How to Develop Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Develop Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

  1. Emotional Intelligence, Made Practical
    Emotional intelligence, popularized by Daniel Goleman, is the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions in yourself and others, often grouped into self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. The component skills are real and trainable, but the sweeping popular claims (e.g., that EQ predicts success better than IQ) are contested and should be read with caution.
  2. Social skill
    Manage relationships, navigate conflict, and influence well by applying the other four skills in interaction.
    Emotional Intelligence, Made Practical
  3. Emotional Agility, Made Practical
    Emotional agility, developed by psychologist Susan David, is the ability to engage with your emotions — including the difficult ones — with curiosity and without being controlled by them. Unlike toxic positivity, it does not suppress or reframe negative feelings away; it asks you to see them clearly and choose your response from values rather than from reflex. The framework draws heavily on ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), which has a well-established research base.
  4. Build emotional energy rituals to buffer against daily depletion
    Emotional energy is the quality of emotional availability you bring to work and relationships — and it is trainable through brief daily rituals.
    Energy Management, Not Time Management
  5. Manage emotional energy
    Cultivate positive emotional states deliberately, since they fuel performance and connection.
    The Power of Full Engagement, Made Practical
  6. The Feeling Wheel: Building Emotional Vocabulary
    The Feeling Wheel, developed by counselor Gloria Willcox in 1982, is a visual tool that organizes emotions in concentric rings from six core emotions (glad, mad, sad, scared, disgusted, powerful) outward to increasingly specific nuanced feelings. It helps people name their emotional experience more precisely — a capacity research calls emotional granularity — which is associated with better emotional regulation and reduced distress.
  7. Self-regulation
    Manage disruptive impulses and moods so you respond by choice rather than reflex.
    Emotional Intelligence, Made Practical
  8. Self-awareness
    Notice your emotions as they arise and recognize how they shape your judgment and behavior.
    Emotional Intelligence, Made Practical
  9. Empathy
    Accurately read and take seriously what other people are feeling.
    Emotional Intelligence, Made Practical
  10. Red hat: name the emotions without justifying them
    Give feelings a legitimate place in the discussion — the red hat makes emotional data explicit so it stops running covertly.
    Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical

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