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Emotional Intelligence & Relationships
A practical, research-grounded course that turns emotional intelligence from a buzzword into daily skills you can use in conversations, conflict, and connection.
For anyone who wants stronger personal and professional relationships and is ready to practise, not just read about, emotional intelligence.
Course content
Workbook & downloads
Put the course into practice — a printable workbook plus editable templates you can fill in and reuse.
Preview the workbook
This workbook turns the course into daily practice. Each section maps to one module and mixes reflection exercises, fill-in worksheets, and action checklists drawn from the Mayer-Salovey model, Gross's regulation research, and the Gottman findings. Work through one section per week, keep your logs, and use the templates to track your progress over a full month.
What Emotional Intelligence Actually Is
Set an honest baseline across the four branches of EI and commit to a measurable 30-day practice plan.
Worksheet: Four-branch baseline self-assessment
Rate yourself 1 to 5 on each branch and write one specific recent example for each. Your lowest score is your highest-leverage target for the next 30 days.
- Perceiving emotion (1-5) and a recent example of noticing someone's feeling
- Using emotion (1-5) and a time you shifted your mood to fit a task
- Understanding emotion (1-5) and a time you predicted how a feeling would grow
- Managing emotion (1-5) and your last strong emotion: reacted or responded?
- Lowest-scoring branch (my focus area)
- One sentence on why this branch matters most for me right now
Exercise: Myth-busting your EI expectations
Be honest about what you expect EI to do for you, then reset against the evidence so you are not disappointed by the real, modest gains.
- What did you previously believe emotional intelligence would do for your career or relationships?
- Which of your current relationships or situations are emotionally demanding enough that EI skills will pay off most?
- Name one inflated EI claim you have heard and what the honest version is.
Checklist: Set up your 30-day practice
- Chosen my lowest branch as my primary focus area
- Committed to a two-minute daily emotion log
- Set a recurring daily reminder to do the log
- Scheduled a weekly 10-minute pattern review
- Diarised a day-30 re-assessment to compare with my baseline
- Defined success as adherence (21+ of 30 days), not fluency
Self-Awareness and Regulating Your Own Emotions
Build precise emotional vocabulary, map your early body signals, and assemble a personal regulation toolkit.
Exercise: Granularity drill: push past the first word
For each vague feeling word below, write two more specific words from the correct emotion family. Then recall a recent feeling and label it as precisely as you can.
- Replace 'bad' with two precise words and the situation that fits each.
- Replace 'stressed' with two precise words (for example anxious, overwhelmed).
- Take your strongest feeling from the past week and name it in a full sentence: I feel ___ because ___.
- List five new feeling words you want to add to your everyday vocabulary.
Worksheet: My body-signal map
Identify the earliest physical cue for each emotion so you can intervene before it peaks. Fill in the first body sign you notice for each.
- Frustration / anger — first body signal
- Anxiety / fear — first body signal
- Sadness / hurt — first body signal
- Signs I am hyper-aroused (flooded, above the window of tolerance)
- Signs I am hypo-aroused (numb, shut down, below the window)
- My early-warning sign that I am about to leave my window of tolerance
Worksheet: Build my regulation menu
Choose one body-based and one mind-based regulation tool, then write a reappraisal for a recurring trigger so it is ready before you need it.
- My go-to body tool (for example 4-in, 6-out paced breathing for 2 minutes)
- My go-to mind tool (for example cognitive reappraisal)
- A recurring trigger that flips my interpretation negatively
- My first (threatening) reading of that trigger
- A more accurate, less threatening reappraisal of it
- My pause plan when flooded (length and exactly how I will signal a return)
Checklist: Regulation habits to practise
- Practised paced breathing once while calm so it is ready under stress
- Caught one emotion early using a body signal this week
- Reframed one situation with cognitive reappraisal instead of suppressing it
- Took a real 20-minute break the next time I felt flooded
- Silently labelled a strong feeling in the moment to take the heat out
Reading and Understanding Other People
Sharpen how accurately you read others, choose the right kind of empathy, and listen so people feel genuinely heard.
