Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence Leadership Training Course

Course overview

Leadership failures often begin before a decision is made: a manager misses signs of frustration in a project meeting, reacts defensively to challenge, avoids a difficult performance conversation, or applies the same leadership approach to every employee. These patterns reduce trust, slow escalation of risks and create avoidable turnover. This Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence Leadership Training Course gives leaders a structured way to recognise emotional signals, regulate their own responses and influence others without relying on authority alone.

The course is built around Daniel Goleman’s four-domain model of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Participants practise identifying emotional triggers, separating observation from interpretation, using empathy in one-to-one conversations, delivering feedback with clarity, resolving tension and selecting leadership responses that fit the situation. They also examine Goleman’s six leadership styles—coercive, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching—and learn when each style supports or damages team performance.

Teaching combines facilitator-led model instruction with structured reflection, behavioural case studies, role-played conversations and peer feedback. Participants work from real workplace situations, including conflict, underperformance, change resistance and cross-functional disagreement. They leave with a personal Emotional Intelligence Leadership Action Plan containing a trigger map, stakeholder empathy analysis, preferred leadership-style profile, feedback scripts and 90-day behavioural commitments that can be reviewed with their manager.

The programme suits new and established managers, technical leaders moving into people leadership, project and programme leads, and professionals whose results depend on influencing colleagues, clients or partners. It is equally relevant to managers seeking stronger team climate and organisations that need leaders to handle pressure, disagreement and change more constructively.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Assess personal emotional triggers and behavioural patterns using Goleman’s four-domain emotional intelligence model
• Apply self-management techniques to pause, reframe and respond constructively during high-pressure interactions
• Distinguish observable behaviour from assumptions when interpreting colleagues’ emotions and intentions
• Use empathy-mapping and active-listening methods to identify stakeholder concerns and motivational drivers
• Select and adapt Goleman’s six leadership styles for performance, change, conflict and development situations
• Conduct emotionally intelligent feedback conversations using evidence, impact statements and agreed next actions
• Resolve interpersonal tension through structured dialogue, perspective-taking and collaborative problem definition
• Produce a 90-day Emotional Intelligence Leadership Action Plan with measurable behavioural commitments

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• People Managers — who need to improve team trust, feedback quality and day-to-day leadership judgement
• Newly Appointed Managers — who are establishing leadership habits and credibility with former peers or new teams
• Project and Programme Managers — who must influence cross-functional contributors without direct authority
• Technical and Functional Leaders — who need to translate specialist expertise into effective people leadership
• Senior Managers — who shape team climate and must lead calmly through change, pressure and conflict
• HR Business Partners and Learning Professionals — who support managers in improving leadership behaviour and team relationships

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course and does not require prior formal study of psychology, coaching or emotional intelligence. Participants should have experience of workplace meetings, stakeholder interactions or supervising others, and should bring two or three real leadership situations they are willing to examine confidentially. Familiarity with basic performance-management language, such as objectives, feedback and development actions, is helpful but not assumed. A laptop is useful for completing templates and the final action plan, although paper materials can be used in classroom delivery. No psychometric certification, assessment licence or prior use of the ESCI is required.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each Goleman model through short teaching segments, then participants apply it to realistic leadership incidents rather than abstract personality discussion. Individual trigger-mapping exercises are followed by paired listening drills, small-group analysis of leadership-style cases and facilitated role plays for feedback and conflict conversations. Participants receive structured peer and instructor observations against behavioural criteria. Throughout the week, they develop an action plan from live workplace challenges, test wording in practice sessions and refine measurable commitments for use during the following 90 days.

Course outline

Day 1: Emotional intelligence as a leadership discipline

• Daniel Goleman’s four-domain emotional intelligence model
• Emotional intelligence, personality and technical competence distinctions
• The leadership impact of emotional contagion
• Self-awareness signals: emotions, values and behavioural cues
• Observation versus interpretation in workplace interactions
• Personal trigger mapping under pressure
• Using reflective journalling to identify response patterns

Workshop: Participants create a personal trigger map from two recent leadership incidents and identify the thoughts, emotions, behaviours and consequences involved.

Day 2: Self-management under pressure

• Self-management competencies in Goleman’s framework
• The pause-reframe-respond technique
• Cognitive appraisal and emotional labelling
• Managing defensiveness during challenge and criticism
• Values-based decision making under pressure
• Stress signals and recovery micro-practices
• Preparing an emotionally intelligent response to escalation

Workshop: Participants work through a simulated project escalation and produce a response plan that separates immediate regulation actions from leadership communication actions.

Day 3: Social awareness and empathic influence

• Social awareness competencies and organisational awareness
• Active listening levels and listening blockers
• Empathy mapping for employees and stakeholders
• Reading verbal, vocal and behavioural emotional cues
• Inquiry questions that surface concerns without interrogation
• Power, status and cultural context in emotional interpretation
• Stakeholder emotion analysis during organisational change

Workshop: In triads, participants conduct a structured listening conversation and produce an empathy map identifying stated needs, unstated concerns and appropriate follow-up questions.

Day 4: Relationship management and adaptive leadership styles

• Relationship management competencies in leadership
• Goleman’s coercive leadership style: appropriate and inappropriate use
• Authoritative and affiliative leadership styles
• Democratic, pacesetting and coaching leadership styles
• Diagnosing team climate and situational needs
• Emotionally intelligent feedback using behaviour-impact-next step structure
• De-escalating disagreement through shared-problem dialogue

Workshop: Participants analyse leadership-style scenarios and role-play a difficult feedback conversation, receiving peer observations on empathy, clarity and chosen style.

Day 5: Applying emotional intelligence to leadership practice

• Integrating the four emotional intelligence domains in live decisions
• Using the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory as development evidence
• Interpreting multi-rater feedback without defensiveness
• Building behavioural experiments for leadership development
• Defining observable indicators of changed leadership behaviour
• Planning manager and peer accountability conversations
• Creating a 90-day Emotional Intelligence Leadership Action Plan

Workshop: Participants complete and peer-review a 90-day Emotional Intelligence Leadership Action Plan with trigger responses, stakeholder actions, leadership-style experiments and review measures.

Tools & standards covered

Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI), Korn Ferry 360, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Teams

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions