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Emotional Intelligence Exercise: Making

Eye Contact

Exercises, Icebreakers, Communication Skills, Exercises

for Kids, Body Language, Acting, Emotional Intelligence

:::: 115 Ratings :::: Monday, July 3, 2017

Purpose
This exercise helps delegates to understand and appreciate the power of eye contact and how it can affect
emotional connection and emotional states. It is ideal in teaching emotional intelligence, body language
and communication skills.

You can get the most from this exercise with the follow up discussions so make sure you allocate enough
time for this.

Objective
Make eye contact with others following the instructions given by the trainer.

What You Need

 An empty room where a group of delegates can easily walk around.
 Blank cards that are easy to write notes on them while standing.
 Setup
 Distribute a blank card to each delegate.
 Ask the delegates to spread around the room.
 Explain that they should assume they are in an art gallery or a museum.
Stage 1:
 Ask the delegates to roam around the room as if they are in a public space while not making eye contact
with anyone else. They should improvise and act the role.
 Allow one minute for this part.
 Stop everyone and ask the delegates to make a note of their feelings on their cards.
Stage 2:
 For this round, ask the delegates to seek out eye contact as they go about the room. However, as soon as
they have made eye contact, they should break it and look away.
 Allow two minutes for this part.
 Stop everyone and ask them to record their feelings on their cards.
Stage 3:
 In this round, ask the delegates to seek out eye contact and as soon as they have made eye contact with
anyone they should pair up with that person. They should stand side by side and do not establish eye
contact with anyone else.
 Allocate two minutes for this part.
 Stop everyone and ask them to record their feelings on their cards.
 Bring everyone back together and follow with a discussion.

Timing
Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes
Activity: 1 min Stage 1 + 2 min Stage 2 + 2 min Stage 3 = 5 minutes
Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion
While going through various stages of the exercise how did you feel? How did it
feel when you were making eye contact and you had to break it straight away?
How did it feel when you made eye contact and you could approach the person to
pair up? If you were slow to pair up with someone, how did it feel to go about
finding someone you could make eye contact with? How easy was it to make eye
contact with someone? How close do you feel with people that you maintained an
eye contact with? What pre-conditioning dictates our behaviour in making eye
contact or maintaining eye contact? How does this compare between different
societies?

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Emotional Intelligence Exercise:

 Temperament Analysis

Leadership, Exercises, Emotional

Intelligence, Giving Feedback, Self-esteem

:::: 80 Ratings :::: Monday, August 21,

2017

Purpose
This exercise helps delegates explore the concept of temperament, understand what it means, how it is
formed and how it can influence their emotional intelligence. Temperament refers to aspects of an
individual’s personality that are mainly biological or innate as opposed to learned. Temperament is
basically life-long traits that we have acquired early on in life or simply inherited. Here are some
examples:

 “I am shy in social settings. I feel uncomfortable if I suddenly find myself at the centre of attention. I
guess it comes from my childhood when I was brought up to be a quiet kid.”
 “I was never very sporty or physical when I was growing up so engaging in sports these days doesn’t
appeal to me much. Where I grow up, it was frowned upon for girls to do sports.”
 “I like talking. If I enter a room and it is quiet I have the strongest urge to talk and get everyone to listen.
 I got this from my mom I guess...” [Carries on talking for a while until stopped!]
 “I have always been sporty, even though I was a girl I always liked any sport even if they were
predominantly for boys. I guess I got this from my dad who was very athletic.”
In this exercise, delegates explore the nature of their temperament and discuss this with others to better
understand what it means.

Objective
Answer the questions provided in the form and then discuss with a partner.

What You Need

 A copy of the “Temperament Questionnaire” for each delegate provided below.

Setup
 Explain that temperament is influenced by a mixture of parameters such as the following:
 Genetic Inheritance
 Physical attributes
 Life Experiences
 Environmental Conditions
 Divide the delegates to pairs. If you have an odd number of delegates use a group of 3.
 Distribute a copy of the “Temperament Questionnaire” to each delegate.
 Ask each delegate to answer the questions provided in the form. At this stage, each person works on his
own.
 Allocate 15 minutes for this part.
 Ask pairs to share what they recorded on their forms in each group. Each person should take turns to
explain what they think of their temperaments. They should also discuss the last question on what they
potentially want to change.
 Allocate 15 minutes for this part.
 Bring back everyone together and follow with a discussion.

