Emotional intelligence self-report
For: Christine Rieksen
Date: January 13, 2025
This resource was commissioned by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health from Dr. Joti Samra, R. Psych. Dr. Samra is also the CEO and founder of
MyWorkplaceHealth.
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This document is for informational purposes only, and does not contain any contractual undertakings, guarantees, representations or warranties
(express or implied) of any kind. Canada Life is not liable for any loss arising directly or indirectly from the use of, or any action taken in reliance on,
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The information contained in this document is not intended to be a substitute for appropriate professional medical advice from your own physician
or other health-care provider.
Table of Contents
Are you ready to change? ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................5
Report of strengths and areas for improvement................................................................................................................................................................................6
Your overall results ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................7
Self-awareness .....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................8
Self-management ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................11
Social awareness................................................................................................................................................................................................................................14
Relationship management ................................................................................................................................................................................................................17
Action planning ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................20
We’d love to hear how you used this free resource!.........................................................................................................................................................................23
Congratulations on completing your assessment. You’re now on your way to learning effective strategies to enhance your overall emotional
intelligence.
Emotional intelligence refers to your:
• Awareness of your own and others’ emotional states
• Ability to effectively manage your own stressors
• Ability to effectively manage your relationships when you or others are dealing with challenging or negative emotions
Enhancing our emotional intelligence has tremendous benefits. Research tells us we’re happier and healthier, both emotionally and physically when we
cultivate stronger emotional intelligence skills. We can reduce rates of depression and anxiety and strengthen our romantic, family, friend and workplace
relationships. Overall, enhancing our emotional intelligence improves our personal and workplace resilience, which is our ability to bounce back from or
adapt to adversity.
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Are you ready to change?
When we make successful changes in any area of life, including our responses and reactions to emotionally challenging or stressful situations, research
tells us we don’t do it all at once. Rather, we go through several stages. It’s important to know how ready we feel to make change. This can help us
consider additional factors that may be at play.
Our state of readiness also helps us set the right goals at the right time. If we set goals we’re not ready for, we set ourselves up for failure.
Most of us weren’t formally taught emotional intelligence, and so, like any other worthwhile endeavour, building these crucial skills takes time and
practice. Be patient with yourself. You may feel unnatural or awkward when you first work on these new skills and approaches, but soon you’ll notice they
feel more natural for you. And you’ll be rewarded with the benefits of enhancing personal and workplace resilience.
The results of your initial assessment for readiness to make changes in this area indicate:
• You’re confident in your ability to make positive changes in how you react to stress.
• You’re aware of the benefits of learning to manage stress for your overall personal and workplace effectiveness.
• You see the value of investing time in building emotional intelligence to better understand and manage stress.
• You value the ongoing training and development of your skills to understand and support those around you who are stressed.
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Report of strengths and areas for improvement
You’ve taken the first step toward enhancing your emotional intelligence by completing the assessment.
Review your high scores, as well as areas where you can improve. Think about the following questions:
• What personal factors may have contributed to your high scores?
How can you protect and sustain these personal characteristics?
• What personal factors may have contributed to your lower scores?
What are you willing to do to address these?
Don’t be discouraged if you have several areas to work on. There are many reasons for this, including:
• Being unaware of, or never being taught, the skill or strategy
• A previous negative experience leaving you reluctant to try again
• Not having time or resources
• Lacking ability or skill
• Lacking the support needed to implement the skill or strategy
• Being uncomfortable with the approach
Where to start
Challenging and negative emotions are a part of our human experience. We all face various personal and workplace stressors over time. We also
experience emotional stress, which impacts our ability to deal whatever life presents to us. What’s important is that we understand areas we can improve
and make a commitment to acting on things we can control.
Emotional intelligence – which is related to enhanced personal and workplace resilience – comprises 4 areas:
• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship management
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Your overall results
Legend
Potential strengths: Your scores indicate a higher than average level of emotional intelligence. There is always room for improvement.
Moderate scores: Your score indicates your emotional intelligence is relatively good. Check out the recommended resources to get even better.
Potential challenges: Your score indicates you could experience challenges in your relationships or stress in your own life. Use the suggested
resources to help build your emotional intelligence.
85%
81%
83%
83%
The first step to enhancing your emotional intelligence is to understand each of these skills and why they matter. Then, analyze your results and develop a
simple action plan to implement or improve specific strategies.
