Emotional Intelligence: Activities for Developing You and Your Business

Citation

Baxter, F.L. (2009), "Emotional Intelligence: Activities for Developing You and Your Business", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 33 No. 8/9, pp. 840-841. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090590910993670

Book synopsis

This A4 Loose‐leaf manual is inspired by the work of Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence and builds upon one of the authors previous work in designing coaching and mentoring activities. The manual contains a variety of activities based around a theoretical triangular‐shaped model (adapted by the authors from Goleman's work) with self‐awareness at the centre and relationship management, self‐management and social awareness constituting the three corners. The core purpose of the manual centres on developing individuals understanding of these areas through a series of experiential activities.

The training materials are divided into six thematically‐structured chapters: each chapter begins with a synopsis of the activities fitting within the theme of that chapter. Chapter one focuses on core emotional intelligence looking specifically at communication, allowing individuals to focus on listening, body language, feedback and inner voice. Chapter 2‐5 focus on the four main themes within the model described by the authors. Chapter 2 comprises of activities based around self‐awareness, guiding the individual towards understanding themselves and the identities they use. There is also an emphasis within the chapter on individual behaviours, thoughts, values and beliefs and issues related to self‐confidence, integrity and impact on others. Chapter 3 addresses the importance of self‐management and includes activities on role modelling, the ability to manage personal change, self‐coaching and setting personal goals. Social awareness is the theme of chapter 4 and this chapter covers the behaviours we adopt as individuals in our interactions with others, such as: mirroring; cultural diversity and equality awareness; understanding other peoples behaviours and relating to individuals different to ourselves. Chapter 5 provides an opportunity to develop relationship management skills and explores activities based on team working, problem solving, developing trust and honesty in relationships and goal setting. Chapter 6 examines the role of inspirational leadership and provides activities intended to develop individual leadership skills. It looks at effective networking skills and introduces activities for developing a strong service orientation among employees. This latter activity on service orientation includes an action planning component allowing individuals to improve levels of customer service within their organisation.

The final chapter provides three suggested workshop schedules for running the activities within the book. These schedules provide trainers with a sample template for planning training on emotional intelligence issues. This final chapter also provides a cross reference grid of all of the 48 activities listed in the book, categorised according to four themes, namely: introduction to emotional intelligence, developing your emotional intelligence skills, emotionally intelligent leadership and coaching.

Evaluation

The manual offers a large number of tools that can be used within group sessions including some individually‐based activities. The training ideas seem straightforward to deliver and the loose‐leaf presentation of the manual allows facilitators easy copying and distribution of handouts to delegates. The manual is available as a loose‐leaf folder or on CD‐Rom – this latter option may be more useful if you are accustomed to delivering training sessions using multi‐media tools.

One point to note is this book is very much activity and exercise based with very little theoretical input throughout, so this may be something that if you are delivering a training session you may wish to expand upon. In other words, it is likely trainers will need to engage in a lot of background reading on emotional intelligence – not provided in the manual – in order to develop an effective workshop combining an overview of the concept with the activities set out in the manual.

I would also comment that there are a large number of action plans used throughout the text (at the end of various activities) designed to move delegate from enjoyable experience to tangible sustainable actions. It may be beneficial if delivering day long courses to build a number of these individual activity action plans into a single more substantial action plan which could capture the learning across a number of activities.

In the author's own words

It is our belief that unless you have a deep and clear understanding of the self, you cannot effectively develop and manage the other three quadrants or triangles (relationship management, self‐management and social awareness). By increasing our levels of self‐awareness, we, in turn, increase our ability to manage ourselves and our behaviours that is self‐management. Likewise, by increasing our levels of self‐awareness and self‐management, we increase our levels of social awareness and relationship management. In short, we increase our emotional intelligence. This series of activities is designed to assist the process of developing and increasing your levels of emotional intelligence. They can also be used to increase the emotional intelligence of your business and workforce (p. 2).

A About the reviewer

Fiona L. Baxter is a HR practitioner and has worked in a variety of different industries. Her research interests include employee relations, the role of line managers within organisations, devolution of HR and the effectiveness of HR processes and systems.