Earlier this week, I met with graduate students in the design program at Lake Washington Technical Collage about Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

My colleague Lindsay Andreotti teaches a class there on “Entrepreneurship and Design” for students in the second year of the program (about 35 people). This was a pretty exciting audience because the bulk of their instruction focuses on design principles and skills. This class is unique in that it addresses the entrepreneurial spirit required of many designers to pursue their own ideas for products and services they wish to bring to market.

In the span of about two hours we generated our own definition of EQ, explored how it shows up in the workplace (or not), it’s roots in early childhood development and the growth of the limbic brain, and a simple tool for examining a pinch or challenge that can strengthen EQ. The talk was tailored for entrepreneurs-in-training, and one student suggested it was only helpful for people “who work in PR.” But the applications of EQ development are much broader than that. My favorite go-to article on this point has to be Cary Cherniss’ “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence”.

Be sure to check out the full list of resources for the EQ for Entrepreneurs workshop.

And if you attended the October 12th workshop at Lake Washington Technical College, I’d welcome any feedback you wish to offer in the comments section below.