning for a particular cause or direction.

The conclusion was that star performers seem to be those who are strong nodes on all of the three networks where they can provide their expertise as well as trust and also communicate well with others while staying in the loop.

To summarise, research showed that the star performers had the following characteristics:

• Ability to coordinate efforts in the team
• Leaders in building consensus
• Being able to see things from the other perspective such as customers or other team members
• Strong Persuasiveness
• Ability to promote cooperation while avoiding conflicts
• Taking initiatives. In other words, being self-motivated enough to take roles beyond what is expected to do as part of the role.

As you can see, these skills are all part of emotional skills which a team member who wants to become a star performer must master.