Emotional Skills Assessment Process ESAP LEARNING GUIDE FOR: Name or ID: DATE COMPLETED: The purpose of the ESAP Learning Guide is to help you understand and apply your ESAP assessment to improve your Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills for higher professional achievement and positive personal well being. The thirteen EI scales identified by the ESAP are essential to your career and personal success. The ESAP profile that you received after completing the online ESAP is a picture of how you saw yourself performing in terms of these skills when you completed your assessment. This guide will facilitate your personal review and interpretation of specific EI skills to learn, develop, and strengthen based on your ESAP profile results. Your experience with this guide will be accurate and valuable to the extent that you were thoughtful and honest in your responses when you completed your ESAP assessment items. The interpretation of your results is a reflection of how you currently see yourself thinking, feeling, and behaving. EI skills are important to learning career and life success, happiness, and personal well being. The great news is that EI skills can be learned and developed. We invite you to use this ESAP Learning Guide to develop an action plan to increase your level of EI skills. Copyright (C) 2009-2020 by Emotional Learning Systems, Inc. All right reserved. Darwin Nelson, Ph. D., Gary Low, Ph. D., and Richard Hammett, Ed.D. P.O. Box 271877, Corpus Christi, TX 78427 NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Introduction Understanding Your ESAP Results In the sections that follow, your ESAP results are discussed and interpreted so that you can learn, develop, and strengthen the EI skills that are most important to your achievement, career success, and personal well being. EI skills are constructive ways of thinking and effective ways of behaving. Your results indicate how you currently see yourself thinking, expressing and managing feelings, and behaving. Emotional intelligence is the most important factor in career achievement, career/life success, and physical and mental health. Emotional Intelligence is a learned and developed ability to think constructively and behave effectively and wisely. Your ESAP results are interpreted so that you can learn, develop, and strengthen each of the thirteen personal and career success skills. Unlike ‘tests’, the ESAP is a positive self- assessment and provides information that is helpful and beneficial to you as you become the best professional and person that you choose to be. As you read and reflectively think about the interpretation of each skill, focus on how you would benefit as a professional and person by developing this skill into a positive habit. The interpretive statements for each skill provide information on how to learn the skill. Resources and learning experiences to help you develop the skills are also included. Links for each skill are provided so that you can easily and quickly obtain additional and more detailed information. The ESAP has been completed by thousands of people worldwide, and the results have been valuable and helpful as a guide for developing and applying emotional intelligence skills in professional environments and personal relationships. Your personal ESAP Learning Guide is one source of information for you to consider as you work to develop high levels of achievement and success. As you read and reflect on the meaning of your ESAP results, remind yourself to focus on your skill strengths. When a skill is identified as one to learn and develop, this is not a weakness but rather an indication that this is an important behavior to learn and apply now to improve your professional achievement and personal well being immediately and in the future. Research indicates that we all have skills that we can improve and that a healthy and effective person is one who knows both strengths and weaknesses and shares that information with others. Your ESAP Learning Guide indicates what you see as skill strengths and what you see as skills (behaviors) that you need to develop and learn to achieve excellence as a professional and as a person. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE SKILLS Your ESAP Emotional Intelligence Skills Profile shows you the skills that you have identified to either (1) learn and develop, (2) strengthen, or (3) enhance. Referring to your ESAP profile report, the color of the area for your score on each skill suggests what action to take. A score in the Red Area means stop! Red area scores suggest skills for priority focus. You should really stop and focus on learning and developing life skills in the red areas. Yellow indicates caution! Scores in the yellow suggest slowing down so that you can strengthen those skills by learning more and applying the skills more often than you already do. Skills in the Green indicate all clear! Keep going and keep using these current strengths in your work and life. Focus on using your emotional skill strengths as often as possible. Enhance your strengths, and learn/develop, and strengthen new skills to improve your achievement and personal well-being. Your ESAP Emotional Intelligence Skills and Potential Problem areas are explained further throughout the ESAP Learning Guide. Have your ESAP profile results handy as you go through the ESAP Learning Guide. POSITIVE SELF- ASSESSMENT The ESAP results are designed to help you develop ways of thinking and behaving that are essential to high levels of achievement and personal well being. Emotional intelligence skills are behaviors, not thoughts. Knowing is not doing. One must