Emotional Intelligence: From Theory to Practice

Emotions Matter. They inform our thinking, creativity, and decisions; the quality of our relationships; our physical and mental health; and everyday performance at home, school, and the workplace. The skills of emotional intelligence, including the ability to recognize and regulate emotions, are especially important. In this presentation, I will discuss our Center’s basic and applied research on emotions and emotional intelligence and provide an overview of our evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning, RULER, which has been adopted by over 1200 schools around the world.

Marc Brackett
Yale University, USA
marc.brackett@yale.edu

Work engagement: When work is making you happy!

During the conference I will introduce the concept of work engagement, which refers to the optimal functioning of people in organizations. The Work Engagement is a positive psychological state characterized by high levels of energy and vigor, dedication and enthusiasm at work, and the feeling of being completely absorpted during work. I will discuss the concept and measurement of engagement, as engagement is related to job demands and resources, personal psychological resources, the relationship between engagement and performance (the happy and productive worker) as well as the last findings about engagement and aging, type of work , emotional contagium, influence, and so on. I also talk about the underlying psychological mechanism of work engagement as well as individual and organizational interventions to increase work engagement.

Marisa Salanova
Faculty of Health Science, Jaume I University, Spain

Emotional competence and health: relationships, pathways and interventions

Although everyone experiences emotions, people markedly differ in the extent to which they identify, express, understand, regulate and use their own and others' emotions. The concept of "Emotional Intelligence" (EI) (also called "Emotional Competence" (EC)) has been proposed to account for this idea. An impressive body of evidence indicates that the level of EI has a significant impact on psychological, social and work adjustment. In this presentation, we will focus on the impact of EI on health and discuss the biological and behavioral mechanisms that are responsible for this effect. We will conclude by presenting the training we have developed to increase Emotional Intelligence and its effects on psychological, somatic and social adjustment.

Moïra Mikolajczak
Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de L'Éducation / Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Belgium
Moira.mikolajczak@uclouvain.be

Cómo construir escuelas emocionalmente inteligentes

Our society has begun to recognise that in addition to information and intellectual training people need to learn other non-cognitive skills. Specifically, the 21st-century society has highlighted the importance of education of feelings to facilitate global adaptation of people in a changing and uncertain world.
Society begins to engage with the double task of educating both the head and the heart, cognitive and emotional dimensions. We are convinced that both dimensions are inseparably interconnected and essential for the welfare and happiness of people.

At this conference we will focus on two aspects: (1) how our emotional intelligence, that is, our ability to perceive, express and understand the emotions, emotionally connect with others and regulate our emotions appropriately are essential factors for personal and professional success in our society today and 2) how you can educate Emotional Intelligence in our schools in a constructive and effective manner.

Pablo Fernández Berrocal
Universidad de Málaga, Spain
pabloberrocal@gmail.com

Emotional intelligence in agile, innovative and high-performance organizations

How can emotional intelligence (EI) contribute to organizational performance, innovation and agility? Organizations are collectives and individual EI – or individual leadership, for that matter - can only explain part of what happens in collective endeavors. How do patterns of open and emotionally intelligent communication across the whole organization, starting with the top management team, enhance employee engagement and effective responses to organizational challenges? Based on case studies of organizational success and failure, we will consider ways of developing emotional intelligence and collective leadership, fostering innovation and adaptability. We will discuss how to use challenges calling for innovation and change to develop people at work, get everyone’s brains to work for a common purpose, and drive performance in organizational settings. Bridging research and practice, we will consider the limitations and potential of emotional intelligence at work, and ways to transform the workplace of the future.

Paulo Nuno Lopes
Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Portugal
paulo.lopes@ucp.pt