Easily integrated micro-changes are more effective and sustainable than trying to apply many changes at once. Start with those that are easy to
implement and/or those that can have the greatest positive impact.
Use the many free resources that can help. Complete the assessment each year to track your progress over time and continually improve.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Self-awareness
85%
Self-awareness involves the ability to accurately identify your emotions, understand why you react the way you do and recognize your impact on
others.
Why this matters
The skills in this area are designed to help you strengthen the following abilities:
1. Identifying your emotions accurately: identify, label and differentiate among a range of emotional experiences and reactions.
2. Understanding the basis for your reactions: recognize the potential causes and functions of your emotional experiences and reactions.
3. Understanding how your reactions impact others: realize how what you say and do affects other people’s emotional experiences and responses.
4. Understanding how other people’s emotions impact you: be aware of how you’re affected by other people’s emotional reactions and responses.
When you enhance your self-awareness, it allows you to better understand your emotions and reactions. Individuals with strengths in this area are:
• Aware of their own emotional reactions
• Skilled at differentiating among a range of emotional states
• Mindful of how they’re feeling at any given time
• Comfortable with appropriately expressing a range of emotions in various personal and workplace settings
• Able to understand the functions served by negative or challenging emotions
• Able to pinpoint the causes of their reactions
• Able to avoid personalizing others’ reactions
• Aware of how their reactions impact others
• Able to anticipate how their behaviour and reactions impact others
• Supportive of others who may be nervous or apprehensive when it comes to expressing their emotional states
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clwsmh.com.
Your self-awareness results
You rated yourself as doing very well in [7/12] of the statements in this area. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a negative statement or strongly
agreed with a positive statement.
Here are some suggestions for the statements you indicated were areas you could improve.
What can I do differently?
• You’ll be ineffective in taking the right action to reduce your stress if you’re unaware of what has triggered your emotions or reactions.
– Try the Emotional triggers activity to learn more.
• You may be unable to effectively regulate your emotions if you’re unclear about what you’re experiencing.
– Track your emotions for one week to gain a better understanding.
• When you don’t know why you react in a certain way; you risk worsening the situation by responding ineffectively.
– Learn more about how your emotions, thoughts and behaviours are connected.
• If you don’t clarify others’ interpretations of your reactions, you risk unnecessary issues and problems could arise.
– Learn what might contribute to you being misunderstood.
• Few people enjoy being criticized but learning to be objective about negative feedback is an important skill in both your personal and professional
life.
– Learn to receive negative feedback without feeling attacked.
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clwsmh.com.
Self-awareness assessment statements
The items that are bolded below are ones where you indicated they are not a concern for you. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a
negative statement or strongly agreed with a positive statement.
• I’m aware of what might trigger my emotions or reactions.
• I can accurately describe the specific emotions I’m feeling at any given moment.
• I can easily tell the difference between similar emotions, such as anger, disgust and shame.
• Generally, it’s best to avoid negative emotions and move forward.
• Negative emotions generally don’t serve any useful function.
• I can usually pinpoint exactly why I reacted a certain way.
• Anyone who upsets me should be prepared for a strong emotional reaction.
• It’s not my fault if others misinterpret the way I respond to them.
• I’m aware of the effect what I do or say has on others.
• Ineffective communication is almost always a sign of someone being manipulative.
• Those who criticize or blame me are typically trying to deflect blame from themselves.
• Complaining, whining or crying are almost always a ploy to get my attention.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Self-management
81%
Self-management involves the ability to effectively regulate stress and appropriately express emotional reactions, whether alone or with others.
Why this matters
The skills in this area are designed to help you strengthen the following abilities:
1. Managing stress: understand, anticipate and manage personal and work-related stressors effectively.
2. Self-regulating: can calm yourself, whether alone or with others.
3. Managing frustration and anger: express frustration and anger appropriately and being mindful of how these emotions impact others.
4. Making decisions in stressful situations: demonstrate thoughtfulness, self-discipline and emotional control when responding to stressful situations.
