About Josephmark

Josephmark is a digital working studio in Brisbane and this firm is famous for identifying and incubating their own digital ventures. Josephmark creates digital products for the clients also. Josephmark recruits the employees for various departments like operations, development, motions and design. The total numbers of employees in this organisation are 55 and each of the department has team leaders. I am a consultant of Josephmark and I am going to prepare the professional development workshop for the team leaders of Josephmark on emotional intelligence. The target audiences of the workshop are the 10 team leaders of Josephmark.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise, understand, use and manage emotions in positive ways to reduce the stress and communicate effectively with the fellow employees. Emotional intelligence characteristic helps to empathise others to overcome the challenge and defuse the workplace conflict. As stated by Chutte and Loi (2014), emotional intelligence makes able to identify own emotional state and the emotions of others as well to engage the people to work together. The team leaders within an organisation can use the understanding of the emotions of the fellow team members to relate better and to make the healthier relationships to achieve greater success in the workplace. Emotions of the people are behavioural, physiological and psychological episodes experienced towards a person, object and event that create a state of readiness. Within the workplace, the employees can experience the emotions; anger, joy, fear, sorrow, surprise or fear. In the workplace, when something happens that immediately triggers the emotional, cognitive and motivational process of the employees. These incidents can create in sense-making or perception for the employees to figure out about the happening and implication. The workplace events evoke emotions for the employees and their perceptions feed by the emotions to shift the behaviour and effects.

As stated by Martin-Raugh et al. (2016), emotions in the workplace can shape the employees’ attitudes and attitudes influence the work-related behaviour. There are two types of emotions; positive emotions and negative emotions and these emotions can influence the person’s behaviour. The authors further stated that emotions relate to the person’s innate personality and some of the people in the workplace experience the positive emotions with natural traits. There are four attributes of emotional intelligence and it starts with self-awareness. The employees and leaders recognise the emotions and they have to understand how these affect the behaviour and thoughts (Goleman 2017). Self-management can control the impulsive behaviours and feelings that manage the emotions of the employees in a healthy way. The leaders can take the initiative to follow the commitments and adapt to changing circumstances. Social awareness helps to understand the needs, emotions and concerns of the people to pick up the emotional cues. In the workplace, relationship management is very important where the leaders can develop and maintain a good relationship to communicate clearly and influence others.

Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence has been experiencing increasing acceptance by business practitioners and organisational consultants. According to Carson et al. (2016), emotional intelligence can promise organisational and individual benefits that can provide a greater understanding of the emotional intelligence and it is coupled with the emerging assertion. The authors further stated that emotional intelligence helps the leaders to navigate the social complexities and to lead and motivate others. The HR department gauges the emotional quotient of the candidates. Sometimes the employees unable to manage the stress level and emotional intelligence assist to learn to relieve the stress. The leaders within the organisation check the mental health of the employees to understand the depression, anxiety and vulnerability. The leaders must know how to control the emotions and they are better able to express the understanding and feeling of others.

The workshop will be conducted for 7 days long and on each day; workshop sessions will be for 2 hours. I am planning to conduct the workshop to the 10 team leaders of Josephmark and 10 team leaders will perform the different activities on the workshop.

The topic of the workshop will be ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and the target audiences of the workshop are the team leaders. After the workshop sessions; the team leaders will get to know about application and implementation of the workshop.

The objectives of the workshop are:

• To define emotional intelligence and emotions within the workplace
• To list the emotional intelligence in life, work and relationships
• To raise personal awareness regarding emotional intelligence
• To increase awareness of others in the workplace and social situations

I have planned some activities for the workshop.

Group discussion: The participants of the workshop are the team leader of Josephmark. In the group discussion; the team leaders will be segregated into two groups; therefore, each of the group will have five members. Each of the groups will be provided with topics on the emotional intelligence. When one group would discuss one topic; another group will listen to the discussion. The group members will discuss the selected objectives of the topic and this group discussion will bring out the knowledge and set of ideas related to the emotional intelligence. I will discuss with the CEO of Josephmark to select the schedule for the group during the discussion as this workshop will be conducted during the working hours. During the time of group discussion; the HR managers and operational managers will be present to understand the views of the team leaders.  

Role plays: During the workshop, 10 of the participants will be segregated into 5 teams. Each of the team will be given a scenario to enact. The team leaders will be given the roles of emotional intelligent team leaders and the roles of the employees. The scenario will be given to highlight the characteristics of emotional intelligence. Role play topic will also be given on the situational leadership; the team leaders need to act according to this. In addition, I will select some of the situations and it will be given within envelopes. The team’s participants need to open envelop and need to act according to the scenario. One can introduce the model of leadership as part of the review in the role-play sessions. The topic of the roleplay will be given keeping in mind the positive goal. Employees will be invited to observe the role play so that they can understand the emotional intelligence.