practice daily to develop a skilled behavior or habit. Think of the EI skills as being positive, intentional habits, and behaviors we choose to do because they help us reach our goals and be successful. As you read and reflectively think about what each interpretive statement means, you will become more accurately aware of your strong points. Also, you will see how to develop new skills and become aware of skills that you need to learn and practice. Self-assessment is positive when the results are personally meaningful and helpful. In essence the discussion of your ESAP The 10 EI skills and 3 problem areas are presented using a 4- results is like having a positive conversation HoQwuatdhrean1t0MEoIdSekl iollfsE&I. 4TPheropbrolebmlemAraeraesasfitteinndtotothceau4sQe uimabdaralanntcMe,odel with yourself about how you are now as a person and what you are willing to do to and are reframed in the ESAP Learning Guide as skills to learn. reach high levels of achievement and personal happiness. Few people stop long The Ten EI Skills and 3 Problem Areas enough to really think about their behavior and fewer still actually focus energy on SELF AWARENESS SELF MANAGEMENT learning new and better ways to think, express their emotions, and choose their Self Esteem Drive Strength behaviors. Time Management Commitment Ethic The 10 EI skills and 3 potential problem Stress Management areas measured by the ESAP are illustrated in the diagram to the right.1 Each of the EI Aggression Deference Change Orientation skills are essential to high levels of job and career success, and personal well being. Comfort Assertion None of us develop these skills to perfection, Empathy Decision Making and developing personal, professional, and Leadership career excellence is a life long process of SOCIAL AWARENESS exploring, identifying, understanding, RELATIONSHIP learning, and applying and modeling the EI MANAGEMENT skills daily. Each skill that you learn, develop, apply, and model moves you toward excellence. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
As you review and reflect on your ESAP skill scores you will see the importance of each skill in professional achievement, career effectiveness, personal happiness, and physical health. Read the description of each emotional intelligence skill identified by your ESAP. The narrative description for each of the ten ESAP skills reflects the behaviors of high achieving professionals who apply and model EI skills in their work and personal relationships. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: INTERPERSONAL SKILLS Interpersonal skills are the skills that each of us use to maintain good working and personal relationships. Although independence is important, no person is an island unto self. Interdependence, the strength we give to and get from others, is even more important than independence. It is interdependence that adds true quality of life and leads to life-long success and happiness. The ESAP interpersonal skills include Decision Making Assertion Leadership Comfort Empathy Now explore and identify your interpersonal skills to learn/develop, strengthen, and enhance to maintain a variety of quality relationships that will enhance your achievement, happiness, and health. EI Skill: ASSERTION My Current Score: 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 I need to (check one) ____ Learn & Develop ____ Strengthen ____Enhance this Skill Assertion is a communication skill that you can learn/develop, strengthen, and enhance to make your communication with yourself and others more direct, clear, and honest. Assertive behavior is active (purposeful) rather than reactive (responsive). High achieving professionals use assertion to form positive and supportive relationships quickly when they arrive in new work settings, teams, and environments. They actively seek out people who are interested in their success and ask for what they need. They seek out members and ask questions about work assignments. They form collaborative productivity groups with other professionals who want to succeed and find mentors and other resources to maximize their opportunity for success. Assertion is a skill and is the learned ability to communicate in a way that respects your rights and also respects the rights of others. An assertive professional says: “ I am confused or concerned about this work assignment, and I would like to talk with you so that I can be clear about how to complete it correctly”. Assertive communicators can express their emotions honestly and directly, and they effectively deal with others who are angry, anxious, or sad. Self-assertion means talking to your self in positive and constructive ways. “I want to be a good professional, and I need some special help in understanding engineering’s contribution to the project”, is an assertive self- statement. Behaving assertively means you initiate and take actions that help you meet your important goals. Assertive professionals are prepared and arrive at meetings on time. They actively participate and are actively engaged in collaborative processes and environments. When difficulties arise, they let bosses and NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
