Practicing the Skill

Do the following:

  • Part A. Form groups of two. Each person is to spend a couple of minutes thinking (without sharing with the other person) of a time in the past when he or she was emotional about something. Examples might include being upset with a parent, sibling, or friend; being excited or disappointed about an academic or athletic achievement; being angry with someone over an insult or slight; being disgusted by something someone has said or done; or being happy because of something good that happened.

  • Part B. Now you’ll conduct two role plays. Each will be an interview. In the first, one person will play the interviewer and the other will play the job applicant. The job is for a summer management internship with a large retail chain. Each role play will last no longer than 10 minutes. The interviewer is to conduct a normal job interview, except you are to continually rethink the emotional episode you envisioned in Part A. Try hard to convey this emotion while, at the same time, being professional in interviewing the job applicant.

  • Part C. Now reverse positions for the second role play. The interviewer becomes the job applicant, and vice versa. The new interviewer will conduct a normal job interview, except that he or she will continually rethink the emotional episode chosen in Part A.

  • Part D. Spend 10 minutes deconstructing the interview, with specific attention focused on what emotion(s) you think the other was conveying? What cues did you pick up? How accurate were you in reading those cues?

Continue to practice these skills in your everyday interactions with others. Pretty soon, you’ll feel more competent at reading others’ emotional cues.

Experiential Exercise

Emotional intelligence (EI). You read in the chapter what it is and why it’s important. What would you say your level of EI is? There’s a very simple online tool that gives you a quick assessment of your level of EI. Visit https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/ei-quiz.htm and take the brief assessment on “How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?” Once you’ve done this, calculate your total score. Look at the discussion of your score that follows the assessment. Compile a brief report that includes:

  1. Your prior knowledge, if any, of emotional intelligence.

  2. Your EI score from this quick Mindtools assessment. Discuss if you were surprised by your score and why or why not?

  3. Using the score discussion section from the assessment, make a bulleted list of each dimension of EI and some suggestions that are given for improving that dimension.

In your assigned group, share your information. As a group, come up with a list of five suggestions for improving emotional intelligence. Be prepared to share these with your class.

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