Exercise: Read, then check
Recall a recent interaction where you assumed how someone felt. Work through the three channels and test whether your read held up.
- What did their face, tone, and behaviour each tell you, and did any of the three disagree?
- What was this person's baseline, and how did their behaviour differ from it?
- What was your tentative read, and how could you have checked it out loud instead of assuming?
- When you did check (or imagine checking), how would you update your first guess?
Worksheet: Choosing the right empathy
For a real situation with someone who is struggling, decide which type of empathy it calls for and convert it into one concrete action.
- The situation and who is involved
- Cognitive empathy: what do they feel and why (their perspective)?
- Emotional empathy: what am I feeling with them, and is it too much?
- Compassion: one concrete supportive action I can take
- My grounding move if I start to flood with their emotion (avoiding empathic distress)
Exercise: Active-listening rep
Run one conversation this week using reflective listening. Afterwards, capture what you said and what changed.
- Write the reflection you offered: 'It sounds like you felt ___ when ___.'
- Write one open question you asked that invited them to say more.
- Did you ask whether they wanted to vent or wanted ideas before offering solutions?
- How did the conversation change once they felt understood?
Checklist: Listening behaviours to drop and adopt
- Put my phone away and gave full attention in at least one conversation
- Reflected the other person's feeling back before talking about myself
- Validated a feeling ('that makes sense') even when I saw it differently
- Asked permission before giving advice
- Avoided 'at least', 'it could be worse', and jumping to 'just do X'
Building and Repairing Strong Relationships
Apply the Gottman findings, NVC, and repair research to handle conflict, raise hard topics, and sustain connection.
Worksheet: Spot and replace the Four Horsemen
Identify which corrosive pattern shows up most in your conflicts and write its antidote in your own words for a real recent example.
- The horseman I use most (criticism / contempt / defensiveness / stonewalling)
- A recent example of it in my own words
- The antidote (gentle start-up / appreciation / take responsibility / self-soothe and return)
- A recurring complaint of mine rewritten as a soft start-up: I feel ___ about ___, and I need ___.
- My positive-to-negative balance during tension (am I near 5 to 1?) and how to raise it
Exercise: Draft a hard message in NVC
Pick a difficult topic you have been avoiding and build it through the four NVC steps so it lands as a request, not an attack.
- Observation: the specific, factual behaviour with no judgement (for example 'three times this week').
- Feeling: the emotion you own ('I feel ___', never 'you make me feel').
- Need: the universal need behind the feeling (respect, rest, connection, autonomy).
- Request: a clear, specific, doable ask where 'no' is genuinely allowed.
Worksheet: Build a real apology
Use this to repair a recent rupture. Include every part, and make sure the word 'but' never appears.
- What I specifically did
- The impact it likely had on them
- My responsibility, stated without excuses
- The change I will make next time
- How and when I will follow through to repair the action, not just the words
Checklist: Daily connection and repair habits
- Turned toward at least one bid for connection from an important person each day
- Made one deposit of appreciation, curiosity, or gratitude daily
- Repaired any rupture within 24 hours instead of letting it harden
- Apologised for impact, not just intent, with no 'but'
- Reviewed my week's positive-to-negative balance and adjusted
Your Action Plan
- Day 1: Complete the four-branch baseline self-assessment and pick your lowest branch as your focus.
- Days 1-30: Keep a two-minute daily emotion log, naming each feeling with a precise word and its trigger.
- Week 1: Add five new feeling words to your vocabulary and write your personal body-signal map.
- Week 2: Build your regulation menu (one body tool, one mind tool) and practise each once while calm.
- Week 2: Use a timed 20-minute pause the next time your heart races past flooding during conflict.
- Week 3: Run one reflective-listening conversation per day and validate before responding.
- Week 3: Identify the type of empathy each situation needs and convert it into one concrete action.
- Week 4: Rewrite one recurring complaint as a soft start-up and deliver one hard message in NVC form.
- Week 4: Turn toward every bid you notice from one key person and repair any rupture within 24 hours.
- Day 30: Re-run the four-branch assessment, compare with your baseline, and set the next month's focus.
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