Application of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Quiz: The quiz sessions will be like the rapid-fire round. In the quiz sessions, the team leaders will be asked to stand on the podium. There will be maximum 20 questions; after each of the questions; the team leaders will press the buzzer to answer the questions. Among the ten team leaders; who will give the maximum numbers of the right answers will be champion of the quiz. This quiz session will be completely based on the emotional intelligence and team leaders will be given some of the breading materials to read on the emotional intelligence. Some of the questions will be based on the multiple choice questions.

Case studies: I am arranging a session when the HR managers and the CEO of the organisation will tell some success and failure stories of the emotional intelligence from the practise field. I am arranging some sessions; where the videos will be shown to the participants of the workshop. These videos and the stories will be like the metaphor that will teach the participants about the emotional intelligence along with benefits of the emotional intelligence. The team leaders need to watch these videos and listen to the case studies; to raise the awareness of emotional intelligence. The main aim of the case studies is to create the repository teaching the cases with the emotional intelligence context to spread the awareness of the value case study method of learning. The team leaders will be asked to emotional intelligence based questions after the case studies being understood.

Debates: During the workshop; one of the activities will be a debate on emotional intelligence. I have already selected the topics for the debates. I will provide two topics of the debates as one topic will be ‘Emotional Intelligence is overrated’ and another topic will be ‘dark side of emotional intelligence’. There will be two teams during the time of debates. There will be 3 members in each team and they will be given the time of 15 minutes to share their opinion on the topic. HR managers and the CEO of the organisation will conduct complex analysis without being able to connect meaningfully with other human beings. The participants of the workshop need to be able to sense and manage emotions during the debate.

Videos: An ‘amygdala hijack’ can be defined as the emotional overreaction to a particular situation. During the workshop; the participants will be shown some of the intense videos where the protagonists of the videos will be or will not be showing the emotional intelligence. The characters of the videos may have shown the sudden and intense emotional reactions. The videos will be containing some of the emotional intelligence quotes. The participants of the workshop need to identify the quotes. There will be four groups to find out the four dimensions of the emotional intelligence. Each of the team will then find the different types of emotional intelligence quotes. The team will need to relate the dimension to tell the audiences about the quotations and emotional intelligence.

Practical Activities of the Workshop

Games: In order to increase emotional intelligence; I have planned to play three different games. In order to increase the social awareness; the participants will play ‘fake out’ game where the participants cannot be ‘fake’ on anything. In order to enhance the skill of self-management; the participants will ask to play the game ‘Gaga Ball’ where the participants will stand on the boundaries. When the play will start; players can move within the boundaries. Lastly, to increase the relationship skill; the participants will play ‘Ro-Sham-Bo’ as this game will be helpful to resolve their own conflicts.  

After the workshop will over; it will make able to identify, understand, use and manage the emotions of the people in an effective and positive way. The participants of the workshop are the team leaders; therefore, the high EQ will assist the team leaders to communicate better with the team members in Josephmark and the team leaders will help the team members to reduce the stress and anxiety, defuse the conflicts and improve the relationship. Most importantly, once the workshop will over; emotional intelligence will affect the quality of the life because it can influence the behaviour and relationship. Emotional quotient is synonymous with the self-awareness; the team leaders will have the capacity to recognise and understand the impact of the own feelings and the behaviour, decisions and performance at work can be improved through the workshop. Emotional expression of the team leaders in Josephmark can create the greater understanding among the team members and it can establish the perceptions and trust of the team members. In addition, this workshop will be designed in a way to have the greater understanding, engage, motivate, connect and respond to the team members. The team members will have the emotional intelligence skill on emotional awareness of others that will provide the benefits of greater understanding of the emotions of team members and it can improve the interpersonal effectiveness. This workshop can improve the emotional reasoning as it will enhance the decision-making skill where more information will be considered in the process. Emotional self-management can improve the job-satisfaction and can develop the ability to cope with high work demands. This workshop will help to provide knowledge on the emotional management of others as it increases the capacity to generate greater productivity and performance from others and it will generate a positive and satisfying work environment. Emotional self-control can help to increase emotional well-being and it brings the capacity to think clearly in the situations of stress.

Reference List

Carson, K.D., Carson, P.P. and Birkenmeier, B.J., 2016. Measuring emotional intelligence: Development and validation of an instrument. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 2(1), pp.33-46.

Goleman, D., 2017. Leadership That Gets Results (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard Business Press.

Martin-Raugh, M.P., Kell, H.J. and Motowidlo, S.J., 2016. Prosocial knowledge mediates effects of agreeableness and emotional intelligence on prosocial behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences, 90, pp.41-49.

Schutte, N.S. and Loi, N.M., 2014. Connections between emotional intelligence and workplace flourishing. Personality and Individual Differences, 66, pp.134-139.