Have you ever questioned your ability as a team leader? How well would you rate yourself with regard to managing yourself and others? An emotional intelligence training provider will equip you with the skills to be able to become 'heart smart' and not just 'intelligent smart'.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is actually just as important as cognitive intelligence (IQ) as it can help to build and maintain business relationships, reach goals and excel as a professional. Although these skills can be developed naturally, a training provider who is specialised in such areas can help to boost your personal EQ by teaching you how to keep stress levels to a minimum, connect and recognise your emotions, communicate in a non-verbal manner and use humour as an effective tool for diffusing heated situations. EQ is about turning yourself into the sort of person that draws the right people into your life.

An EQ training company will likely focus on four core areas:

Self-awareness: Acquiring the skill of being able to recognise emotions and the impact they make on your behaviour and decisions. You will learn how to identify your strengths and weaknesses and build up your self-confidence.

Self-managing: Recognising those feelings of impulse and how your emotions affect your behaviour. You will learn to control your feelings so as they work for you in a healthy rather than harmful way. Thus allowing you to take the initiative, fulfil comments and adapt naturally to changes.

Social awareness: Attuning to the feelings, thoughts and emotions of others so as you can recognise any concerns or doubts

Business relationships: Communicating effectively, inspiring and influencing teams as well as managing conflict

In the stressful dog-eat-dog world of business, it is easy to disconnect with our emotions and allow them to run wild. The term 'emotional' has negative connotations and is associated with feelings of being weak, fragile and unstable. However, when we focus our attention on matters connected to intelligence we are considered focussed, determined and stable. Unfortunately, those who have a high intelligence but low EQ are more likely to struggle in a professional capacity.

A reputable training company will provide the tools which merge IQ with EQ to create balance and harmony to all business areas. Although these skills can be learned, they have to be used autonomously to obtain effective results.

When you engage with your emotions you are able to spot those times when you are not thinking rationally and stop them in their tracks before they thwart those best laid plans. When we are running on stress, our thoughts and intuition are clouded thus making it impossible to sense a feeling, thought or situation arising.

An EQ training course will provide instruction for calming those heightened emotions so as we are able to function effectively with the challenges that confront us. Many of us have spent a long time living on stress and have forgotten what it feels like to be calm. We may be disconnected with those feelings but we cannot ignore the fact that they are still there. Without being aware of our emotions, we cannot recognise those factors which heighten our anxiety.

We all react differently to stress, some of us become fretful and agitated, others freeze and some go into a state of depression. An EQ training course will help us to recognise our own individual stress responders and uncover ways to work with our senses to find solutions which minimize the anxiety that we feel.

An EQ training course will also put us in touch with our non-verbal skills. Often, it is not the things that we say which have a direct impact on others but the way that we portray communication via our tone of voice, body gestures, facial expressions and eye contact. By becoming aware of this wordless form of speech we can instil a sense of trust, intrigue and excitement into our dialect rather than conjuring up fear, doubt and mistrust.

An EQ training course uses humour as an effective means of raising the spirits by helping us view life's disappointments and frustrations from a lighter perspective. It also helps to deflate the power of awkward or difficult circumstances and fight off those feelings of fatigue when we just want to pack up and walk away.

When we look at the lighter side of life we open ourselves up to the realms of creativity and possibility rather than the confinement of negativity. There is nothing that can replace a good belly laugh which instantly decreases stress levels, elevates the mood and tickles our frazzled nerves.

A coaching programme often involves working with our friends, family, key business clients and superiors etc, to ascertain how well we manage our emotions. The training provider will use this data to build up a picture of our performance and leadership skills. Using this information as a guideline, we work through a customized action plan for making positive changes in our key areas. We will partake in discussions and have the opportunity to utilize these new skills. A training program such as this will bridge the gap between those employees who reach their highest capabilities and those who remain dormant.

From sales executives through to middle management, an EQ training program can lead to breakthrough performance for employees on every rung of the career ladder. Studies have shown that those who possess a strong EQ are more likely to soar to dizzy heights than those with a higher IQ or experience in a similar role.

To conclude: EQ training will teach us to respond to emotional stimuli as a habit. It will instil the necessary components for treating people the way that we would like to be treated. Your IQ could certainly get you that top job but EQ will allow you to evaluate other people's emotions and feelings and use this as a guide to how you respond. By developing these skills, you can harness these emotions to bring out the best in others.

If you are in the business of social-interaction and want to achieve positive results, you owe it to yourself to take an EQ training course. It is proven that this sort of training is more likely to lead to success than being blessed with cognitive intelligence.