In recent years, we have gained an understanding of emotional intelligence and how much difference it can make in personal interactions as well as work environments. In fact, it’s been proven that people with high degrees of emotional intelligence are more likely to stay calm under pressure, resolve conflict effectively, and interact with other colleagues using more empathy. Without emotional intelligence, it can be difficult to regulate and express emotions, which can always cause trouble in a setting where people need to collaborate. Keep reading to learn more about emotional intelligence and get several ideas for emotional activities for teams. 

What is emotional intelligence? 

The core of emotional intelligence is understanding and managing your own emotions, as well as recognizing and even influencing the emotions of people around you. A term coined in 1990, over the years we have gained an understanding of how emotional intelligence can affect not only the workplace but leadership. 

Emotional intelligence - often called “EQ” - has evolved into a must-have skill in the workforce. Research even shows that EQ is an incredibly strong predictor of future performance. Employees with high emotional intelligence typically display self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Those with emotional intelligence will seek to understand colleagues and work on active listening, which will benefit most workplace scenarios. This is why it’s incredibly important to cultivate emotional intelligence in a group setting. 

28 Emotional intelligence activities for work groups

1. Emotion check-in

A great way to start a meeting or workshop is to have everyone do a check-in with a partner. Put people into pairs and then have them be as open and honest as they can be in answering the question “How are you feeling?” Rather than just saying “nervous” or “happy”, have them elaborate. What type of happiness? Exactly how nervous? Some people like using a weather metaphor to help elaborate on emotional terms. You can have them use weather terms to discuss their emotions. Perhaps not a hurricane, but a light sprinkle of rain. Or, the most beautiful sunny day imaginable. Starting other exercises with this activity is a good way to make everyone feel more open and in touch with their feelings, and those of others.  

2. “Who are you?” interview

The question “who are you?” has a variety of answers, and will change day by day depending on what you’re doing, who you’re around, and how you’re feeling. Again, have people move into pairs and begin a conversation with “Who are you?” Have them go through a few different rounds, using a different response each time. This will help people to think through the various versions of themselves and how they express emotions to others. The spectrum of answers is great evidence of how multi-faceted people are, and a good reminder to think of ourselves in a more complex way. 

3. “When I feel…”

When we are able to recognize our true feelings, we are better able to register what our responses to these emotions might (or should) be. Often, emotions are impulses to act, and it's important to look at the ways that feelings cause us to act. To begin this exercise, have everyone check in with their own emotions. Have one person begin by announcing an emotion, and then calling the name of another person in the room. That person should declare what they would do if they felt that emotion, and then name their own emotion and a new person. The cycle goes on.

For example, person A says “Anger - Person B”. Then Person B says “I might deal with anger by doing some vigorous exercise. My emotion is anxiety. Person C.” This helps us to not only understand ourselves better, but those around us, and learn some new ways of regulating emotions and dealing with complex feelings. 

4. Feeling wheel

It’s valuable to develop an emotional vocabulary so that you can articulate how you’re feeling, to yourself and others. Experts have mapped eight major emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. You can use a feeling wheel to group similar emotions together and then discuss the differences. You can use a visual aid of the feeling wheel to facilitate a discussion among your team. 

5. Thinking evolution

An important part of self-awareness is understanding that our feelings are actually mutable. For instance, if you receive a short, bluntly worded email that makes you feel a bit anxious, but later you find out more context and it alleviates your nervousness.

For this exercise, have everyone complete the sentence “I used to feel…but now I think…” Then have them describe such a situation; one where they felt a certain emotion and then changed when they gained more knowledge. This can be a powerful reminder of how adaptable our feelings are and how important it is to take full context into consideration before giving into our emotions. 

6. Leadership pizza

Goal-setting is an important part of self-management and motivation. Begin by having everyone do a self-assessment and then find areas of self-improvement. They can also come up with a timetable for the changes they want to see. Have participants identify skills, qualities, and characteristics they find important in being an effective part of the group. From there they should assess their ability in that area, and create goals to become more emotionally intelligent members. This is a great leadership activity that can make a real difference in how teams understand each other and work together. 

