How To Improve Emotional Intelligence Through Training
Have you ever noticed your feelings?
How often have you stepped into others’ shoes and experienced their emotions?
How well do you understand what you feel and why you feel so?
Emotional Intelligence is our mind’s ability to perceive, manage, and express emotions effectively in real life. Jack Mayer and Peter Salovey (1990) defined Emotional Intelligence (or E.I.) as the ability to regulate feelings and use them to guide our actions.
Like I.Q., emotional intelligence varies from one person to another. While some people are gifted by birth in the way they understand and deal with people, others may need help to build their emotional skills.
Getting fluent in the language of emotions helps us sustain our relationships both personally and professionally. Emotional intelligence can empower the mind and make us happy and content.
The term “Emotional Intelligence” was first published in a paper by Michael Beldoch in 1964, but became popular after Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book “Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ.”
A well-balanced, empathetic, and friendly person is more emotionally aware than an unempathetic and demotivated individual. The studies of Daniel Goleman illustrated an emotionally intelligent person to have:
- The ability to recognize own emotions
- The ability to relate to others’ emotions
- The ability to actively listen to others
- The ability to actively participate in interpersonal communication and understand the nonverbal cues of behavior
- The ability to control one’s thoughts and feelings
- The ability to effectively manage emotions and express them in a socially acceptable way
- The ability to receive criticisms positively and benefit from them
- The power to forgive, forget, and move on rationally
How many of the above qualities can you relate to yourself?
In this article, we will try to uncover the practical implications of emotional intelligence and discuss how to use it for wholesome and healthy living.
Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Emotional Intelligence Exercises for free. These science-based exercises will not only enhance your ability to understand and work with your emotions but will also give you the tools to foster the emotional intelligence of your clients, students or employees.
Can E.I. Be Learned?
“Our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind.”
Daniel Goleman (1995, p. 20)
Research suggests that people with average or below average E.Q. can do just as well as others by learning it. The only thing needed is the motivation to learn and the intention to apply it in real life.
Emotional Intelligence can be gained and improved at any point in life (Goleman, 2014). Learning emotional intelligence skills needs a resourceful environment where we can picture the areas, or the aspects of E.I. that we should focus on, and seek expert advice on how to do so.
4 Stages of Learning Emotional Intelligence
1. Insight
Any learning starts when we are aware that there is something in us that needs to be changed or improved, and we are ready to make those changes happen. Emotional intelligence has five components in it:
Self-awareness – the knowledge of what we feel and why we feel so
Self-regulation – the ability to express our feelings in the right way
Motivation – the internal drive to change the way we feel and express
Empathy – the ability to relate to others’ emotions and see the world from their perspective
Social skills – the power to communicate effectively and build strong connections at home or in the workplace.
Learning E.I. starts with gaining insight into which aspect of E.I. we should work on. Some of us may have solid social skills but lack in self-regulation while others may be high on motivation but poor in self-regulation. The learning process begins with the knowledge of which aspect of E.I. to develop first.
2. Assessment
The next step is attempting to measure where we stand on each of the E.I aspects. E.I. tests are widely available online, or if you are seeking training in a professional setup, there will be materials provided to you for assessing your emotional intelligence.
Here are a few assessments and emotional intelligence tests that we can take for evaluating our E.I. The scores in each of them are indicative of whether or not we need to learn emotional skills, and where do we practically stand as an emotionally aware human being.
3. Training
Assessment opens us to a range of options to choose from. Depending on what part of emotional intelligence we need to work on, we can decide what sort of training would suit us the best. For example, a low score in motivational and social communication aspects can be improved by organizational training.
Many professional sectors offer E.I. courses and workshops for employees who are keen to build their interpersonal skills.
E.I. training improves:
- Communication skills and the power to comprehend nonverbal cues of interaction (for example body language, facial expression, the tone of words, etc.)
- Group performance, especially at the workplace and maintaining a high team spirit
- Organizational skills – and managing schedules more efficiently
- Work motivation and the power to accept feedback and criticism positively
- Leadership skills
4. Application
The final and the most critical stage of learning emotional intelligence is incorporating the chalk talk in real life. The exercise and self-help activities that structure E.I. courses are productive only when we can implement in real-life situations.
The skills and techniques that these learning modules impart to us can be used in:
- Interacting with people at personal and professional levels
- Understanding and labeling our own emotions
- Expressing what we feel in a way that will not upset others
- Understanding others’ feelings and listen to them without judgment
Can Emotional Intelligence Be Taught and Developed?
Teaching emotional intelligence to individuals not only builds their emotional skills, but it also sustains the education over several years (Nelis, Quoidbach, Mikolajczak, & Hansenne, 2009).
Delphine Nelis, a cognitive psychologist, established her fact in an experiment with 40 college students. She divided the sample population into two groups and provided a four-week E.I. training to only one of the groups.
Findings from her study indicated that the group that received the practice not only showed marked improvement in their emotional abilities, but they also continued to manifest the same even after six months of the experiment.
Although this was a small scale pilot study to understand the influence of emotional intelligence training, the results were quite significant and suggested the possible long-term effects of education on E.I.
Although Delphine Nelis initiated this pilot study, now you can also become an Emotional Intelligence Expert and teach others by enrolling in our highly acclaimed Emotional Intelligence Masterclass©. This is the best way to help others understand and use their emotions in life-enriching ways.