How to Improve Emotional Intelligence

What the training evidence says

Two meta-analyses give the clearest picture. One pooled 24 studies of EI training in healthy adults and found a moderate improvement from before to after training, which held at follow-up (Hodzic and colleagues, 2018). Another pooled 58 published and unpublished studies and also found a moderate positive effect, with larger effects in published studies than in dissertations (Mattingly and Kraiger, 2019). A systematic review of 46 intervention studies found some support for EI programs but concluded that limitations in most studies restrict how far the results generalize (Kotsou and colleagues, 2019).

Read together: change is possible, it is moderate rather than dramatic, and the published record may be a little rosier than reality. That is a good reason to practice deliberately and to measure progress by what you do, not by how a questionnaire feels a month later.

Lever 1: borrow other people’s eyes

The first obstacle is that people are poor judges of their own EI. In studies of professional students, the lowest scorers on an EI test overestimated their performance, explained away concrete feedback, and were less interested than top scorers in coaching or reading that might help (Sheldon, Dunning, and Ames, 2014). If improvement starts with knowing where you stand, it starts with someone else.

Ask for feedback that is narrow enough to answer honestly. Not “Am I emotionally intelligent?” but: “In meetings this month, when I disagreed with someone, how did it come across? Is there one thing I could do differently?” Then say “Thank you, that’s useful” and nothing else. Defending yourself in the moment teaches people to stop telling you.

Lever 2: name the feeling precisely

“Stressed” covers dread, overload, resentment and fear of being found out, and each calls for a different response. In a brain-imaging study, labeling the emotion in a negative image reduced amygdala response compared with other ways of processing it (Lieberman and colleagues, 2007). That was a lab task, not proof that naming feelings fixes problems, but it fits a practical observation: a precise word gives you something specific to act on. The emotion wheel and the guide to building an emotional vocabulary help with the words.

Lever 3: decide the response before the moment

Good intentions fail in the heat of a conversation because there is no time to think. If-then plans move the thinking earlier. Across 94 tests, forming implementation intentions (“If X happens, then I will do Y”) had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (d = .65) compared with holding the goal alone (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006). Examples that fit emotional situations:

• “If I feel my face get hot in a meeting, then I will write down the point and wait for the next pause.”
• “If my partner says ‘you always,’ then I will ask ‘When was the last time?’ before defending myself.”
• “If an email makes me angry, then I will draft the reply and send it after lunch.”

Lever 4: change the story instead of hiding the feeling

A large meta-analysis of experimental studies compared regulation strategies. Changing how you think about a situation had a small-to-medium effect on emotional outcomes (d+ = 0.36), taking another person’s perspective had the largest effect of the specific tactics (d+ = 0.45), and concentrating on the feeling itself backfired (d+ = -0.26) (Webb, Miles, and Sheeran, 2012). In practice: when a colleague ignores your message, ask “What else could explain this?” and list two real possibilities before you decide it was a snub.

A six-week practice plan

This plan is an editorial suggestion assembled from the strategies above, not a program that has been tested as a whole.

How to tell whether it is working

Feelings about progress are unreliable, so track things you can count. How many times did your if-then plan fire this week, and how many times did you follow it? How long did you wait before replying to the last tense message? Did the person you asked for feedback in week 5 describe the same pattern they would have described in week 1? A useful sign is that people around you change how they act: a colleague who used to avoid raising problems with you starts raising them early, or a partner stops prefacing requests with “Don’t get upset, but…”.

Mistakes that stall progress

Practicing everything at once. “Be more emotionally intelligent” is not a plan. One situation and one skill at a time is.

Judging progress by mood. You will still get angry. The measure is whether you sent the email after lunch instead of at once.

Retesting too soon. Retaking a questionnaire after a week mostly measures your mood that day. Compare your week-1 and week-6 notes instead, and see how often to retake an EQ test.

Treating it as solo work. Emotional skills are used with people, so they improve with people. If patterns feel stuck or painful, a licensed therapist can help in ways self-practice cannot.

Choosing where to start

The EQTiger assessment can help you pick a starting dimension by showing your relative pattern across six areas. Its descriptive scores are for choosing practice, not for proving change. For regulation-specific techniques, see responding instead of reacting, and for the models behind these skills, see the components of emotional intelligence.