Emotional intelligence (EQ) is about understanding emotions—both your own and those of people around you. It’s the ability to recognize your emotions, manage your reactions and understand how others are feeling. It also includes characteristics like empathy and self-control.
People with high EQ are often skilled at staying calm under pressure, communicating effectively and handling conflicts without getting heated or letting the situation spiral out of control. EQ helps individuals in their personal life and at work—making it easier to lead, collaborate and create positive connections with colleagues.
Here are eight resources to help you develop your EQ in all areas and become an overall better human being in the process.
Self-awareness is the key to effective leadership and is important for developing skills like communication, influence and agility. It enables leaders to recognize how their identity impacts their interactions and how others perceive them, thereby improving their leadership effectiveness.
Dale Carnegie’s three-hour “Self-Awareness: Leading With Emotional Intelligence” training helps leaders dive deep into their personal blind spots through hands-on exercises and discussions, enhancing their leadership skills by improving EQ.
Udemy’s The Complete Adult – Emotional Regulation course, created by renowned psychologist Susan Dalby, teaches participants how to identify and manage their emotions in any situation. It helps individuals gain control over their emotional responses and build the confidence they need to understand both themselves and their interactions with others. The course provides practical, real-world examples and offers skills you can apply to situations that provoke strong emotional reactions.
Dale Carnegie’s timeless bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, takes the classic advice we all know and love and gives it a fresh twist for today’s world. It highlights how important empathy and active listening are for building genuine connections, especially in our fast-paced modern lives.
The book discusses how to effectively influence others and resolve conflicts collaborativelytools, tips and plenty of actionable examples that apply to both digital communications and remote work environments.
UC Berkeley’s Empathy and Emotional Intelligence at Work course dives into the social and emotional skills you need to foster positive work relationships while placing a special emphasis on empathy and EQ. It highlights how these skills can improve your overall well-being in an organization and demonstrates that empathetic managers have happier and more loyal employees.
The course also offers practical strategies for building trust and collaboration among teams as well as tips on effective conflict resolution. The course instructors and co-creators, Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., and Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., also launched The Science of Happiness, a global phenomenon that inspired half a million students worldwide.
In her course, Motivating People for High Performance, Cornell University professor Risa Mish teaches leaders how to effectively motivate their teams for top performance. Motivation isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, so leaders must learn to analyze performance issues to determine whether they stem from a lack of motivation or other underlying causes.
The course offers tailored techniques to enhance individual motivation, drawing on insights from social psychologists. Key takeaways include identifying personal motivation drivers, conducting root-cause analyses for performance gaps and creating the right conditions to boost engagement and performance across teams.
360-degree feedback is a comprehensive evaluation process that gathers input about an individual’s performance from multidirectional sources—peers, subordinates, supervisors and even clients. When applied to EQ, it provides valuable insights into how an individual’s emotions, behaviors and interpersonal skills impact their workplace relationships and overall effectiveness.
While there are many different software solutions to gather this feedback, the 15five system focuses on employee engagement and performance with regular check-ins, making it ideal for ongoing feedback.
Beyond EQ, active listening allows people to engage in meaningful conversations and build strong relationships.
Coursera’s Active Listening: Enhancing Communication Skills course covers the essential principles of active listening and practical techniques to engage with people. Participants develop the ability to recognize and interpret nonverbal cues and gain deeper insights during discussions. Additionally, the course also explores cross-cultural communication and how to respectfully listen to individuals from diverse backgrounds.
Journaling is an effective tool for enhancing EQ by encouraging reflection on thoughts and feelings, providing a safe space to process and express emotions, and allowing individuals to reflect on their interactions and understand others’ perspectives. This EQ journal offers daily and weekly reflection practices designed to transform to-do lists into opportunities for enhancing EQ in the workplace.
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo from Zamrznuti tonovi/Shutterstock.com.