When you enhance your self-management, you can improve how well you emotionally react and respond to stressors. Individuals with strengths in this
area are:
• Calm, level-headed and even-tempered
• Effective, even in highly stressful personal or work situations
• Calm under high pressure
• Able to bounce back from difficult situations easily, quickly and effectively
• Respectful towards others in all circumstances
• Able to modulate intense emotions, such as frustration, irritation and anger
• Thoughtful decision makers
• Effective and controlled in demanding situations
• Attuned to others’ emotional reactions in high-pressure circumstances
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Your self-management results
You rated yourself as doing very well in [8/12] of the statements in this area. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a negative statement or strongly
agreed with a positive statement.
Here are some suggestions for the statements you indicated were areas you could improve.
What can I do differently?
• You risk burnout if you don’t maintain effective work-life harmony.
– Improve your ability to prevent burnout.
• You’re likely to be prevented from performing effectively when you strongly believe that you have no control over stress.
– Learn to challenge your thoughts about stress so you can continue to be effective.
• Your relationships, as well as your overall levels of stress, are worsened when you stop effectively communicating or connecting with others due to
urgent demands.
– Resilience is a skill that enables you to deal with stressors more effectively. Develop a plan to build your own resilience.
• Reacting without reflecting can lead to actions you later regret.
– View this video to hear how others manage their reactions to pressures.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Self-management assessment statements
The items that are bolded below are ones where you indicated they are not a concern for you. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a
negative statement or strongly agreed with a positive statement.
• I regularly struggle with maintaining good work-life harmony.
• For the most part I have no control over my stress.
• Stress prevents me from being as effective as I’d like to be.
• It’s impossible for me to hide my emotional reactions even when I try to control them.
• I remain calm even under extreme pressure.
• If I get upset, it takes a long time for me to feel like myself again.
• Others would say I’m always respectful no matter how frustrated or upset I am.
• Anger’s one of the hardest emotions for me to control.
• People can tell I’m emotionally upset, even if I haven’t said a word.
• When faced with urgent demands, it’s generally best for me if others stay out of my way.
• When under high pressure, I tend to act quickly and reflect later.
• It’s unreasonable to focus on others’ emotional reactions when I’m under high demands.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Social awareness
83%
Social awareness involves the ability to understand others’ emotions and reactions and respond in a supportive, non-judgmental manner.
Why this matters
The skills in this area are designed to help you strengthen the following abilities:
1. Understanding others’ emotions:
• Recognize and understand the meaning, function and motivation behind others’ emotional reactions and responses
• Engage in non-judgmental, active and reflective listening to better understand what others are trying to communicate and why
• Express empathy, respect and appreciation effectively – both verbally and non-verbally
2. Responding to others who are distressed: respond effectively to others who are emotionally upset or distressed. At minimum, you can avoid
reactions that make a situation worse.
3. Being flexible and adaptable: use inclusive approaches by understanding others’ unique attributes and differences, including diversity in:
• Age
• Gender
• Sexual orientation
• Ethnicity
• Culture
• Health status, including mental health
4. Overcoming barriers to action: understand common barriers to responding effectively to others who are emotionally upset or distressed, such as
uncertainty about what to say or do.
When you enhance your social-awareness of others’ emotional reactions and responses, you can improve your ability to communicate effectively.
Individuals with strengths in this area are:
• Excellent listeners
• Understanding and empathetic
• Non-judgmental
• Respectful and appreciative
• Comfortable discussing others’ emotions
• Confident in knowing what to do and say when others are emotionally upset or distressed
• Calm, even in challenging situations with others
• Someone others seek out for support when they’re emotionally struggling
• Understanding and inclusive of others’ diverse characteristics and emotional needs
• Effective communicators who can tailor and adapt their approach to meet others’ individual needs
• Proactive in providing support to others who may be struggling emotionally
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Your social awareness results
You rated yourself as doing very well in [5/12] of the statements in this area. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a negative statement or strongly
agreed with a positive statement.
Here are some suggestions for the statements you indicated were areas you could improve.
What can I do differently?
• Personal and workplace relationships may suffer if you don’t cultivate strong listening skills.
– Learn to improve your listening skills.
• When you avoid discussing others’ emotions, you risk alienating them and damaging your relationship.
– Learn to increase your comfort in responding to those who are emotionally distressed.
• When someone’s upset, it’s important to listen and reflect back to them your understanding of what they just described.
– Reflective listening helps you avoid saying or doing the wrong thing and often supports the individual to put their own situation in
perspective.
