CLAMP Campus Adventures

One of the things about my Emotional Intelligence class is we have to come up with an action plan of items we’re going to do to improve our own emotional intelligence. During October, we will write a first draft and the professor will go over it and we’ll hand in our second draft as our definite plan. In November, we’ll be putting the plans to work and recording the results as the final report for December.

Yesterday, we went over what is expected in the action plan. What I need to do is take certain things about myself I want to improve and come up with two or three of those items for the action plan. For each item, I have to come up with a goal and metrics. For example, my lowest EQi score was in impulsiveness. This is part of the stress section of the test and this score was incredibly low despite my high stress management score (well over the median 100). One of the things indicative of impulsive behavior is high emotions and emotion control. So, my first action item will be a resolution to decrease the amount I snap back at people. You know, snarky comments said without thinking. Snapping is certainly an impulsive behavior for me. Carl annoys me, I snap at him. It happens at work too.

So in order to do this goal, I need to come up with measurable items. During the month of November, each time I snap at someone (online or offline) I will mark it down. Just seeing how much I do it should help me recognize the behavior. There are other things I can do in order to control the behavior as well. I will go to bed three to four work-nights a week by 10 pm (I have a class that ends at 9:55 pm on Tuesdays or I’d say three to five, but I have to be realistic). I will spend time three time a week practicing stomach breathing. This is when you take deep, calming breaths, in order to relax.

I’d do things like counting to 10 before snapping, but that’s never worked for me. I think this is a good start, but I need to go through my EQi scores and figure out what other things I can work on. I need one or two more. I’m leaning towards picking only one more because I don’t want to overwhelm myself with change.

According to my professor, we really aren’t going to see many results in the one month we’ll be doing this. In order to affect true change, you need to continue working on your action items for at least 15 months.

If anyone is interested in reading more on this subject, I highly recommend reading Daniel Goelman’s Working with Emotional Intelligence. I read it over the summer and it was a nice, easy read. The book for class is also pretty good and it has exercises you can work on. It’s called The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success by S. J. Stein & H. E. Book. The EQi test I took was the Bar-On EQi. Unfortunately, it’s not free, and I haven’t found any reliable online sources for free EQi tests. I also haven’t found anyway to just take the Bar-On test online and pay for your results. They only way I’ve seen it available is if your company gives it as an assessment tool or if you go to an Emotional Intelligence seminar where the test is given as part of it. More on Emotional Intelligence can be found at the following websites:

The EI Consortium
Emotional Intelligence Information Site
EQ Directory

Basic Tests (not comprehensive at all):
EIS - EI Test
What’s your Emotional Quiotent

Google came up with 1,050,000 responses on the search Emotional Intelligence.