The Netherlands Education Group - Social Intelligence and Leadership

Social intelligence is the capacity to communicate and form relationships with empathy and assertiveness. It comes from knowing yourself and exercising proper emotional management. We can say it is closely linked to emotional intelligence, but it is not exactly the same thing. 

Social intelligence is essential for unlocking the skills of effective communication, dialogue, and teamwork to create an optimal and productive work environment. Until recently, social intelligence was a priority that few people had, mostly because they already had the right mindset for it and picked up the associated skills along the way, but training to develop social intelligence is relatively new.

We invite you to join the Social Intelligence and Leadership program to develop your social intelligence and apply your new knowledge and skills in daily life! Understand other people better and communicate more effectively! 

The program will be especially useful for those who want to create a healthy environment at work but the material you will learn can be also applicable in personal life. New knowledge and skills will help you to build effective relationships with colleagues, partners and customers. Everyone is unique and sees the world in their own way. In order to understand others, you should learn to see the world from their eyes. That is where social intelligence can help you! 

Do you have difficulties in communication with colleagues? Do you experience stress at work due to unhealthy relationships there? Social intelligence can help you there. We cannot always choose our colleagues but we can choose how to build relationships with them. Your stress at work might affect all other areas of your life but improving the social climate in relations to colleagues can change the situation.

The program will allow you to improve your communication skills, understand better behaviour of other people and build better relationships at work and in private life. 

After participation in the program you will be able to: 

• Build more effective and strong relationship at work and in private life
• Understand better the behaviour of other people 
• Decrease your stress level by being able to avoid complications during social interactions with other people 
• Adjust your own communication style at work if you feel the need to do so
• Acquire the skill to allow you to see others in a new way
• Identify and remove obstacles that you might face during communication with people 
• Increase your motivation and efficiency at work by being able to build more enjoyable relationships with colleagues 
• Develop your leadership skills by understanding how you can influence other people
• Work more effectively in a team having better knowledge about the reasons for the behaviour of other members of the team
• Obtain great networking opportunities with other people who are interested in social intelligence and with whom you can keep in touch in future and measure your progress together 

Program

In a society where social relationships are a crucial component of everyday life, having enduring and enjoyable social ties not only promotes happiness but also better health. The importance of social intelligence is substantial and growing, providing individuals with the potential to better themselves and their relationships with others (Zautra, 2015). 

Social intelligence is a major building block of developing and maintaining social relationships (Belton, 2016).

Today, learning social intelligence is indispensable because it is the best resource to build and maintain a good work culture and to protect jobs in an era of increasing automation. Development of social intelligence leads to success at work in addition to a better work atmosphere and productivity (Zaccaro, 1991). Workers with higher levels of social intelligence are better prepared for a complex work environment which is especially important in today’s VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world. They are more flexible in their responses and more aware of the various demands and requirements of those situations.   

Social intelligence is of particular importance for leaders. It is not a secret that followers mirror their leaders. Part of a leader’s job is to develop human capital (Goleman, 2008). Social intelligence can help you to develop a leadership style that will allow you to communicate effectively with colleagues. 

Relationships you have with other people have a huge impact on the quality of your life. Relationships at work in most cases play a crucial role in your career development. You might be very knowledgeable in the field where you work and be able to do the work better than anyone of your colleagues but if you are unable to build effective relationships with your colleagues, your career opportunities within this company might be limited. Social intelligence can help you here! 

Social intelligence manages the required abilities for effective communication based on empathy, self-knowledge, listening, and reading of emotions.

Nowadays at the workplace, you often have to complete a series of non-routine tasks that often requires social intelligence, complex critical thinking, and creative problem-solving (Garcia-Bulle, 2019) 

Because our behaviour creates and develops neural networks, we are not necessarily prisoners of our genes and our early childhood experiences. You can change if you are ready to put in the effort (Goleman, 2008). And the tools that you will learn during the course will help you! 

Moreover, according to the research, higher levels of social intelligence will allow you to live happier, better cope with daily and major life stressors, protect from an incidence of some diseases and live a longer life (Cacioppo, 2015). And at the same time, lower levels of social intelligence is associated with the development of depression, anxiety and loneliness (Faust, 1985).

This program includes the material for the 4-weekend option and in addition to that, we will offer a large block on leadership – how you can use social intelligence to develop your leadership skills. We make a large emphasis on the use of social intelligence for the development of leadership skills.