Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence

YOUR TURN

Write and Reflect

After you have completed the EI questionnaire, reflect on your results. Were you surprised about what you learned about yourself? What particular areas would you like to work on? Answer these questions in a journal entry.

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A number of sophisticated tools can be used to assess emotional intelligence. Some first-year seminars and many campus counseling centers offer the opportunity to complete a professionally administered questionnaire such as the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), which provides a detailed assessment of your emotional skills and a graphic representation of where you stand in comparison with other students. Even without a formal test, however, you can take a number of steps to get in touch with your own EI (see the box below). You’ll have to dig deep inside yourself and be willing to be honest about how you really think and how you really behave. This process can take time, and that’s fine. Think of your EI as a work in progress.