Engaging Emotional Intelligence Activities in the Workplace

We often hear the term “IQ” when talking about intelligence. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is how we measure and quantify our mental abilities to think critically, logically, and objectively.

But what about the personality aspects that affect everything from how we relate to others to how we manage stress and conflict? That’s where emotional intelligence (EI) can be a valuable measure.

Discover more about this skill and how to improve it with some of the most engaging emotional intelligence activities in the workplace. Let's get into some of the best emotional intelligence activities!

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, also known as EI, describes a person's ability to recognize, understand, manage, and reason with emotions. Not to be confused with EQ, which stands for emotional quotient, which means your actual emotional intelligence level, like IQ.

EI is a key part of overall intelligence that is often overlooked. When it comes to managing others, being a team player, and functioning successfully in the workplace, emotional intelligence is absolutely essential. Studies have shown that employees with higher EQ scores also tend to be rated higher on measures of interpersonal functioning, leadership abilities, and stress management. Other studies have linked higher emotional intelligence with better job satisfaction and overall job performance.

Cultivating emotional intelligence at all levels of your organization helps establish a culture of empathy in which teams and colleagues can engage, collaborate, and learn from one another.

Empower your employees to learn about and improve their emotional intelligence with these top HRDQ activities.

Encourage Self-Exploration

Employees need a clear sense of who they are to understand how they relate to others. With these HRDQ tools, you can empower employees to explore their values and tendencies to kick off the emotional intelligence conversation.

Values Edge System

Understanding ourselves – our core values, motivators, and personality traits – is fundamental to understanding others. The Values Edge System: An Exercise in Personal and Team Discovery is a powerful training tool for gaining personal insight, improving employee engagement, improving teamwork, and aligning culture at every level of your organization.

With this tool, participants create a hierarchy of their values using cards that represent them. As a visual exercise, Values Edge System helps individuals literally SEE their own value set and how it compares to that of their peers, teams, and the organization as a whole.

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Emotional Intelligence Activities: Build Emotionally Intelligent Teams at All Levels

Ensure you’re building a culture of empathy and emotional intelligence by training employees across all levels of your organization. These resources will help you build emotionally intelligent teams and bolster teamwork:

Emotional Intelligence Customizable Courseware

The Emotional Intelligence Customizable Courseware offers a comprehensive introduction to emotional intelligence for all levels of your organization. It covers the four essential aspects of honing EI along with strategies for developing each: intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, adaptability, and resilience. In this course, participants have the opportunity to work through real-life scenarios, confront issues, tackle problems, and productively manage change and stress.

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Team Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence

Team Emotional and Social Intelligence (TESI) is a set of tools for assessing and developing a team's emotional effectiveness across seven dimensions, a prerequisite for high performance.

Team members rate their abilities in the following categories: Team Identity, Motivation, Emotional Awareness, Communication, Conflict Resolution, Stress Tolerance, and Positive Mood. Individual team members learn about their own emotional intelligence strengths and areas for improvement, empowering everyone involved to be more collaborative and empathetic.

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Navigating Difficult Conversations Customizable Courseware

Emotional intelligence is really put to the test when a conflict arises. How do you confront the issue in a productive, level-headed manner? This comprehensive, customizable course introduces participants to a seven-stage process for taking control in tricky situations. With real-world examples and role-playing activities, this program helps participants prepare, conduct, and close difficult conversations in the most productive way. Empower your employees to embrace confrontation rather than to fear it.

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Equip Managers for Success with Emotional Intelligence Activities

Many times, managers set the tone for the rest of their teams. So, it’s especially important that these employees understand themselves and how to manage their subordinates with intention and thoughtfulness. Here’s a great activity to help:

Emotional Intelligence Skills Assessment

This self-assessment is designed for manager-level employees and measures their emotional intelligence across five scales crucial to that role: perceiving, managing, decision-making, achieving, and influencing. This is a thorough, hands-on introduction to emotional intelligence that provides a framework for managers at all stages of their careers to deepen their understanding of themselves. Managers with this kind of emotional self-awareness are better equipped to manage others, extend empathy, and play to their team’s emotional strengths.

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Have Some Fun While You’re At It!

Emotional Intelligence can be fun, too! Make the process engaging and dynamic with some of HRDQ’s game options:

Thumballs

Thumballs make for a creative and engaging ice-breaker activity for your EI training session. Simply toss and share your reaction to the prompt under your thumb for fun, intuitive topics that create a stress-free environment optimized for training.

The Be A Leader Thumball is particularly helpful for emotional intelligence thought starters, starting the conversation with questions that guide introspection on leadership strengths and opportunities for growth.

With questions like “I'd be a better leader if I spent more time on...”; “When my workers disagree with me, I...”; and “I get honest feedback from workers when...”, participants begin to reflect on how they function emotionally in the workplace. This provides a terrific groundwork for a productive conversation about emotional intelligence.

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Choose Happiness at Work

This interactive card game is another great facilitation workshop tool, especially as an ice-breaker or break-time activity in your session. One set of cards introduces a common workplace issue or scenario, while the other set offers solutions in the following categories: Positivity, Stress, Goals, and Relationships. The game encourages participants to think of positive, productive, and intentional solutions to common workplace issues, promoting a more empathetic workplace culture informed by an understanding of EI.

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Get Started Today

Use these activities, assessments, and more from HRDQ to train emotional intelligence within your teams and organizations. Explore our complete emotional intelligence collection of resources today, and see collaboration and performance soar.