co-workers know the essentials and make arrangements to get help. Asking for what you need and want to be successful is an essential career and life success skill. You learn and develop assertion by observing people who model clear, honest, and direct communication with practice. Assertion is straight communication that is respectful and honest. You can learn more about assertive communication from books, videos, and skill development programs. Speech classes help develop communication and presentation skills. Counselors can help you identify specific situations where assertion is valuable and helpful. Librarians can help with research skills and help you use Internet resources for personal skill development. EI Skill: COMFORT My Current Score: 5 9 13 15 17 19 21 23 24 I need to (check one) ____Learn/Develop ____Strengthen ____Enhance this Skill Comfort is a learned form of social awareness and means that you initiate contact and form effective relationships with others quickly and easily. High achieving professional leaders demonstrate this skill in their verbal and non-verbal communication with peers, colleagues, and others. Interpersonal comfort means that you are comfortable in relationships with others and that you are skilled in judging how close or how far away to be from others. The EI skill of Comfort helps you appreciate, value, and experience diversity as a strength to fully develop to facilitate more effective relationships and teams. High achieving professionals use their interpersonal communication and comfort skills to manage difficult environments. Identify your primary learning style and develop strategies for cooperating effectively in situations that are not matched well to your personal interests. If you end up in a situation or environment that does not motivate or interest you, accept responsibility for your own contribution and create collaborative partnerships with other professionals to complete the work requirements. Many professionals try to avoid work they call “boring” and suffer the consequences of poor appraisals that can follow them for years. Interpersonal comfort skills let you be comfortable and motivated within your self, and healthy and effective relationships buffer you from the negative effects of stress. Comfort is extremely important in professional learning situations. A positive and supportive group of friends, relationships with administrators and others who are genuinely interested in the success of their workers, and the ability to effectively approach company and government officials to solve problems, obtain accurate information, and seek assistance are important benefits of interpersonal comfort. Develop/Learn Comfort • Interpersonal comfort is a learned and developed ability that involves active listening and attending skills. High achieving professional leaders develop the ability to get along well with others and build trust in relationships by being genuine and authentic. Professionals who develop interpersonal comfort skills are self-assured, confident, spontaneous and relaxed in their relationships. People who demonstrate this skill are described as open, honest, and easy to talk to. • Create collaborative relationships with groups and organizations that fit naturally with your interests. • Identify your primary learning styles. Develop strategies for learning that are matched well with your particular interests or best ways of learning. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Strengthen Comfort • Implement and practice the suggestions effective behaviors for learning/developing comfort. • Identify and develop collaborative relationships with groups and organizations that fit naturally with your interests. • People are heard only when you listen, and listening for true understanding increases interpersonal comfort. Enhance Comfort • Implement and practice the suggestions for learning/developing, as well as strengthening your interpersonal comfort skill. • Work to learn/develop, enhance, and strengthen your other interpersonal ESAP skills. Learning communication and creative problem solving strategies build self-confidence for approaching and dealing with new and difficult people. The ESAP skills of Assertion, Empathy, Decision Making, Leadership all build interpersonal comfort and make relationships with others more positive and supportive. Joining professional organizations related to your interests help you develop friendship relationships with other professionals that are meaningful and helpful. EI Skill: EMPATHY My Current Score: 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 I need to (check one) ____Learn/Develop ____Enhance this Skill ____Strengthen Empathy is the ability to accurately understand and constructively respond to the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of others. High achieving and successful professionals develop the ability to actively listen and accurately hear what another person is saying and feeling. Professionals skilled in Empathy can effectively and constructively deal with diversity, opinions, and beliefs of others very different from their own. Professionals high in Empathy are patient, tolerant, and accepting of differing views and can accept another person even though they disagree with his/her ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. Develop/Learn Empathy Accurate Empathy builds positive and effective intrapersonal (with self) and interpersonal (with others) relationships. Empathy skills are extremely important in our most valued relationships with family, friends, and mentors. To be listened to and accurately understood is extremely important. Empathy lets us understand persons from their point of view. When you demonstrate Empathy, you put yourself aside and accept and respect the viewpoint of the other person. Professionally-centered people use Empathy skills to communicate acceptance and genuine concern for the success and well-being of others. Good professionals demonstrate empathy when they encounter people and ideas that are radically different from their own. Empathy lets us be tolerant and non- judgmental about ideas, beliefs, and customs that we encounter in diverse environments. Knowledge of emotion plays an important role in learning and developing the skill of empathy. As you learn the four basic emotions and develop the ability to accurately recognize them in your self, you are also developing the skill to accurately identify and empathically respond to emotion in others. Emotions are a NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