7. Letter to myself

Writing is an incredibly cathartic process that can help us process emotions as well as consider new perspectives. For example, from a goal-setting perspective, writing down your hopes and ambitions in detail can make the ideas feel more real and serve as a visual cue and reminder.

Have team members write down a letter to their future selves. Try prompting team members with questions like “What is the next thing I want to achieve?”, “What is the date that I should accomplish this by?”, “Something I want to change is…”, or “Something I never want to forget is…” These letters should be private and at the end of the day people can keep them, burn them, throw them away, etc. The point is the manifestation that happens in writing the letters in the first place. 

8. Everyday hassles

Most of us have knee-jerk reactions to everyday stressful situations. Sometimes those reactions can have a negative impact on others or make the scenarios worse. When we identify how we react to certain situations we can adapt and make better decisions.

This exercise helps to reframe how we think about inconvenient situations that pop up in everyday life. When we think of more positive solutions, we can see them as opportunities for growth. Start by having someone mention an everyday hassle, like a traffic jam or getting the wrong order at a restaurant. Then have other people chime in with the best potential ways to react. This will help everyone to reframe their thinking and better adapt in the future. 

9. Meditation

Meditation is a powerful tool in many ways. It can be really helpful in exploring emotions and staying stress-free. What’s even better is that meditation can be done anywhere, at any time.

You can set up a formal meditation workshop for everyone, or encourage people to use a private space in the office when they need to take a few moments. You may even want to kick off your next big meeting with a short meditation exercise so everyone can clear their mind and begin with a clean emotional slate. You can also consider some gratitude exercises that are appropriate for the workplace, too. 

10. Group pomodoro

Pomodoro is a time-management technique that many people use to be more productive and efficient. It involves setting a timer for 25 minutes of an activity and then a 5 minute break. You can go through these chunks for several hours in order to plan your day, and many people find it makes them much more effective. As an exercise in self-management, have your team members take some time to plan out their own Pomodoro agenda. This is also a great exercise for planning and working through busy phases of work. 

11. Hear, see, respect

Listening is the best place to start with understanding and respecting other perspectives. Empathy is created when we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Put everyone into pairs and have each person tell a story about a time they didn’t feel heard. The non-speaking person’s job is to listen closely and not try to judge or fix the situation.

This is a great opportunity to practice active listening and understand other perspectives. Each person should get a chance to talk about a situation and have the other listen, letting them know they are heard, seen, and respected. This can also help with conflict issues, like these conflict examples and common workplace issues (and to learn more about toxic work environments, check out our blog). 

12. Strength sharing

Ideally, everyone in your team feels safe and confident to speak up. Without that, true collaboration can be difficult. It’s important to build up other people and celebrate wins to help forge confidence. Get everyone in groups of 3 or 4 and have one person share their greatest accomplishment. Then have the other group members discuss the strengths they must have used to reach that goal. Each person in the group should get a turn, with everyone thinking about those necessary strengths and sharing them with the group.

It’s a wonderful way for people to receive compliments and hear nice things about themselves, which can be really helpful for helping them to be more assertive at work. 

13. Walking pair

At your next team retreat or long meeting, put people into random pairs and then have them go for a walk. It’s the simplest of exercises but gives people a chance to talk openly and get to know each other. It’s important that the pairs are not people who normally work together or socialize. A quick walk around the block can be a great bonding experience, and it’s simple and free. Learn more ways to cultivate a positive work environment on our blog. 

14. Simple anthropology

Anthropologists observe people and societies and understand how they work at a deep level. Put people into small groups and have them pick a place where they will go to observe what’s happening around them. Have people go out into a public place like a restaurant or park and have them observe. They should immerse themselves in the local setting and take notes on what they experience and what it suggests about the people they see. They can record their findings in a notebook or even with a camera (if that’s not too intrusive).

Afterward, bring everyone back together and have them discuss what they saw. What are the similarities and what are the differences? Did they learn anything new? You can learn a lot about how people operate simply by paying attention. 

15. Back-turned feedback

When you hear the term “behind someone’s back”, it typically has a negative connotation. Flip that on its head by having people share their opinion of another person behind their back - but a positive one. Have your team stand in a circle and one by one, turn their back on the group. While their back is turned, have everyone else share their positive opinions on the person. It can be as small as “I like their shoes'' to bigger like “This person is a huge motivation to me.” Make sure each person gets a turn to hear what everyone has to say about them.

