Essentials of Emotional Intelligence Online Course
Organizational life is full of emotions. These emotions drive our behaviors and actions. They often fundamentally influence our results, both individually and collectively. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize and influence emotions. It is a skill that can be developed through practice.
The Essentials of Emotional Intelligence online course will help you on your way toward a deeper understanding of emotional intelligence and spark your interest in learning more. In this course, you will be looking at emotional intelligence and why it is widely seen as a predictor of potential and future performance. You will learn about emotional intelligence's impact on individual performance, team results, and organizational climate. Finally, you will be introduced to ideas and tools that will enable you to increase your emotional intelligence.
This online course provides an introduction to emotional intelligence for
- individuals who want to develop their capabilities,
- team leaders who want to draw out the best possible team performance,
- managers who want to solve organizational challenges and improve company results, and
- leaders who want to make better decisions, drive change and innovation, or implement a new strategy in their organization.
 |
By completing the course, you will get an Aalto EE Essentials of Emotional Intelligence certificate worth 0.5 ECTS. |
Access five study modules, each with interactive video lectures, reflection tasks, and reading material covering emotional intelligence from different perspectives
Working at your own pace, gain an understanding of emotional intelligence at individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels
Acquire a workbook of tools and templates that will enable you to increase your emotional intelligence
Watch the introduction video
Benefits
All people feel emotions at work and are influenced by them. Emotions can be harmful if not understood or managed properly or, in the best case, can enable radical progress and superior performance. During this online course, you will recognize the impact of Emotional Intelligence on individual performance, team performance, and at the organizational level.
For
This online course is suitable for anyone who wants to get a coherent understanding and increase their own Emotional Intelligence.
Contents and Schedule
This online course covers the essentials of Emotional Intelligence. During the course, you will learn what Emotional Intelligence is, why it is important at personal, interpersonal, and organizational levels, and how it can be increased and developed.
You will also get a Course Workbook to gather your reflections from the course. You can apply the findings to reflect on your learning journey and use the workbook to start developing your Emotional Intelligence capabilities.
The course is structured into five online modules consisting of interactive video lectures, reflection tasks, and reading material covering emotional intelligence from different perspectives. The videos are accompanied by interactive questions to check your knowledge along the way.
Each module contains
- Introduction
- Video lecture
- A small reflection task
- Knowledge check questions
- Review of the key takeaways from the module
The course videos are subtitled in English.
The estimated study time of the course is 12 hours. The course allows flexible study patterns; you can decide on your schedule and the speed of your progress.
Recommended study schedule is 2–3 hours per week for 3–4 weeks.
Modules
What is Emotional Intelligence?
After the module, you will be able to
- describe how emotions influence people in organizations at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels,
- define emotional intelligence,
- remember that emotional intelligence starts from emotion recognition, and
- recognize that emotions contain energy that can be used in a productive way.
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important on the Individual Level?
After the module, you will be able to
- describe how emotions result from an appraisal process,
- recognize changes in bodily reactions and label them with emotion words, and
- take actions to alter your own emotional reactions by reframing or through physical activity.
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important on the Interpersonal Level?
After the module, you will be able to
- define interpersonal emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize and influence others' emotions,
- describe how you can recognize others' emotions by attending to their non-verbal cues and by considering how they are likely to perceive the focal situation,
- explain how you can influence others' emotions by pointing their attention to cues that will change how they interpret the focal situation, and
- explain how emotions are contagious and how you can therefore influence others by displaying the emotion you want to make them feel.
Why is Emotional Intelligence Important on the Organizational Level?
After the module, you will be able to
- define organization-level emotional intelligence,
- define and describe the two key dimensions of the organizational emotional climate,
- explain why people in different organizational units might feel different emotions, and
- name and describe practices that can be used for recognizing and managing emotions at the organizational level.
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence
After the module, you will be able to
- describe how emotions influence strategic decision-making and how systematic emotion management can lead to beneficial effects,
- explain how keeping a diary of your emotions can help you better recognize and influence them,
- explain how and why explicit discussion norms can increase interpersonal emotional intelligence and benefit team performance, and
- describe how structured processes and presentation templates can increase emotional intelligence in decision making.
The Course Workbook
The Essentials of Emotional Intelligence Workbook contains a series of reflection questions and assignments. It helps you understand the course content better and lets you start immediately putting the tools and frameworks into use.
Instructor
Timo Vuori
Timo Vuori is an Associate Professor, Strategic Management at Aalto University School of Science, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.
Professor Timo O. Vuori is a strategy consultant and professor at Aalto University. His research on the psychological aspects of strategic management has been published in leading international journals and won several international awards. He has taught and presented his research at leading universities like Harvard and INSEAD.
Professor Vuori's research and teaching focus on how companies formulate and execute strategies. He has written two books with senior business executives on these topics. "Living Strategy" describes scenario-based strategy making in an ever-changing world. "Platform Strategy" describes how incumbent firms should and can renew themselves in the digital era. The books detail both the "hard" factors, such as technology and business models, and "soft" factors, such as people and psychology, influencing strategy and renewal.
Professor Vuori works extensively with companies, often collaborating with a leading strategy consulting company. Vuori helps the client organization formulate and evaluate several strategic options in strategy formulation projects. He uses advanced psychological techniques to help leaders unleash their strategic creativity and overcome thinking myopias and personal biases. This approach is based on his cutting-edge international research, also described in the Platform Strategy.
In strategy execution projects, Professor Vuori specializes in helping the client firm optimize the psychological engagement of the whole organization. He analyses the psychological impact of the intended strategy execution program and modifies it to maximally leverage the emotions of the organization's members' for effectiveness.