natural part of being human and all humans experience emotion. The only time emotions are harmful is when they are experienced too intensely or for to long. Learning to accurately identify and appropriately respond to emotions reduces both their intensity and duration. The four basic emotions are: Anger. Anger is the strongest of the survival instincts. It is red hot and accompanied by a strong desire to stop something from happening in the present. Anger comes with tremendous energy and almost any action will only make things worse. Anger communication patterns create adverse relationships with others. When angry, the emotionally intelligent response includes accurately identifying the anger. Practice saying to yourself, “I am angry.” This is a positive self-statement that will help interrupt negative self-talk. Take responsibility for your anger. Rather than asking “Why am I angry?” ask “How am I making myself angry?” Healthy physical activity will help reduce your anger, and allow for constructive, positive solutions to emerge. Fear. Fear is the flight response; a yellow, cautionary feeling. Although not as potentially destructive as anger, fear can have adverse consequences in relationships by setting up deferent or passive response patterns. The energy accompanying fear is avoidance. When in fear, emotionally intelligent responses include accurately identifying the feeling. You might practice saying to yourself, “I am afraid.” This is a positive self- statement that will help interrupt negative self-talk. Take responsibility for your fear. Rather than asking “Why am I afraid?” ask “How am I making myself afraid?” Physical and healthy activity will help reduce your fear, and allow for a constructive, positive solution to emerge. Sadness. Sadness is a blue feeling that accompanies loss. Sadness is useful in overcoming physical loss. The tendency behavior accompanying sadness may be withdraw, and support from important close friends can be very helpful when we are sad. When sad, give yourself permission to grieve and fully process the sadness. If possible, spend time with people who are important in your life. Use their positive energy to help you through your sadness. Happiness. Happiness is a feeling that you get when things are really going your way. When truly happy, activities are fun and not work. Time flies and you have a sense of great potential and optimism when you are happy. Happiness is incompatible with anger, fear, and sadness. While those other emotions tend to just happen, we define our happiness and in so doing provide less room for anger, fear, and sadness. Define what makes you happy and then work to give yourself the gift of happiness. Strengthen Empathy • Implement and practice the suggestions for learning/developing empathy. • Strengthen your empathy skill when you want to be of maximum help to others. When another person is talking about how she or he feels, Empathy is the best way to respond. Listen actively and reflect back the feeling that you heard the other person express. The emotion that was expressed may be more important than the idea or conveyed by the words. • In particular, focus on the ESAP skills of Empathy, Assertion, Decision Making and Leadership. Enhance Empathy • Implement and practice the suggestions for learning/developing, as well as strengthening your interpersonal empathy skill. • Most conversations are carried out on two levels-the verbal or cognitive level and the emotional or feeling level. Enhance you empathy skills by listening for the emotion or feeling underlying the words spoken. • Work to learn/develop, enhance, and strengthen your other interpersonal ESAP skills. In particular, focus on the ESAP skills of Assertion, Comfort, Decision Making, and Leadership. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
EI Skill: DECISION MAKING My Current Score: 5 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 I need to (check one) ____Learn/Develop ____Strengthen ____Enhance this Skill Decision making is the learned ability to plan, initiate, and apply effective and creative problem solving skills. High achieving professionals apply creative problem solving and conflict resolution skills to resolve problems and blocks to their achievement and personal happiness. Strong emotions are often a factor in making constructive and effective decisions. Problems can only be solved one at a time. High achieving professionals use a systematic approach that they follow in creating solutions to resolve difficult problems. Friends, interested colleagues, mentors, and counselors can provide assistance in developing creative solutions to pressing problems. When problems are approached from several viewpoints, creative solutions are created that we would not think of alone. The decision to seek out help is a skill. Develop/Learn Decision Making • Difficult problems confront us daily, and decision making skills and processes are essential for moving through blocks to our professional success, personal happiness and contentment. Effective decision making requires constructive thinking, creative problem solving, and action goal setting. • When viewed as barriers, problems can become a source