Breakthrough Development Group - EQ-i· Certification Program

EQ-i™ Certification Program

Dr. Michael Rock presents an opportunity to learn the key skills and frameworks for applying the newest and most significant trend in training and development today.

The rise in the importance of people (or ‘soft’) skills has become a major focus in business today. Even though companies trumpet that ‘people are our greatest asset’, they often have little idea how to maximize the value of those assets.

Organizations are finding that the changes in the market environments, which bring about the need for continuous reinvention in order to remain competitive in a turbulent and rapidly changing environment, have meant that ‘People’ have gained a new prominence. They are recognizing that people competencies really do affect the bottom line.

The ‘soft’ skills of communication, building and maintaining internal and external relationships, developing and transferring knowledge and harnessing individual creativity have become a major focus of people development. So too is the previously under recognized area of ‘self management’ which includes attributes such as stress resilience, mood management and self-actualization.

The benefits link into:

customer and staff retention

product development

strategy formulation and implementation

the general ability of managers to realize more of the latent potential which exists within people and which is largely untapped by conventional management thinking.

The issue is therefore to have an integrative framework which allows people to perform more effectively through greater self-awareness and awareness of others, and to apply that new awareness to business situations whilst avoiding those factors which manifest themselves in poor performance e.g. the effects of change resistance and stress.

Emotional Intelligence provides that integrative framework. It enables professionals to both assess potential and to develop individuals, groups and organizations. The framework provides a method to measure the effectiveness of the individual in managing themselves and in their social interactions. It also provides a powerful tool for on going development.

Emotional Intelligence has become a familiar term with well grounded research and statistical analysis demonstrating that the skills of self management and social competence are crucial to workplace performance today. However, the subject of Emotional Intelligence is complex as it has arisen from the results of work in such widely diverse fields as brain-science, psychoneuroimmunology, educational research and human performance (Superperformer) research.
Many people are claiming to be capable of running Emotional Intelligence development programs and courses and introductory sessions are proliferating. However, many of the claims are unproven, nor are they grounded in the real theories and frameworks, which constitute Emotional Intelligence.

In addition, personality tests are often confused as measures of Emotional Intelligence. Personality tests are measures of outcome, whereas the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i™) measures the process factors that people engage in their daily lives.

The EQ-i™ Certification Program will provide a benchmark standard, ensuring people understand the theories and frameworks of Emotional Intelligence as well as possessing the critical skills and requirements for applying the concepts. In this way a new benchmark for both knowledge and application will aid the practitioners and the recipients of their knowledge. The rigorous professional development of Emotional Intelligence practitioners will move forward the concepts and research in Emotional Intelligence for the benefit of all concerned.

Now HR departments and People managers can justify their previous intuitive interest in personal and interpersonal development with the business case for Emotional Intelligence. They can now justify it to their boards because it does make an impact on the financial bottom line and they can prove it.