Emotional Intelligence Activities

Reflection and journaling are suggested as activities for improving emotional intelligence. Writing down thoughts and experiences can help release stress and increase self-awareness. Another activity involves giving feedback and practicing active listening. The importance of confronting and giving constructive feedback is emphasized, and participants are encouraged to reflect on their initial reactions and then reassess their feelings. These activities promote empathy, self-awareness, and self-regulation, all essential components of emotional intelligence. So the activity I'm going to suggest for emotional intelligence, and there's many, and it's going to seem weird and it's a little bit corny, is reflection and journaling. You know, I've journaled for a long time, and when I encourage other people, and especially guys will struggle with it because it's, ah, it's a diary, no, it's really putting down your thoughts. You know, there's a great book at Harvard, The Progress Principle, and Teresa Amable, one of the authors, talks about journaling and the effects on stress. When you write things down, what happened, you tend to let go of some of it. And in her study, she talks about how it actually decreases stress, I think it's up to 23%. So one of the activities is practice giving feedback, having people just say thank you, this is our listening chat, and just simply reflect and journal what they heard, what they learned, what maybe they agree with, maybe what they disagree with, and then come back and get some further clarification. That time of reflection versus immediately responding builds self-awareness. It builds emotional intelligence. Let me share another activity. I got in a room once with a group of people, a lot of yeah, but bobs, a lot of people with low self-awareness, a lot of people who struggled with self-regulation, and I gave everybody a thought. And the conversation was around conflict, but I was really coaching to emotional intelligence. And I said, I want to leave you with a thought, and I'm going to share something with you, and I'm going to leave the room, and I want to challenge all of you to not speak. I just want you to digest. We're going to do it for about five minutes, and I want you to be honest. Everyone's nodding, and like, okay. I said, I might even stand outside the door to make sure you're not talking. And everyone starts laughing, and I said, do you know that people who confront and give constructive feedback, like leadership, don't want to do it? They actually don't enjoy doing it. They actually hate doing it, and I stopped. And I walked out, stood outside the door. Nobody talked. I came back in. I said, now, let's put up on the whiteboard on the left side of the board. When I first said it, what was your immediate reaction? Write it down on a piece of paper. Everyone wrote it down. I said, now that we're sitting here maybe five to seven, eight minutes later, and I've given you some time to reflect and journal and write your thoughts down, now how do you feel about it? The left side of the board, we filled up with things like, this is BS, I'm angry, I'm upset. The right side of the board became, yeah, I've never thought of it from that perspective. It is tough to confront other people. It is tough to challenge other people. It is tough to manage other people. And I looked at all of them, and I said, and you're all leaders, too. How many of you love to give constructive feedback? And what we were doing is creating an activity around emotional intelligence. It addressed empathy. It addressed self-awareness, and it addressed self-regulation. It's one of the coolest activities you can do.