Emotional Intelligence
Training Exercises and Resources

This exercise helps illustrate an important point on body language. As soon as we see a person, we read their body language quickly to establish their mood and we can be fairly good at this. The problem is that the mood of the interaction is then set from that point onwards and this can be contagious. This emotional contagion can then work against us as we may react with the same negative emotions even when there is no cause for it. The exercise helps people see this non-verbal phenomenon and increases their awareness. For example, this can help people at workplace to control their body language when interacting with colleagues and also helps them not to get affected by other people’s moods and emotions, thereby improving their relationships.

This is a simple exercise that anyone can use to measure his self-awareness. Simply think about answering a series of questions and through that become more aware of how you feel and how others feel about you.

Knowing how we feel is part of our self-awareness. The more we are aware of our feelings, the better we can control our behaviours and understand those of others. This exercise helps delegates to become more aware of their emotions and learn to describe them. It also encourages them to think of ways to get to a target emotion, such as happiness.

The purpose of this exercise is to help delegates understand the concept of crowd contagion. This is particularly applicable to business meetings where emotional comments can easily lead to a suboptimal meeting. Crowd contagion captures the idea that emotions are contagious and if not controlled come to dominate a group meeting. If one person becomes angry, others are likely to become angry soon as the emotion is passed from one person to the next.

Some leaders seem to be too controlling. They want to exert their power and position on others to get them do what they want. On the other hand, some leaders seem to understand others and are much friendlier and open to new ideas. They seem to be much more logical and are viewed much more positively than those who are too controlling.

Research shows that those who are too controlling of others and their environment are usually insecure. Their insecurity is expressed by forcing others to comply and they see this as the only way to bring balance to their world.

This exercise helps delegates to become more aware of this concept and learn how to ask questions from themselves on how they treat others.

This simple exercise allows team members to share important information about their life with each other. The aim is to gain a better understanding of why people behave in a certain way and to help putting team members' actions into perspective.

The ability to act allows you to adopt different roles as you see fit. To be good at emotional intelligence, it is very important to understand emotions and be able to express appropriate emotions when needed, perhaps to sympathise with others or establish rapport.

We always recognise actors as those who are capable in presenting a range of emotions in their roles from sadness to happiness to anger. They seem to be able to switch from one emotion to the next at ease, while their facial expression shows every tiny detail for that emotion. How do they do it?

This exercise is based on classic acting exercises used in acting schools to increase students’ sensory awareness. Rather than asking students to cry, or to show some strong emotion, they are encouraged to think of all the sensory information present in any typical everyday activity. By becoming more aware of these sensory data, they can learn to improvise and imitate down to the tiniest detail.

For best results, you may need to give a pre-course assignment to delegates so they can prepare and rehearse for their acting which takes place during the course.

This is a useful exercise in acting. Use this exercise to help people adopt certain roles or learn how to imitate target behaviours. Acting and understanding how an ideal role feels like can help delegates to get to those targets. For example, being able to act like a manager can significantly help people to eventually become a manager. Not only acting like a manager helps the person to see what it takes to be a manager, others will start to respond appropriately and will be more receptive when that person is elevated to the managerial level. For example, what is the typical body language of a manager? What do they say and how do they say it? What signals show that they are confident in their role? What gestures do they use to reassure? How do they show their feelings indirectly to allow saving face?

This exercise helps with various useful roles provided as mission cards. You can use the exercise as a template for other useful roles or choose based on the content of your course.

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.

This is a simple yet powerful exercise on emotional intelligence which helps delegates to engage all their senses while thinking about what they or others around them experience emotionally.