The following video covers the key areas of focus in the field of Emotional Intelligence.
It is a useful and reasonable thing to be able to identify when your emotions affect your decision-making and behaviour. It’s also handy to have some strategies for dealing with emotions that impact negatively on your relationships and working life.
You might have done ‘self-talk’ sessions in school. A lot of schools teach students about developing resilience and dealing with stress or bullying. Students are taught to recognise negative self-talk and to replace it with positive self-talk. Some of that involves identifying emotions and recognising how those emotions make you behave. Perhaps you remember doing exercises like this one?
| When I... | yell |
| I am feeling... | angry |
| I need... | to be alone |
Learning Portfolio
Complete exercise 6 in your Learning Portfolio.
Websites
The emotional intelligence toolkit, on HelpGuide.org, has a series of steps to help you develop emotional awareness and intelligence.
Some people put behaviour down to personality – as though you can’t change it. Many employers use personality tests when recruiting. Doing these tests can be tricky because whether you get labelled an extrovert or an introvert often depends on lots of factors. Work through this careers and disposition/personality type quiz and think about how accurate it is. How do you think an employer would regard your result?
Emotional intelligence involves keeping our emotions under control, but in some people that control can be absent. In a TalentSmart Newsletter article, Dr. Travis Bradberry sets out some strategies to handle toxic people in an emotionally intelligent way.