Timing
Explaining the Exercise: 5 minutes
Activity: 15 min answering questions + 15 min sharing = 30 minutes
Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion
What do you think of the effect of your temperament on your everyday life? How did your partners’
temperament differ from yours? Was it easy to come up with strategies on how to change or modify
some of the behaviours discussed?

Temperament Questionnaire
Describe your temperament with three adjectives. Choose the ones that describe you best.

Suggest three adjectives that others use to describe your temperament.

Go through each of the adjectives identified in the above two questions and see if each one is because
of Genetic Inheritance, Physical Attributes, Life Experiences or Environmental Conditions.

How do each of the temperamental factors affect you on a personal level?

How do each of the temperamental factors affect you on a leadership role level?

Which of these factors do you want to change and why?

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Emotional Intelligence Self-Awareness

Exercise
 Leadership, Exercises, Team
Building

:::: 37 Ratings ::::

Monday, May 8, 2017

Purpose
Self-awareness is one of the important competencies within emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is
about understanding your strengths, limitations, attitudes, values and motivations. In this exercise,
delegates have an opportunity to reflect on their values and see exactly what matters to them the most.
Self-awareness helps people understand what they believe now and how this might have changed from
the past. Hence, this exercise can be conducted periodically, such as once a year, and you can expect to
get different results each time. Comparison of these results on their own can be quite educational and
further help to increase self-awareness.

Objective
Go through the values provided and select the best ones based on the instructions provided.

What You Need

 A copy of the “Value List” provided below.

Setup
 Explain to delegates that in this exercise they will be examining themselves in respect to a range of
values. By understanding the values, they will boost their self-awareness.
 Provide a copy of the “Value List” to each delegate.
 Ask delegates to identify ten values that they strongly believe in or that are important to them. The list is
provided as a reference only. They can add any other value they feel strongly about to the list and select
it as part of their most important ten values. Ask them to write these values on a separate piece of paper.
For best results, they should be as honest as they can. They should not pick values to show off, for being
politically correct or popular fashion. They should choose only based on what’s important to them.
 Allocate about 5 minutes for this part.
 Now in the next step, ask the delegates to select only five values from the ten they have selected. This is
now much harder, but the selection process will force them to see what they truly value the most.
 Allocate 2 minutes for this part.
 Allocate a few more minutes for reflection so delegates can think about what their choices really mean to
them.
 Bring back everyone together and ask them to share their values and observations one by one. If the
delegates know each other or are part of a team, sharing important values can be quite educational as
people can see what’s most important to other team members.
 Follow with a discussion.

Timing
Explaining the Exercise: 2 minutes
Activity: 5 min selecting ten values + 2 min selecting five values + 3 min reflection = 10 minutes
Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion
What did you learn about yourself in this exercise? Was it difficult to select the ten values? How about
narrowing it down to five values? Did you add any new values to the list? What did you think of other
delegates’ values? If you know the other delegates, did their choices match your expectations? If you
have gone through this exercise in the past, were your values any different? What does this suggest?

Value List

Love and care Power

Growth
Being rich
Community Personal development
Inner happiness
Variety Religion
Honesty
Stability Reputation
Selflessness
Efficiency Novelty
Family
Friendships Elegance
Creativity
Fame Self-respect
Competence Status Modesty

Ecological awareness Intellectual freedom Helping society

Political correctness Job security Influencing others

Ethical behaviour Knowledge Risk taking

Financial freedom Merit Recognition

Financial security Meaningful work Certainty

Achievement Routine Sex

Adventure Leadership Time

Perfectionism Independence Truth

Competition Loyalty Working for yourself

Order and law Respecting nature Working with others

Privacy Close relationships Gratitude

Challenge