• If others are afraid to approach you for help, it can be a sign that you may be unintentionally alienating others.
– Learn how to have a supportive conversation.
• Discomfort with others’ negative emotional reactions impedes personal and relationship growth.
– Understanding that all reactions are ways to meet personal needs, you can reduce your discomfort while you explore your curiosity about
what is motivating the behaviour.
• When you avoid speaking to others about their emotions and feelings, you miss opportunities to give and elicit the need for support during times of
need.
– Learn to respond to emotionally distressed people effectively to increase your comfort level.
• When you ignore others’ emotional distress, you risk giving the inadvertent message that you don’t care or don’t want to help.
– Rather than jump in, reflect on the pros and cons of reaching out to determine your best move.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Social awareness assessment statements
The items that are bolded below are ones where you indicated they are not a concern for you. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a
negative statement or strongly agreed with a positive statement.
• Most people around me would describe me as a great listener.
• I have a hard time understanding where others are coming from when they’re really upset.
• I’m uncomfortable when others discuss their emotions with me.
• When someone’s upset, I’m generally not sure what to say or do.
• I can easily remain calm when dealing with someone who’s emotionally upset.
• Others regularly seek my help when they’re emotionally distressed.
• I’m easily able to approach emotionally charged situations from a place of non-judgmental empathy and understanding.
• I feel comfortable dealing with others’ negative emotional reactions.
• I’m easily able to adapt my communication style to meet others’ needs and preferences.
• Unless I’m directly responsible, it’s not up to me to provide support to others when they are emotionally distressed.
• I’m generally uncomfortable speaking to others about their emotions and feelings.
• I generally don’t acknowledge others’ emotional distress unless they choose to come to me for support.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Relationship management
83%
Relationship management involves the ability to communicate in an assertive, respectful and non-defensive manner, particularly when providing
feedback or managing interpersonal conflict.
Why this matters
The skills in this area are designed to help you strengthen the following abilities:
1. Communicating assertively: engage in assertive, non-defensive communication that avoids aggressive, passive or passive-aggressive behaviours.
2. Giving and receiving negative feedback: share negative feedback in a constructive and respectful manner to help minimize your own and others’
negative emotional reactions and responses.
3. Managing conflict: approach, manage and resolve emotionally charged conflicts and disagreements effectively.
4. Influencing others positively: understand how to effectively manage the emotional dynamics of a team or group.
When you enhance your relationship management, you can improve the quality of your relationships. Individuals with strengths in this area are:
• Non-defensive
• Clear and respectful in describing their concerns and perspectives to others
• Open to negative feedback from others
• Skilled in giving constructive feedback to others
• Balanced in their view of others’ strengths and weaknesses
• Effective at approaching, managing and resolving conflict
• Calm and confident in difficult or emotionally charged situations
• Proactive in addressing interpersonal difficulties
• Skilled at managing team or group dynamics, personally and at work
• Motivational and inspirational leaders
• Skilled at creating a positive and hopeful mood even during stressful or otherwise challenging situations
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Your relationship management results
You rated yourself as doing very well in [6/12] of the statements in this area. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a negative statement or strongly
agreed with a positive statement.
Here are some suggestions for the statements you indicated were areas you could improve.
What can I do differently?
• When you avoid expressing your concerns to others, the problem may worsen and your overall stress levels increase.
– The inability to express concerns effectively may result in passive-aggressive behaviour. Learn more about communication styles that may
cause challenges for you.
• When someone is negative about whatever you are discussing, getting louder or more intense rarely helps you get your message across.
– Learn to communicate with clarity to avoid the frustration.
• Being someone of few words is okay, but when you rely on body language to communicate, make sure you’re sending the right message.
– Learn more about body language awareness to choose what you communicate.
• If others become upset when you provide negative feedback, there’s a strong likelihood you haven’t communicated in a respectful or effective
manner.
– Learn to effectively provide constructive criticism.
• If you lack the skills to effectively resolve conflict, your overall stress levels may increase, and your relationships might worsen.
– Learn to deal with personal conflict more effectively.
• If you experience high stress when dealing with conflict, you’re more likely to avoid a situation or approach it ineffectively.
– Learn why conflict may be difficult for you and tips to make it easier.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Relationship management assessment statements
The items that are bolded below are ones where you indicated they are not a concern for you. This could mean you strongly disagreed with a
negative statement or strongly agreed with a positive statement.
• I generally avoid expressing my concerns if I know addressing an issue might upset someone.
• I tend to communicate more intensely when I feel I’m not getting my message across.
• When I’m upset I tend to show, rather than say, how I feel.
• I tend to immediately defend or justify myself when receiving negative or critical feedback.
• I’m uncomfortable providing constructive or critical feedback to others.
• I’ve generally found that others become upset when I give them negative feedback.
• People would describe me as skilled at resolving conflict.
• Dealing with conflict is something I find very stressful.
• I feel I have a good ability to understand others’ views and opinions, even when I disagree.
• I know how to create a positive mood when those around me are under high stress.
• Others would describe me as being respectfully direct when the situation calls for it.
• I’m generally calm and confident in difficult situations.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Action planning
Research indicates we’re much more likely to make effective changes if we write out our goals. Then, we create accountability by sharing those
goals with someone – whether it’s a partner, a close friend or a trusted co-worker or manager.
Review your Emotional intelligence assessment strengths and areas for improvement.
1. Choose one specific area you wish to improve. Look through the suggestions under “What can I do differently” and read or complete the suggested
resources provided.
2. Write down how you would measure success in improving in the statement you have chosen.
3. Share this with someone who’ll check in with you after a few weeks to see how you’re doing.
4. When you feel you’ve improved in that particular area, come back to the report to look for other opportunities for improvement.
5. At any time, you can retake the emotional intelligence assessment to measure your overall improvement.
Check out Emotional intelligence for employees and Emotional intelligence for leaders for action-oriented and reflection exercises to help you
further refine your emotional intelligence.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
You can also use the following free resources to help you build your emotional intelligence:
Plan for resilience: Use this resource to:
• Improve your ability to bounce back after a potential health, personal or work crisis
• Identify effective strategies and resources to draw on when needed
• Deal with personal challenges or crises and support others
Creating a plan may not help us avoid crises but it can make it easier to get through them and effectively support others. Post-secondary students may
find From surviving to thriving: developing personal and academic resilience most helpful.
Building stronger teams: Use this resource to strengthen leadership skills and build team resilience. The team-building activities can help your team:
• Respond more effectively to stressors
• Resolve issues
• Support each other through challenging times
All these skills relate to emotional intelligence and resilience. Higher levels of emotional intelligence can help reduce our stress and positively impact our
teams’ effectiveness– a win-win for all.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.
Workplace Strategies for Mental Health resources are:
• For all employers, people leaders and employees
• Available in English and French
Plan for resilience
Use this resource to help improve your ability to bounce back if faced with a
health, personal or work crisis. It will help you identify effective strategies
and resources to draw on when needed.
• Evidence- or practice-based
• Available to anyone at no cost
Examples of the resources available at clwsmh.com include:
Caregiver resources
Use this information to help caregivers find support for their loved one,
including government and provincial services, financial and healthcare
support and more.
Guarding Minds at Work
Psychologically safe interactions workshop
Use this slide presentation, facilitator guide and participant handout to
engage your team in a workshop that increases awareness of how our
behaviours may be interpreted as bullying, even when that wasn't our
intention.
Psychologically safe leadership assessment
Identify and support leadership strategies that are psychologically safe for
you and all leaders in your organization.
This suite of tools can help you assess the psychological health and safety Supporting employee success
of your workplace.
Use this free tool to help employers help an employee create and follow a
workplace plan that addresses performance and workplace stressors.
Health resources
Supportive conversation library
Choose credible and practical information and resources to help you
manage your own health and wellness and help others.
Questions and strategies to help you have a supportive conversation with
someone you care about on difficult topics like mental health, stress,
Mental health awareness videos
addiction, anger, abuse or lying.
Share this video series to provide practical coping strategies that can be
used by individuals at work, off work and when returning to work.
On the agenda workshop series
Is a series of free workshop materials and facilitator tools to address
psychosocial factors. Create an action plan with your team to improve
psychological health and safety.
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clwsmh.com.
We’d love to hear how you used this free resource!
Contact us through social media or at clwsmh.com.
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All Workplace Strategies resources are available to anyone at no cost, compliments of Canada Life. To learn more, visit
clwsmh.com.