2-minute discussion guide. Click each card to explore the key ideas, then use the breakout questions below to spark conversation in your group.
Key Ideas
🧭
Four Domains of EQ
Emotional intelligence covers self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Goleman's research shows these competencies correlate strongly with leadership and organisational performance — and they are learned, not innate.
🔍
Perceive, Use, Understand, Manage
The Mayer-Salovey model breaks EQ into four abilities: naming your emotions, using them to think and decide well, reading others and how moods shift, and regulating your own and others' emotions to reach goals.
⚖️
Head and Heart Together
IQ used to be the only measure of potential. EQ is now seen as equally important — not the triumph of heart over head, as David Caruso puts it, but the intersection of both. Smart isn't enough without it.
⏸️
STOP Before You React
Jodie Rogers' in-the-moment practice: check whether you're tired, hungry or projecting; don't say what you were about to; ask "where do we agree?" in disagreement; and fully understand their view before pushing yours.
"If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far."
— Daniel Goleman
Breakout Discussion
💬
Group Discussion Timer
10 minutes · 2 questions
10:00
01
Question 1 — Reflect
Of the four domains — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management — which is your strongest and which needs the most work? What evidence from the last month tells you that?
02
Question 2 — Apply
Think of a recent disagreement with a client or colleague. If you had started with "where do we agree?" and asked to hear more before stating your view, how might the conversation have gone differently?
02
Module 6 · Lesson 2
Power to Choose
2-minute discussion guide. Click each card to explore the key ideas, then use the breakout questions below to spark conversation in your group.
Key Ideas
🚨
The Amygdala Hijack
The amygdala senses danger, switches off the rational cortex and floods the body with adrenaline. Useful for real threats — but when it fires over a sharp email or a comment in a meeting, we react with disproportionate, irrational emotion. "I don't know what came over me."
🌬️
Four Ways to Cool Down
Take a breath (slows the heart, calms the nervous system). Change your setting (step away from the trigger). Reframe the situation (find the positive angle). Practise empathy (see it from their side). Higher EQ means spotting your triggers sooner.
🕳️
The Space Between
Viktor Frankl: between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space is our power to choose. Choosing a different response — again and again — hardwires a different pathway over time. We are free to choose our attitude toward everything that happens to us.
🎯
Circle of Concern vs Control
Covey's first habit: reactive people spend energy worrying about things they can't control. Proactive people shrink their circle of concern and focus on what they can influence — making them more productive and less prone to hijack.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
— Viktor Frankl
Breakout Discussion
Scenario to consider
In a client status meeting, a stakeholder says in front of everyone that your team "clearly didn't test this properly" — when you know the defect came from a change on their side. You feel the heat rise and your heart start to race.
💬
Group Discussion Timer
10 minutes · 2 questions
10:00
01
Question 1 — Reflect
What are your personal early-warning signs of an amygdala hijack, and what tends to trigger them? Share one example where you caught it in time — or didn't.
02
Question 2 — Apply
In the scenario above, what is in your circle of control and what isn't? Agree as a group on how you would use "the space" to respond in a way that protects both the relationship and the team.
03
Module 6 · Lesson 3
Build Emotionally Effective Teams
2-minute discussion guide. Click each card to explore the key ideas, then use the breakout questions below to spark conversation in your group.
Key Ideas
👩💼
Lesley's Blind Spot
A young, self-aware leader is promoted and expects team leadership to be plain sailing — but her team isn't delivering and nobody comes to her. Her definition of EQ was too narrow: being in tune with your own emotions is only half of it.
🗣️
EQ Includes Hard Conversations
Real emotional intelligence means having difficult conversations, thinking creatively and being willing to ruffle feathers so the team pushes its boundaries. Self-control keeps disturbing emotions from clouding judgement when tough feedback is due.
🔄
360° Feedback
Reviewing the 12 EQ competencies yourself gives a rough picture. Objective feedback from others reveals the gap between how you see yourself and how you're perceived — a good predictor of engagement, satisfaction and organisational success.
🪟
The Johari Window
Luft and Ingham's model: you and others pick adjectives that describe you. The overlap and gaps reveal what's open, what's blind to you, what you hide, and what nobody knows yet. Disclosure builds trust; feedback shrinks blind spots.
"At the heart of leadership is your style of engagement and at the heart of engagement is your emotional intelligence."
— Jackie Kennedy
Breakout Discussion
💬
Group Discussion Timer
10 minutes · 2 questions
10:00
01
Question 1 — Reflect
Have you been in Lesley's position — strong on self-awareness but stuck with a team that isn't performing? Which difficult conversation did you avoid, and what would having it have looked like?
02
Question 2 — Apply
Pick three adjectives you'd use to describe yourself as a leader, then ask your group which three they would choose. Where are the gaps, and should feedback like this be anonymous to be useful?
04
Module 6 · Lesson 4
Creating Emotionally Intelligent Environments
2-minute discussion guide. Click each card to explore the key ideas, then use the breakout questions below to spark conversation in your group.
Key Ideas
🧪
The Neuroscience of Trust
Paul Zak: trust and purpose release oxytocin, which makes us feel safe enough to be open and vulnerable — which builds more trust. Stress does the opposite, shutting down empathy and engagement. Individual EQ is lost in a culture of mistrust.
🛠️
Eight Trust Behaviours
Recognise excellence; set meaningful challenge stress; give autonomy; let people shape their work; share information broadly; build relationships intentionally; grow the whole person; and show vulnerability and EQ as a leader.
🦠
Emotions Are Contagious
Leaders think their influence is transactional — deadlines, targets, deliverables. But teams take their emotional cues from their leader, consciously or not. Your mood sets the team's mood. That's why your own EQ comes first.
🪞
Leadership Is Distributed
Goleman and Boyatzis: leadership isn't only at the top — it lives in every person who leads a group at any level. Primal Leadership's self-directed learning (ideal self, real self, gaps, practice, trusted relationships) works for individuals and whole teams.
"Experiments show that having a sense of higher purpose stimulates oxytocin production, as does trust. Trust and purpose then mutually reinforce each other, providing a mechanism for extended oxytocin release, which produces happiness."
— Paul J. Zak
Breakout Discussion
💬
Group Discussion Timer
10 minutes · 2 questions
10:00
01
Question 1 — Reflect
Of Zak's eight trust behaviours, which one is most present in your team right now, and which is most missing? What one concrete thing could you do this month to strengthen the weak one?
02
Question 2 — Apply
If emotions are contagious, what mood are you spreading in your team on a hard delivery week? Describe the gap between your ideal self as a leader and your real self — and one habit you'll add to your progress tracker to close it.
Module 6 of 10