Emotional intelligence, often known as EI, is the capacity to be aware of and manage emotions while managing and developing interpersonal connections with self-awareness, excellent judgment, and empathy. This is the capacity to detect, comprehend, and control one’s own emotions as well as those of others. Moreover, Emotional Intelligence is one of the most significant skills in various aspects of life, and eLearning is surely one of them.

Developing emotional intelligence is critical for everyone, but especially for L&D (learning and development) teams and learners or employees. Now the question arises how can you include emotional intelligence in your online learning, and what is its purpose? We will look at each of its aspects, and make the term and its significance more clear.

Can Emotional Intelligence Be Learned?

Contrary to popular belief, in the era of eLearning, emotional intelligence may be learned and improved over time. And, if you are a part of the L&D team, you must understand that addressing your learners’ or employees’ emotions may be very beneficial since an emotionally safe eLearning environment increases self-confidence and motivation, fosters risk-taking, and promotes creative expression, all of which are essential components of an effective online learning experience.

How Does Emotional Intelligence Affect eLearning?

To learn about the impact of emotional intelligence in eLearning, or more specifically, how emotional facilitation of thinking improves the employees’ engagement and performance, you must consider the five components of emotional intelligence, listed below:

1. Self Awareness
   Self-awareness is the capability to identify and comprehend one’s own emotions, strengths, shortcomings, and motivations, and then use them to make decisions. The stronger your learners’ capacity to be emotionally aware during the eLearning experience, the more control they have over their inner selves, and therefore the higher their self-confidence in achieving their learning objectives. You, being a part of the L&D team may also help your learners understand what they are thinking and feeling while making decisions throughout the online learning times by giving them control over their eLearning experience, and utilizing a learner-centered strategy. Moreover, this will inspire them to solve problems more creatively and flexibly, as well as make more efficient decisions.
   

2. Self Regulation

   Regulating our emotions entails keeping track of both happy and bad sentiments, allowing us to deal with obstacles without giving up. This aspect of emotional intelligence is very important for eLearning since learners frequently experience irritation, boredom, and anxiety while working on tough, tedious, or disengaging eLearning tasks. Also, the L&D teams, using online learning approaches should assist their employees manage their negative emotions and adjust to changing conditions. Through this, the learners could also be helped to track their progress toward accomplishment by incorporating several evaluations throughout the eLearning offerings, providing regular feedback, and considering developing eLearning tools that improve their self-management abilities.

3. Self Motivation
   Self-motivation is the capacity to harness our motivation and drive towards success. In eLearning, a strong sense of self-motivation on the learners’ part means that they may produce positive emotions such as excitement, fervor, and tenacity in order to learn. Well! Sounds great, Isn’t it? So, to improve the learners’ self-motivation abilities, and motivate them by providing them with compelling eLearning courses that are relevant to their personal and professional lives, such as situations that provide real-world advantages, and enhance their optimism by allowing them to try again and learn from their failures.
4. Social Awareness
   Regarding the sophomores’ social competency, social awareness also known as empathy is the capability to perceive and comprehend the emotions of others in social circumstances or making any decision. This aspect of emotional intelligence is very important in online learning programs as in complex corporate contexts, learners require excellent decision-making abilities to function well in areas such as leadership, customer service, or sales. Moreover, to increase social awareness among your workforce, try including problem-solving and conflict-resolution interactions in the eLearning programs, giving learners an opportunity to accept responsibility for their actions while comprehending diverse views.
5. Social Skills/Relationship Management
   Last but not least comes social skills or relationship management. Social skills or relationship management is the capacity to interact with others helpfully even in times of disagreement. Handling social interactions is another important aspect of emotional intelligence in eLearning, for obvious reasons. When employees can interact and collaborate well with one another, they become more effective and bring out better outcomes. To improve their social skills, the L&D team should incorporate social learning into their eLearning program creation to encourage them to form strong bonds with their peers both within and outside the virtual room. Allow them to share tasks during the eLearning programs by using team player eLearning games, and assist them in developing friendships, collaborating, and managing conflict during tough eLearning assignments and group activities.

Clearly, the above-mentioned components of emotional intelligence play a very crucial role, and could definitely be used in online learning programs. Also, in this way, the L&D team could create a creative as well as productive, and yet friendly, skill-developing environment among employees, along with building trust, motivation, and devotion to outcomes.

Now that you understand how emotional intelligence influences eLearning and how to leverage your learners’ emotional intelligence in eLearning, you might be interested in understanding how to create memorable eLearning experiences.

What Are The Factors That Determine Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is a crucial component of eLearning. You can create an engaging, effective, and impactful eLearning experience by creating a positive learning environment, understanding your learners through empathy, using emotional language to create engagement, providing constructive and supportive feedback, and developing strong relationships with your learners. Along with these, there are four essential factors that should be examined when working on Emotional Intelligence-centric instructional programs:

1. Emotional Perception
2. Emotional Reasoning
3. Emotional Understanding
4. Emotional Management

Conclusion

Well! You often have seen workplace conflicts related to co-working or may notice an employee’s stress level, increasing over little issues. These might be indicators that it’s time to leverage emotional intelligence to tailor training and improve team communication. Emotional intelligence is all about recognizing and regulating emotions in a healthy manner. Employees with a high EI know how to handle situations tactfully and with a clear understanding of how their actions or behaviors may be perceived by others, rather than losing their cool when someone makes a remark or makes comments that may offend a colleague simply because they are unaware that it is insensitive.

Indeed, using emotional intelligence in eLearning helps learners increase their emotional quotient or EQ, allowing them to express, comprehend, and manage their emotions. As a result, people are better able to collaborate in groups, increase their work performance, and make meaningful relationships in both their personal and professional lives.