Incorporating Emotional Intelligence into the Preparation and ...

Continued/Table 2: Ten Suggestions for Increasing and Practicing Emotional Intelligence duringInternational Travel6. Work to connect with each fellow traveler. Avoid splitting yourself off from the group withone or two special friends. This reduces your resources and limits your future options while itundermines group process.7. Write a journal. Writing is a tool that can help surface feelings and ideas about how tomanage them. Keeping a journal can serve as a practice and reminder of the physical andemotional journey you are taking8. Be wary of the results of alcohol consumption. Often traveling adults who don’t know eachother well socialize with alcohol. When tired, stressed, and in unfamiliar surroundings, drinkingmay depress your ability to exercise EI competencies.9. Adopt a Live and Let Live philosophy. Your engagement with your fellow travelers, whileintense, is time limited. Try to shrug off others’ idiosyncrasies if they don’t overtly intrude onyour experience.10. Schedule a trip de-briefing session before traveling. Everyone should know that the groupwill gather on return to review the trip, settle outstanding issues, and share improvement ideas forthe next course. This also gives participants the opportunity to self-regulate and delay workingout some problems until return. Also assess the EI process. How can skills learned by applied indaily life?The Post Travel PeriodIn terms of group development, now is the time for adjourning and parting. Inasmuch as the group hasworked closely together under intense conditions, there may be unfinished business in terms ofunresolved conflict. Additionally, there is likely to be some letdown and sadness because a remarkableexperience has come to an end. It may be necessary to deliberately seek emotional closure amongparticipants, particularly since new tasks and old responsibilities are pulling everyone in differentdirections. Some ideas to promote the exercise of EI competencies at this stage include the following:For participants.• Exorcise left over emotions by talking to family and friends. Use reflection time to betterunderstand how the practice self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skillscan boost personal performance.• Meet for the previously scheduled debriefing session for the purpose of discussing anyproblems, issues, or conflicts unresolved during travel.• Don’t expect to completely resolve all differences of opinion. In wrapping up the activities of atemporary group, final resolution on certain conflicts may carry too high a price to be worthwhile.For the institution.• Maintain an institutional understanding of emotional intelligence training for internationaltravelers. Share feedback from students who have used the curriculum with administrators andprofessors. Share material with a broad faculty base whether they are travel leaders or not. (Mostnotably, professors of organizational behavior are likely to be receptive).• Ask all trip leaders to routinely integrate EI training into their course plans. An EI lesson plancould be generically prepared for all faculty responsible for travel courses.• Identify EI experts on your faculty and/or staff and broadcast their talents. Extant trip leadersmay not be familiar with EI concepts and may need to be trained. If EI work is deemed valuable buttrip leaders are not interested or able to train students, facilitators can be brought into the class tohelp complete this work pre-travel.Emotional Intelligence Competency Building for International Travel Course Participants 10