Emotional intelligence training is a great tool to grow resiliency in your teams
Resiliency is a mindset: the capacity and confidence to be able to work through negative thoughts or emotions and be able to bounce back, work around and find effective ways to cope with difficulty or challenges.
7 outcomes of a Resilient Team
Dr. Ginsburg, a child pediatrician and a human development expert proposed 7 integral and interrelated components that make up being resilient. We think these components can extend well beyond childhood and onto teams and workplaces.
| Outcome | Value |
|---|---|
| Competence | Handling stressful situations effectively. |
| Confidence | Belief in one’s competence. |
| Connection | When people have a sense of belonging, we are less likely to seek out alternative destructive behaviours. |
| Character | People have a strong sense of who they are (strengths and values). |
| Contribution | Everyone needs and wants to feel appreciated, that their contribution made a difference, connected to the larger goal |
| Coping | Stress reducing skills and social skills for dealing with everyday life stresses |
| Control | Knowing that results can be determined by choices, having a sense that there is control over personal choices and the knowledge of which choices help them to bounce back from challenges even if the outcome can’t be changed |
The outcomes of a resilient team condensed into one sentence are reduced stress, better performance and a positive influence on workplace culture. We all want our teams to be resilient and the outcomes are obviously beneficial not only personally, but for our organizations, workplaces, and teams.
RELATED: How to Improve Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
Defining Emotional Intelligence
In a How to Improve Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace we defined emotional intelligence or EI as a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we:
- Perceive and express ourselves
- Develop and maintain social relationships
- Cope with challenges
- Use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way
How to Grow Resilience?
I hope the parallels between resilience and emotional intelligence are obvious. A Psychology Today article states that “having [healthy] emotional intelligence generally improves our relationships, as well as helps us respond well in a variety of situations, [therefore] it can be linked to resilience”.
To grow resilience, we need to become aware of how we currently use our set of emotional and social skills and then create action steps to make small changes that grow our resilience by increasing our emotional intelligence. By developing strong emotional regulation skills, our ability to stay calm, cool and collected under stress or pressure we grow our resilience.
As more and more leaders have and are being encouraged to develop more of a coaching style of leadership, EI helps leaders and the people they lead sharpen their social awareness and social management skills.
CASE STUDY: In the Leadership Presence course at the Rotman School of Management, emotional intelligence assessments played a vital role, enabling students to develop their personal leadership visions and effective strategies for team-based challenges. Read the case study.
How to Improve Emotional Intelligence?
By using the Emotional Intelligence tool in an in person or virtual workshop(s), participants will receive a comprehensive 20-page report of the functioning level of 15 Emotional Intelligence competencies. In a workshop we’ll talk about what happens to our brains under stress and pressure and work through some emotional regulation skills and tools we can each use when we feel stressed or triggered.
An EI workshop is a great place to start when we want to build resilience in our teams. Individuals and teams will have a great starting point for future conversations about emotional regulation learning and accountability goals for themselves and for team skills. Participating in an EI workshop has a side benefit of building relationships and trust among the team as they build resiliency.
As always, we’re here to help. Feel free to Contact Us.