This is a great time to be transparent about the strengths and weaknesses you appreciate about your team, and learn more about what they value in general. Plus, knowing the good things your team thinks about you can really improve morale and improve working relationships. 

16. Roses, buds, and thorns

Constructive criticism is one of the most important parts of being a leader, but also one of the most ignored. Great leaders deliver feedback in a way that gives people the space to reflect on their own performance and share improvements with the team. Self-aware people have an idea of their strengths and weaknesses and where they might be off track. For people who need some help with self-awareness, this is a great exercise.

Consider sitting down with employees during review periods and asking them to share their perspective on their roses, buds, and thorns. Roses are successes or strengths; buds are areas for growth; and thorns are challenges or things that need to be addressed. Have an open and honest conversation about how you see each of those things in their performance and what can be done to support them from here. 

17. Silence to vibrance

There is nothing wrong with silence, and many people are naturally quiet. A great leader helps their team in feeling safe and confident in sharing their feelings and expressing themselves.

In your next exercise or group meeting, ask some of the more quiet members of your team to speak up about a time they felt silenced. Have them describe the scenario and how it felt to be so quiet, and why they chose to remain so. Have them describe any feelings they might have been dealing with. Then ask them if they had the opportunity to speak up now, what they would say. Give them the opportunity to recreate the situation and share their real feelings now. Let everyone have a turn who feels ready to share. 

18. Open questions

Most of us understand how open-ended questions can help us to understand others, but it can still be hard to use them in practice. Paring open questions with active listening leads to overall stronger communication.

In a smaller group (we suggest 12 or less people), have each person try to find out something new about the person next to them using questions. What, why, who, how, when, where, etc. are all great examples of open-ended questions that can be asked to explain a scenario which can lead to a much deeper understanding of each other. 

19. Seven words

Surely you’ve heard the phrase “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.” To really drive this point home, have people come up with a seven-word sentence or phrase. Have them place emphasis on different words in the phrase. Then have the group discuss what that might mean.

For example, if the emphasis is on the first word, how might that change the meaning of what they’re saying? Have people modify the sentence in different ways using their tone of voice and body language. What is the takeaway from how non-verbal cues change the meaning of words? 

20. Participation style mapping

Working in a group requires a delicate balance of how people actively participate in meetings, workshops and in day-to-day communication at work. Sometimes, people that are too controlling or dominating can hurt the group by being too aggressive. At the same time, people who don’t put enough energy in will drag the group down. Therefore, learning to balance the styles is crucial.

Create a visual aid so that people can plot their styles and learn to balance them for better group dynamics. Have your team compose a color coded chart where they can plot their style on an X and Y axis. A great way to create this graph is by having an X axis that ranges from shy to loud, and a Y axis that goes from thinking quietly to talking through things out loud. Have everyone place themselves somewhere on the axes and then have a group discussion once everyone has gone. This can offer a really helpful visual for the types of leadership styles and how everyone can work together. 

21. Travel to the future game

Creativity is a great way to harness positive energy and improve collaboration. This is an inclusive storytelling activity where the team imagines traveling to the future and choosing one object they’ll take. There are a couple ways to do this. You can have everyone simply pretend, and discuss the hypothetical object they’d take. Or, you can prepare in advance and have a variety of items on display. You'll need as many items as there are people, and they can be random things from around the office. So, if you have 12 people in the group, you’ll need 12 objects. Then, one by one, have people go to the front of the room, select an object, and explain to the group why they picked it.

This is a simple way to learn more about the people you work with as well as to get more comfortable speaking in front of others. As a bonus activity, if you really want to encourage active listening, quiz the team at the end and have them write down their team members and which object they picked. 

22. Nine dimensions

The most effective teams align their own self-awareness with emotional intelligence in dealing with others. This exercise ​​guides us to rate our abilities in nine aspects important to our work environment and how we relate to others. Give each participant colored dot stickers so that they can place them in areas where they feel they’re doing well. Do a search online for the nine dimensions activity and you can get a visual which you can print and use with your team. From there, the best thing to do is have a discussion.

Who is particularly skilled in a certain area? Did you already know that or did you learn something new? What takeaways are there about working in this specific team? 

