INFLUENCE OF EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CONSTRUCTION DESIGN TEAMS
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Date
2021-12-02
Journal Title
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Publisher
Ahmadu Bello University Zaria
Abstract
The construction Industry has laid emphasis on technical skills for performance
improvement. However, performance does not depend only on technical skills but also
on people/soft skills which can be measured using Emotional intelligence (EI). EI is
established to be an important competence for teamwork settings. Predominantly,
previous EI studies on teams focused on individual level EI neglecting the synergy of
team members in a team. Therefore this study established the influence of EI on the
performance of construction design teams. A mixed-method approach was utilised in
collecting data by means of questionnairre survey and focus group interview. The
questionnairre was used in collecting data for leader EI, team EI and team performance
while the focus group interview gave more insight on the team activities related to
emotional intelligence. The Emotional and Social Competence Inventory (ESCI) and
Group Emotional Competences (GEC) survey were used for team leader EI and team EI
respectively. A total of 52 projects were identified and clustered into eight (8) teams. The
eight (8) teams consisted of 38 individuals. Thus the questionnairre was administered to
38 respondents from which 17 valid responses were received. Only four (4) teams
fulfilled the criteria for analysis in line with the ESCI and GEC. Mean, percentages and
correlational analysis were utilised in the analysis of the quantitative data while content
analysis was used for the qualitative data. The results obtained showed that leader EI and
team EI are yet to be of strength (that is having a mean score of 4.3 or above) thereby
requiring improvement. Also, the total performance scores show that team performance
can also be made better especicially in teams where members come from separate firms.
Furthermore, the correlational analysis revealead that Leader EI has a significant
association with only the team’s self-direction as indicated by the correlation coefficient
value of 0.463 and significance value of 0.034 thereby suggesting that for constructiondesign teams the team leader EI do not contribute significantly to team performance. On
the other hand TEI has significant positive association with the team’s self-direction and
also with the average (overall) performance as indicated by the result of the correlation
to be (τb= .432, p=.046) and (τb= .401, p=.042) respectively. This suggest that TEI
contributes significantly to team performance of construction design teams. Therefore,
this study concludes that Team emotional intelligence has greater influence on the
performance of construction design teams more than the team leader EI. Nevertheless the
team leader EI has great influence on TEI norms which in turn influences team
performance. Thus the study recommends that individual EI competences should be
developed given that every professional in construction is a potential team leader.