of inconvenience and even failure. A constructive way to think about problems is that they exist for a purpose and they present an opportunity to actively participate in life. Accept that living means having problems and most problem situations can be coped with and effectively overcome. Strengthen Decision Making • Implement and practice the suggestions for learning/developing your ESAP Decision Making skill. • Use library and other resources to develop decision making processes that work best for you. • Obtain feedback from others to expand your thoughts when facing a difficult problem. • Instead of hiding or denying problems, share them and find helpful, effective solutions. Enhance Decision Making • Implement and practice the suggestions for learning/developing and strengthening your interpersonal ESAP Decision Making skill. • Set goals and develop action plans to take you closer to your goals. Include people who have experienced success in similar situations and seek their help as you set goals and make your action plans. • Work to learn/develop, enhance, and strengthen your other interpersonal ESAP skills. Learning communication and creative problem solving strategies build self-confidence for approaching and dealing with new and difficult people. The ESAP skills of Assertion, Comfort, Empathy, and Leadership all build interpersonal decision making and make relationships with others more positive and supportive. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: CHANGE ORIENTATION The ESAP scale Change Orientation reflects how satisfied you are with your current ways of thinking, managing and expressing emotions, and behaving. A Low Score indicates a positive and satisfying view of your current behavior. A High Score indicates an awareness of the need to change and/or develop new and more skilled ways of behaving. An awareness of the need to make personal changes is the first step to improving EI skills. The EI skill most related to this scale is Positive Personal Change and your ESAP profile is a map to follow in developing new ways of thinking and behaving. ESAP SCALE: CHANGE ORIENTATION My Current Score: 35 7 9 11 13 16 18 21 24 LOW HIGH AVERAGE LINK: POSITIVE PERSONAL CHANGE The purpose of the ESAP Learning Guide is to help you understand and use your results to develop EI skills that will improve your professional achievement, career/life effectiveness, and personal well-being. Changing old behaviors and learning new ones requires emotional as well as cognitive learning. Select the EI skill that would help you most right now. Learn about the skill using Internet and library resources and watch others who model the skill. Change yourself in ways that you value and find resources to help you develop the skill. The ESAP is a reflective learning tool to help you EXPLORE, IDENTIFY, and UNDERSTAND EI skills. Reflect on the meaning and value of your results, and remember that they are accurate to the extent that you were thoughtful and honest in your responses. The ESAP Action Plan is provided on page 17 to help you develop your skill of Positive Personal Change. The Emotional Learning System (ELS) diagram on page 20 provides a systematic approach for life-long Positive Personal Change. Combine these resources with the ESAP Learning Guide and other valid sources of information to convert your awareness of a need for continuous, positive change to become your best self for career-life achievement, success, happiness, and health. FINAL LINK: THE ESAP Learning Guide The authors developed the ESAP Learning Guide as a professional development guide for career and working professionals. The report is meant to directly benefit professionals who complete the ESAP assessment. The ESAP Learning Guide is research derived and the normative group used included professionals and college and University students from around the world (N=380). NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
ESAP ACTION PLAN Use your ESAP results to develop an action plan for self-directed coaching and as a guide for coaching others. Begin by focusing on your strongest EI skill. Look at your ESAP Skills Profile and write in the name of the skill that you see as your strongest behavior. Currently my strongest EI skill is _______________________________________________________________ Read the definition of this ESAP skill and then define it in your own words: _____________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________ List the value and benefits of applying this skill daily in your life and work: _____________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Identify and record the ESAP skill that you most need to learn, develop, or strengthen. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________ List the most important benefits you would receive by learning, developing, or strengthening this ESAP skill: ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ The first step that I will take in learning or strengthening this ESAP skill will be: _____________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________ My mentor/coach for learning this ESAP skill will be: ___________________________________________________ Note: EI skills are intentional positive habits that you learn to improve your productivity, career-life success and personal well being. The three ways to develop EI skills are through self-directed coaching, emotional mentoring, and personal goal setting. Use the AWAKE Journal to learn constructive thinking, creative problem solving, and personal goal setting. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
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