23. Sit-stand-disappear

Bring emotional intelligence to your icebreakers with this activity. The best thing about this game is that it can be played with virtual teams. Have everyone adjust their screen so that they see three people at a time. In each row, your goal is to have one person sitting, one person standing, and one completely out of the frame. This can be really tricky in Zoom since everyone has a different view. It’s almost like a human Rubik’s cube!

Work together to accomplish this and then have a discussion about the process. How did you work together as a team? Did you mainly observe, or did one person take the lead in organizing? Did it take longer than you thought it would, and did you have any feelings about how it went? This game is also a good opportunity to see who has natural leadership skills and who tends to be quieter. 

24. Myer-Briggs exercise

Personal assessments are always interesting when you have team members with different personalities. Use the test as a starting point for a discussion about how your team members are different and what each brings to the table. You’ll need to set aside enough time for completing the test and then reviewing the responses. Every person should share their responses with the group (to the degree that they’re comfortable) and then highlight the parts they agree with and don’t agree with.

Let the team provide feedback on their thoughts. For example, if one person shares that their test showed a certain trait, but they’re surprised by it, the team can chime in with their opinion on if they have noticed that particular characteristic or if they’re surprised. You can find the Myer-Briggs (and several others) personality assessment with a simple Google search. Make sure to let your team know that they only need to share what they’re comfortable with and any feedback should be positive. This is not the time for constructive criticism, such as “I’m not surprised to hear you’re judgmental, you do tend to criticize others.” 

25. EQ worksheets

When all else fails, grab some worksheets! If you have an upcoming event or meeting where your team is getting together, why not start things out with a simple worksheet on EQ?

You can print a variety of assessments or even info sheets that list a few quick bullets. Or, if there is any area in your workplace where you share resources or provide content on physical or mental health, this would be a good place to leave a few papers on EQ. This psychology website has several worksheets and workbooks that are free to use. 

26. EQ workshops

If you feel that emotional intelligence is paramount to your work and you really want to put a focus on it, you can invest in having an expert speaker come in and speak to your group. They might have their own content, workbooks, or exercises for you to do, but they’ll know how to guide everyone through helpful material that can teach them all about EQ.

If you have different speakers or other guests at your regular company-wide or team retreats, consider having your next one be an emotional intelligence expert. Search online to see which professionals are available in your area and start reaching out. For other professional development activities, make sure to follow our blog. 

27. Emotional intelligence assessment for leaders

Leaders have one of the biggest jobs to do in any organization, so emotional intelligence is particularly important. Look for an emotional intelligence assessment that is designed for leaders and hand them out to your managers. These assessments are geared toward leaders because they are focused on vision and vision-killing behaviors.

The activity will list several vision-killing behaviors and then individuals should grade themselves according to how often they engage in that behavior. You can have a discussion afterward about what people learned about themselves and what they might do differently from here on out. 

28. Eye contact practice

Eye contact is one of the most important elements of communication, but it’s also something many people struggle with. The truth is eye contact can help you to connect on a more emotional level with others, better understand them, and be more honest about your own feelings. As an exercise to improve eye contact, have your entire team randomly roam about the room for one minute. When the minute is up, give them some kind of signal, and everyone should stop moving and make eye contact with a person. When they do, those two should pair up and have a conversation where they make eye contact as much as possible.

Having people naturally “find” each other based on their eye contact is an important exercise in connection, and having them extend the conversation while practicing further eye contact might be harder than they expect. 

Enhance EQ with team-building retreats

The truth is that it can be hard to cultivate emotional intelligence, but it’s always worth the effort. As mentioned, raising the emotional intelligence of everyone on your team will result in improved collaboration, more patience, happier and more loyal teams, and a stronger team culture. The best place to try a few of these emotional intelligence activities is in a group setting.

A team building retreat is always a good use of time, because you can incorporate training, socializing, and a few of these EQ activities in a fun setting. Create an agenda where you can plan a few different exercises or even bring in a speaker to inspire your team in an environment where everyone is connected.

If you’re apprehensive by planning a team building retreat, just reach out to us at Surf Office. We can help you to pull off the ultimate team building retreat, complete with plenty of time devoted to EQ and creating happier teams.