Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Time & Stress Management Course

Learning Objectives:

In this four day course, participants will complete several self-assessments to develop insights into their strengths in the workplace, leadership style, and how to manage their time and emotions effectively. This course includes modules on time management, stress management, strengths-based leadership, and emotional intelligence, as well as situational leadership.

Learning Objectives: On completion of the course students will be able to:

1. Understand the link between Emotional Intelligence and effective leadership skills

2. Identify the common behaviours of others, and how to manage them

3. Develop awareness of our own leadership behaviours

4. Identify our key leadership strengths, and how to leverage them

5. Apply different leadership behaviours, adjusting style for the situation

6. Identify sources of stress, and develop positive coping strategies

7. Recognize the difference between stress and burnout

8. Identify barriers to effective time management

Emotional Intelligence, or “EQ” is the ability to understand and manage your emotions appropriately, to achieve the best possible results. For instance, we all feel anger, but how we understand and deal with it varies widely. Are we aware of what caused the anger? Some people become irritable and they don't understand why. It mounts over the day until they snap at someone or something completely unrelated to the source of their feeling (classic example of kicking the dog or slamming doors because you're in a bad mood when you get home). Some people understand the trigger for their anger, and respond aggressively with the person who made them angry. Some people understand what triggered their anger, are able to take a deep breath and have a candid discussion in order to deal with the situation. People with high levels of emotional intelligence may experience the same feelings, but they manage their responses to achieve the best possible outcome. They are also able to sense and understand the emotions of others,and respond appropriately.

There are several models for EQ, which can be broadly classified into “ability,” “trait”, and “mixed” models. The difference between the models is about whether EQ is something we’re born with, something we learn, or a little of both.

The mixed models, such as the Bar-On EQ-i, propose that you're born with a certain EQ predisposition, and it can be developed throughout your lifetime. The best way to understand this is to think about our natural ability to play hockey. To achieve a certain level of performance, some people have to practice for hours every day, whereas other people just pick up the sport without much effort at all. So with EQ, we have some natural ability but it can also be developed throughout our lifetime. In these mixed models and measures, you see a fairly sharp rise in EQ for most people until they reach their 40's and then it begins to level out a bit as our “learning curve” flattens. Assessing your EQ can help you identify areas of strength to leverage, and other areas that you want to either develop or strategize around. An example of a "strategy" is a salesman who knows it's important to his clients that he remember their likes and dislikes, names and ages of their children, etc, but isn't very good at this. He can either try to use memorization tools, etc to develop this competency, or he can develop a strategy, such as creating a database of information that he can refer to before a client call. John Mayer and Peter Salovey popularized the term “Emotional Intelligence” in 1989, with the development of their ability model.

The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) shows images of faces / people and assesses your ability to understand their emotions. The MSCEIT uses “consensus scoring”, which bases scoring on the agreement of a large number of people. For example, if 70 percent of people felt that a photo was of a very happy person, then the best answer for the photo would be "happiness". A low score on this test indicates that the subject’s perceptions of emotions are not “in sync” with the majority of people, which in turn could cause interpersonal problems.