Developing Your Emotional Intelligence and Interpersonal Competence

Course Description

This course helps participants learn what emotional intelligence is and how to develop it to become more skilled in building relationships and handling challenging interpersonal situations. Participants are encouraged to target areas of interpersonal competence in which increased facility will help them be more effective supervisors, team members, and colleagues.

Course Objectives

• Know the core competencies of emotional intelligence.
• Complete the Emotional Intelligence Style Profile.
• Understand how to increase your self-awareness and self-management.
• Develop increased interpersonal awareness and interpersonal skills.
• Enhance your empathic understanding of others.
• Build relationships of trust and mutual commitment.
• Handle challenging workplace situations.

Course Length: 1 day

Course Outline

I.       Introduction: What Is Emotional Intelligence?

A.     Discussion: Define Emotional Intelligence. List some work situations in which you think a well-developed emotional intelligence would be helpful.

B.     Understanding Self and Others

According to the Emotional Intelligence Style Profile, Emotional Intelligence “draws on two simple concepts: applying knowledge appropriately and applying feelings appropriately.” (Dr. Jon Warner)

C.    The Four Pillars of Emotional Intelligence – Personal Competence and Social Competence

1. The Emotional Intelligence Style Profile

Activity – Participants complete the Emotional Intelligence Style Profile and then plot their scores on X and Y axes, producing a style in one or more of four quadrants. The instrument helps the participant determine the degree of balance in his/her emotional intelligence. Participants will learn how to use the new awareness to expand their repertoire of emotional responses available.

• Tools for Being Emotionally Intelligent

A.     Self-Awareness

Game: Feelings/Thoughts

Activity: Morris Louis Painting – What are you feeling?

Discussion: How can we increase our awareness of our feelings?

B.     Self-Management

1.     Positive Self-Talks

Activity – Participants review a list of statements and rewrite them into statements that are positive, specific, and present tense. They then create positive self-talks to fit their own situations.

2. Positive Energy/Optimism
3. Self-Motivation – Top Ten Things Self-motivated People Do
4. Self-Control

Activity – Participants make a list of recent events and then note how much self-control they exercised and what they might have done to exert more self-control.

5. Resilience
6. Social Awareness

C.     Empathy

Activity – Participants work in pairs to practice making empathic statements, based on a model for showing empathy they learn in the workshop.

D.     Interpersonal Skills

1. Understanding Relationships – Legitimize Empathize.
2. Helpful Communication Styles

Activity: Participants work in small groups to analyze a series of situations in which a response is made using a less-than helpful style. Participants then rewrite the response using one of the four helpful communication styles used.

3. Appreciation

Activity: Whom do you appreciate and why?

4. Dealing with Difficult People
5. Dealing with Angry People – Tip: Deal with the feelings first
   • Activity – Acknowledging Feelings

• Dealing with Steamrollers, Complainers, and Snipers

1. Capstone Activity: In small groups, course participants review 10-20 scenarios and determine which emotional intelligence skills to use to address the situations described. Groups report out on what they plan to do to handle these and similar situations.

Note: These scenarios can be customized to the organization, if there are particular situations that employees need to be able to address Some examples of the scenarios are:

• A colleague frequently blindsides you in meetings with negative comments about your ideas and proposals.
• A colleague sometimes says things to you that come across as the colleague knowing everything about everything. She doesn’t seem open to suggestions or other viewpoints.
• A fellow team member takes credit for work you have done.
• A colleague strongly disagrees with your ideas for solving a recurring problem. You think your approach is the better way to go.
• You need some vital information from a colleague to finish a project, but s/he seems to be avoiding you and has ignored your emailed requests.
• In a feedback session, your boss criticized you for a mistake you made 5 months ago.
• You just received an email that included harsh criticism of a suggestion you recently made.
• Your supervisor micromanages. She tends to get very involved with whatever approach you use, criticizes you when she thinks you are making a mistake, and isn’t at all open to feedback about her style.
• One member of your team complains that he is consistently assigned the most menial work tasks in the group. The other team members acknowledge that he does many of the more menial tasks but are already overburdened themselves.
• A team member is not pulling his weight.
  1. Action Plan

Activity – Participants review their Emotional Intelligence Style Profile and identify two – four areas where they can take concrete steps to increase their interpersonal skills and write an action plan, listing the concrete steps they plan to take and adding start and end dates for their planned activities.