Case History: The Neuroscience of Emotional Intelligence Workshop for Kent County Council
Kent County Council’s South East Coaching & Mentoring Network comprises more than 16 organisations and has trained hundreds of members on ILM accredited coaching and mentoring courses.
Through Culture at Work, I was asked to provide a workshop in emotional intelligence. As an Accredited Emotional Capital Report (ECR) Practitioner and expert in emotional intelligence I designed a one-day workshop.
Solutions
The workshop provided an overview of the Emotional Capital Report, an Emotional Intelligence model developed by Martyn Newman (Roche Martin), and its ten competencies. Participants explored Self-knowing, Self-control, Optimism and Empathy in greater detail, examining for each topic a definition, neuroscientific underpinnings, key components and how to recognise them. Participants were given time for self-exploration as well as for gaining insight through coaching each other on the respective competencies.
At the end of the workshop, they noted key learnings and strategies to take away.
Outcome
The workshop received excellent feedback from all participants.
Feedback on the workshop
“It was excellent feedback, something we will look at hopefully offering again in the future” – Serena Cunningham, Engagement, Organisation Design & Development, Strategic and Corporate Services Directorate, Kent County Council
“The course content was guided, and the facilitator made frequent references to how the content can be used in coaching. Particular areas such as cultivating Self-Control and Optimism were particularly interesting and could be further explored for use in coaching. The facilitator made use of group work which enabled us to try out new techniques and generally offered her thoughts to support our ideas. Definitely worth attending – very knowledgeable facilitator and some interesting insights into Emotional intelligence and its uses within coaching.”
“The facilitator was engaging, making sure we understood and had time to practice the bite-size knowledge she was imparting. A reminder that coaching is all about the coach creating a space where someone can access new insights …helpful to understand the science behind it”.
“The course covered personal approaches (resilience, mindfulness etc.), framed in a leadership context which will help me in leading my teams. I have already brought some of the approaches/thinking from the course into a coaching session and it was very helpful. Overall the course was good and will have a real impact on how I conduct myself and view emotional intelligence with others.”
“The facilitator was very good and we covered 4 of 10 areas of the relevant model in depth. This was by design and I will follow up on the other areas with some further reading. For this course specifically I’d say it is worthwhile, thought provoking and will provide some grounding for emotions in facts and evidence.”
“My key learning from this session specifically around use in coaching is self-control. My developmental areas were managing my mood, being well organised and stress tolerance. I make sure that I’m reminded of these as I show up to the sessions, managing my empathy and how this embodies me when the coachee is in a state of stress or heightened emotion.
I loved the opportunity to have a great mix of knowledge input, followed by discussion and then exercise in coaching to experience how this works, along with immediate feedback. I personally would have loved more, but it was expertly handled. I would say it’s a must to improve your EI awareness on a day to day basis but more importantly whilst coaching.”
