Developing Emotional Intelligence:
Course Corrections in the
Journey of a Lifetime
This is a description of sequence of experiences designed to accelerate your progress on a path you are already on. Research has shown that, even if we pay no conscious attention to it, EQ continues to evolve over the course of our lifetimes. Apparently, with experience does indeed come a degree of wisdom.
Imagine the opportunities available to us if we set out to fully develop and deploy EQ in all aspects of our lives. Given the role of EQ in creating a fulfilling life and successful career, it is hard to think of a development pursuit that could be more important.
Training Time Required
Although a one-day version of this event is available, two to three days is preferred. The three-day version is especially recommended for people in leadership positions or those being considered for promotion into them.
The training can be presented in consecutive days but deeper learning and insight is available when the days are spread out a week apart. This would allow time for "homework assignments," such as conversations with colleagues at work and people in their private lives.
The topics of these conversations will encourage participants to reflect on insights being developed, consolidate learning points, and seek out feedback, and support for change. They will also be asked to practice relationship skills included in the design and being able to come back to discuss how things went will further enhance the "take" of the training being provided.
Pre-Workshop Activities
Expanding Self-Awareness
EQ development begins with the expansion of self-awareness. Pre-workshop assignments will engage participants in seeking out feedback to help them expand their awareness of their EQ strengths and developmental needs.
These activities can include:
- Taking the Simmons EQ Profile and having your results interpreted individually by phone before the workshop. The EQ Profile is a deeply revealing instrument and requires a conversation to fully understand its results. Although you will bring the Profile and your notes from our conversation to the workshop, how much you disclose about those results will be entirely your choice.
- Reviewing past performance appraisals and any available 360 feedback measures that provide perspectives from managers, peers, and subordinates.
- Following a protocol designed to structure what could be sensitive conversations, ask for feedback directly. This should include people who know them well, both at work and in their personal lives.
Pre-workshop preparation includes reflective work to be done in writing. Our life histories are filled with relationships, events, and circumstances that shaped the people we have become and influence the development of our EQ.
We will explore the most critical influences on the development of your values, beliefs, and assumptions about life, work, and relationships. You will be asked to respond in writing to questions that will encourage reflection on these formative experiences and how they continue to influence them today, even at a level that is often below conscious awareness.
While the written work is important and should be brought to the training, one of the purposes of the exercises is to encourage reflection on these topics, even when you are not actively writing about them.
You will set developmental goals before the training event. People should discuss the workshop overview and content to be covered with their direct managers and establish intended developmental goals to be achieved by participating in this process. These goals should include how to leverage EQ strengths and well as identify developmental needs to be addressed both during and after the training.
Participants who are married or in a significant relationship should also include their spouses or significant other's perspective in goal setting.
Note: While we will be studying a four-stage model of EQ, a variety of skills will be introduced early in the design to allow use of them to enhance the workshop experience as well as provide opportunities to practice and start developing mastery of these skills.
Workshop Overview
Emotional intelligence: Creating fulfillment on and off the job.
- Understanding emotional intelligence.
- A four stage model of EQ: Self-awareness, self-regulation, connectivity, and relationship development & maintenance.
- EQ: Creating a context for its development.
The origins of EQ.
- From genetics to a lifetime of learning.
- Wired to relate: The physiology of EQ.
Connectivity: The foundational skills of relationship development.
- Authentic listening: The gift of presence in relationships.
- Inner versus outer directed ways of relating to your world.
- Developing interest in people wherever you find them.
- Getting out of your head: How self-absorption derails connectivity.
Life experience and the development of EQ.
- Early influences on who we think we are and what we think we can become.
- Lessons learned: How your family life, peers, and cultural circumstances narrowed or expanded possibilities.
Unwritten rules: Discovering and redefining "truth."
- What is in your rulebook?
- Role models: Influence on self-perception and coping strategies.
- Connecting with your life script and rewriting the rules.
Giving and receiving feedback.
- Coaching skills for expanding another person's self-awareness and supporting their development.
- The difference between performance-based and EQ-based feedback.
Optional elements in the design.
These workshops will be tailored to meet the needs of your group. The designs typically include content and skills drawn from the other two workshops described in the website.
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