Emotional Intelligence Exercise: How Admirable Are You?

Purpose

Self-awareness and self-motivation are critical competencies within emotional intelligence. Everyone must actively take steps to become better in these areas. A great way to achieve this is by systematically reviewing your own performance and thinking of what you are good at. This positive thinking can reinforce your confidence and boost your motivation. This simple, yet powerful exercise helps you to achieve this.

Remember, admiring yourself is not about being arrogant or feeding your ego. It is about knowing and appreciating what you are good at so you can inspire others around you and help them to grow as you grow further. This is particularly important in leadership roles.

You can provide this exercise during training or provide it as a pre or post-course assignment so delegates have more time to spend and reflect on their life and behaviour. If you run this as a pre-course assignment, you can ask them to bring their responses and then initiate a group discussion and encourage delegates to get inspired by each other.

Objective

Answer a series of questions by thinking of how you admire yourself, what you desire to be and how you can get there.

What You Need

• A copy of the “Desire Form” provided below for each delegate.

Setup

• Distribute “Desire Form” to all delegates.
• Ask delegates to think about the questions in the form and provide their answers.
• Allocate 10 minutes.
• Bring back everyone and ask them to share their thoughts and their self-analysis.
• Follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes.

Activity: 10 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes.

Discussion

How do you feel now that you have identified your admirable traits? Do you think others would recognise these traits in you easily? What did you learn from other people’s admirable traits? Where there any traits by others that you like to have too? How do you see your desired self in comparison with what you are? How do you plan to get there and what did you think of other people’s strategies on getting there?

 

Desire Form

What you see in yourself that you admire the most? What are your most admirable traits?

 

 

 

What should you do to become even more admirable from your own point of view?

 

 

 

Thank yourself for being admirable. How do you plan to reward yourself when you become as admirable as you desire?