<>The Emotionally Intelligent Trainer's Toolkit is your unique practical guide to transforming your training by learning about yourself and how you relate to your participants. The tools in this Toolkit show how Emotional Intelligence reaches every aspect of the training process. They provide straightforward exercises which will help you bring a vital extra dimension to your training.
<>Emotional Intelligence is about who you are as a person and how you relate to others, which is integral to what is happening when you are running a training session.
<>Emotions are always bound up with the process of learning. If you are responsible for the learning of others it is crucial to be able to recognise and handle emotions. But many trainers continue to concentrate on technical skills, such as using materials or arranging activities, without looking at the emotional dimension which underlies everything a trainer does.
Contents:
1. Being an emotionally intelligent trainer
This unit investigates what it means to be an emotionally intelligent trainer, taking a close look at the behaviours involved. It investigates the benefits of this approach to training and helps you review your current use of Emotional Intelligence.
2. How you relate to your participants
How you relate to your participants is crucial in determining the extent to which you can use Emotional Intelligence with them. In this unit there are tools which help you analyse your current ways of relating to your participants’ feelings and how to develop even more productive relationships.
3. Preparing for a session
Emotional Intelligence comes into play even as you prepare for a session, especially one with a group you have not met before. This unit helps you take into account the use of Emotional Intelligence in your planning.
4. Dealing with participants’ expectations
Participants come to a training session with a range of expectations about what will happen. The emotionally intelligent trainer attaches great importance to acknowledging, discussing and responding to these expectations as they will have a great effect on participants’ readiness to learn. Here you will find practical suggestions for dealing productively with participants’ expectations.
5. Creating the climate
Just about everything that a trainer says and does will have an effect on the emotional climate in the training room, which, in turn, will affect how participants are feeling. This, in its turn, alters the degree to which participants are likely to learn. Pointers are provided here on what to do in order to create and maintain, in participants, emotional states that will aid their learning.
6. Language and materials
The language you use as a trainer is an important factor in shaping the emotional climate in the training room. Whether verbal or written, the words you use and the way you use them strongly influence the learning state of your participants. This unit helps you look more closely at how you can improve participants’ learning states through careful use of language.
7. Attending to your participants
Participants appreciate being full heard, and you can respond better to them when you have absorbed how they feel and what they have to say. To achieve this, you need to deploy active listening skills, which are central to the use of Emotional Intelligence. Being attentive also means attending to the differing learning preferences of group members. Here you have the chance to review and develop you use of listening skills and your choice of learning activities.
8. Responding to your participants’ comments and questions
Every time you respond to a comment or question from a participant you have the opportunity to affect not only how they feel but also the emotional climate in the room. This unit gives guidance on how to make best use of your responses to participants’ comments and questions, whether straightforward or difficult.
9. Acknowledging and responding to the feelings of your participants
Participants in a training session may well convey their feelings to you, either deliberately or incidentally. It is vital that you acknowledge these and respond to them appropriately. On occasion it is useful for you to seek expressions of feeling from participants. Here you can find out how best to handle these exchanges.
10. What you communicating to your participants
You cannot fail to communicate messages to your participants through your words and behaviours. Self-awareness is fundamental to Emotional Intelligence and this unit helps you review the extent to which you are aware of the messages you are sending, as well as how to modify these messages if you need to.
11. Developing self-awareness and managing feelings
This unit further develops your self-awareness as a trainer but focuses on less visible aspects of your make-up such as your values, prejudices and preferences. It also gives you the opportunity to review how you manage the strong feelings which you can experience in your work. The process you experience in using these tools can then be adapted for any further self-enquiry that you might initiate.
12. Continuing your development as an emotionally intelligent trainer
Emotional Intelligence, by its very nature, entails continuous development. This unit gives guidance on how to structure that development and draws heavily on the process of learning through reflection, which is particularly well-suited to this area.
230 pages, with OK to copy pages
