Emotional intelligence can be defined as combining thinking with feelings to make good quality decisions and to build authentic relationships.
Emotional intelligence is a complex construct that encompasses every aspect of life (and business), incorporating disciplines such as wellbeing, resilience, mindfulness, decision making, interpersonal relationships and human factors, to name only a few. Emotional intelligence is fundamental to all learning and development. It is a subject that is continually undergoing qualitative and quantitative research supported by positive psychology and neuroscience.
Information and frameworks focused in soft skills (now being referred to as Power Skills) offer some insight and understanding to a wide range of leadership and management functions. These include
- how to build relationships with people
- how to listen
- how to be empathetic
- how to develop resilience
- how to ask great questions
- how make quality decisions
- how to conduct difficult conversations
- how to manage conflict
However, gaining new knowledge alone is not enough to change behaviour or develop leadership capabilities. This is why these soft skills are often the hardest to improve.
Online courses covering soft skills can be effective as they are more impartial and impersonal. However, emotional intelligence and leadership can’t be developed just by watching a few video lectures!
Training emotional intelligence online
Several highly effective advanced behavioural techniques can be utilised in online courses focused around emotional intelligence that challenge thinking and generate alternative strategies. Learners build their leadership and emotional intelligence skills by identifying and replacing unhelpful thinking patterns and habits through practical activities that incorporate planning and goal setting. These can be supported further by simple personality and behavioural assessments incorporated into the course and referred to throughout the course to build understanding and application.
Also methods are used that focuses each individual learner to work on and around the specific issues that they are facing relevant to them within their workplace. Without these, an online course based around emotional intelligence merely becomes a distracting series of informative presentations.
Proceed with caution
However, learners must be interested in their self-development, willing to learn and apply their knowledge. Any learner who feels forced to undertake training around emotional intelligence, for whatever reason, may react negatively to the training as it often exposes parts of their behaviour that they would rather not address or is too difficult or challenging to change. In many instances, this is seen in the emotional responses expressed in the low ratings of online soft skill courses.
In conclusion
Training emotional intelligence online gives a good return on investment, when managed appropriately, giving perceivable benefits in a matter of weeks, through improved job retention, reduced stress levels and improved performance results.