CoachMike
Nurturing Stronger Families
Emotional Intelligence Activities to Elevate Your Team
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a game-changer when it comes to building a cohesive, effective team. The following activities are designed to strengthen emotional awareness, communication, empathy, and collaboration across your team. These simple yet powerful exercises will help your team:
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Build stronger relationships
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Practice active listening and emotional regulation
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Improve communication and trust
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Navigate conflict with empathy
Each activity is designed to be easy to implement, requiring no special tools, and can be done during regular meetings, retreats, or team-building sessions.
1. Emotion Wheel Check-ins
This activity encourages each team member to reflect on their current emotional state using an "emotion wheel"—a visual representation of various emotions. The team takes turns naming a feeling from the wheel and explaining why they are feeling that way.
Goal:
Increase emotional awareness and create space for vulnerability in your team.
Time Estimate:
5-10 minutes
Instructions:
1. Display or provide each team member with an emotion wheel.
2. Ask everyone to pick an emotion that resonates with how they’re feeling.
Debrief Prompt:
How can we use this understanding of each other’s emotions to improve communication and collaboration today?
3. Each person shares their emotion and a brief explanation of why they feel that way
2. Empathy Mapping
Empathy mapping helps team members understand the perspectives of others. It’s useful in team discussions and brainstorming sessions.
Goal
Foster empathy and perspective-taking to improve communication and collaboration.
Instructions
1. Draw an empathy map on a whiteboard or large sheet of paper.
Time Estimate
30 minutes.
Debrief Prompt
What did you learn about your teammates' perspectives that you didn’t know before? How can you use this insight to improve teamwork?
2. Divide the map into sections for “What I Hear,” “What I See,” “What I Feel,” and “What I Think.”
3. Have each team member reflect on their role and experiences, and fill in the map accordingly.
4. Share insights and discuss commonalities and differences.
3. The Listening Circle
This activity focuses on improving listening skills, empathy, and communication. Each person speaks while others listen without interruption.
Goal:
Enhance active listening and emotional connection within the team.
Instructions:
1. Have everyone sit in a circle.
2. One person speaks for 2 minutes about a topic of their choice (work-related or personal).
3. The rest of the group listens actively, without interrupting.
4. Afterward, the group reflects on what they heard and how they felt.
Time Estimate:
15 minutes.
Debrief Prompt:
How can we use this understanding of each other’s emotions to improve communication and collaboration today?
4. Strength-Based Feedback Sessions
This activity focuses on giving and receiving feedback in a positive, constructive way by focusing on strengths.
Goal
Encourage a growth mindset and create an environment where feedback is viewed as an opportunity for improvement.
Instructions
1. Pair up team members.
2. Each person provides feedback about their partner’s strengths and contributions.
Time Estimate
20 minutes.
Debrief Prompt
How did it feel to receive positive feedback? How can you continue to focus on strengths in future feedback sessions?
3. Encourage the use of specific examples and positive language.
4. After both partners share feedback, they discuss how they can continue to grow and leverage their strengths.
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