BSBLDR511 – Develop and use emotional intelligence - The Complete Academic Support Hub

BSB51915 Diploma of Leadership and Management

BSB50215 Diploma of Business

BSBLDR511 – Develop and use emotional intelligence

Task 2

Questioning Assessment
Candidate Instructions
You will complete questions for purposes of formal assessment as per the questions outlined in the questioning record below, and any additional probing or clarification questions required by the assessor. The Knowledge Activity is designed to confirm your competency for all the required knowledge in the unit of competency. Task Details There is no restriction on the length of the question responses, or time restriction in completing the assessment. It is anticipated that the assessment will take approximately 6 hours to complete. The assessment may be re-attempted on two further occasions (maximum three attempts in total). All assessments must be resubmitted 3 days within receiving your unsatisfactory grade. You must clearly indicate “Re-submission” on your resubmitted work. You must complete all questions unassisted by the assessor or other personnel but may refer to reference material as may be needed. All questions must be answered satisfactorily for the assessment to be completed satisfactorily. For any assessment conducted that is incomplete, or without satisfactory performance, the assessment will need to be completed again after further training support. This may be simply to focus on question areas not achieved in the prior assessment. Evidence to be collected Answer the activity in as much detail as possible, considering your organizational requirements. In undertaking this assessment task, you as the candidate are providing consent for your work to be reviewed for the purposes of formal assessment in the unit(s) of competency. If you have concern regarding this permission, please discuss this with your assessor prior to undertaking the task.
Objective	To provide you with an opportunity to show you have the required knowledge for this unit.

Candidate Declaration
Candidate name:
Trainer’s name:
Date:
Assessment declaration:	I declare that no part of this assessment has been copied from another person’s work, except where clearly noted on documents or work submitted. I declare that no part of this assessment has been written for me by another person. I understand that plagiarism is a serious offence that may lead to disciplinary action.
Candidate signature:

Your trainer and assessor will be grading your work and provide you with constructive feedback on the Learning Management system.

Task 2 – Performance and Skills Assessment

Part A – Reflect on Your Own Emotional Intelligence

Research 3 different tools, techniques or systems for identifying an individual’s emotional strengths and weaknesses.
1. Write a report on each giving a brief history and background on the system and make a recommendation on which one the three would be best to use with the personnel at your work and why. If you are not currently working, you can base it on a company you used to work at or a well-known company you would like to work at in the future.
2. Ensure you properly reference the ideas you draw from the published sources you have researched (300 to 400 words)

2. Apply one of the emotional intelligence tools you have researched in Q1 to yourself, then write a self-reflection on the emotional strengths and weaknesses the tool reveals to you. Ensure that your self-reflection covers three (3) strengths and three (3) weaknesses and includes anecdotal examples of your behaviours and the underlying emotional strengths and/or weaknesses. (400 – 500 words)

3. Consider 3 stressors you experience in your workplace and complete the following:

Describe the 3 stressors you experience in the workplace (40 words)
Describe the resulting emotional states and how you respond. (60 words)
Describe one strategy for dealing with the stressors. (40 words)

4. Identify and describe one cause or trigger of a positive emotional state and one cause or trigger of a negative emotional state at work. How can you use the awareness of these triggers to control your responses and achieve positive outcomes, especially with respect to your impact on others and their work performance? (60 words)

5. Refer to Appendix A – Emotional Intelligence Feedback Form. Use this form to get feedback from 3 people in your workplace (or 3 people who know you well). Ask them to fill in the feedback form and return them to you.

Get feedback from 3 people.
Scan or take a photo of the feedback forms and upload with your assessment.

6. Based on the feedback from question 5, describe 3 strategies to improve your emotional intelligence. (60 words)

7. Describe 3 behaviours that you can model in your workplace to demonstrate good management of emotions. (60 words)

Part B – Respond to Emotional Intelligence of Others (Case Study)

For this assessment task, you will read and respond to a case study by answering a set of written questions.

Introduction to Case Study – Australian Hardware

Australian Hardware (a simulated business) is a large and expanding hardware and homewares retailer with approximately 140 stores located across Australia. In its vision statement, Australian Hardware states that it intends to ‘lead the hardware and home-improvement market in Australia within five years’.

In order to realise this vision, the organisation intends to:

build market share by focusing on the customer experience
control direct and indirect costs through efficient internal processes
establish the reputation of Australian Hardware as a socially and environmentally responsible company.

These strategic organisation-wide directions are implemented from senior management down, in the form of performance expectations for managers and employees at every level of the organisation.

Australian Hardware realises that the success of the business rests on its people. For this reason, the organisation insists that managers build effective teams by responding to the needs of employees. Such needs include safety and security, fairness, flexibility, skills development and self-actualisation. Satisfying such needs will allow employees to focus more effectively on work tasks and customer needs.

In addition, Australian Hardware encourages managers to take a flexible approach to meeting performance targets and to set goals in close collaboration with employees. To implement strategic directions and advance Australian Hardware’s values, managers are expected to lead employees by, first of all, modelling positive behaviours and attributes – those they expect their employees to emulate and embody in turn. To lead and inspire people, managers must demonstrate keen emotional awareness and promote positive team-building behaviours in others.

You are the new General Operations Manager of the Wollongong store and you are ready for a challenge. You are directly responsible for managing general sales and checkout staff, administration staff and a human resources officer. You report to the Store Manager, who is responsible for all areas of store responsibility (Timber, Plumbing & Electrical, Gardens and Homewares departments and general operations).

Case Study – Scenario 1

Your Store Manager has had a stressful month. It is the end of the financial year and sales revenue in the Timber and Plumbing & Electrical departments is down on targets, almost certainly due to increased competition from smaller competitors for trade contractors’ business.

Just this week, the Store Manager held a meeting in which she yelled at all the department managers and told you and them to work out a way to improve revenue. Obviously, the outburst did not make much sense as the department managers, in such a large business, do not have the capability to raise much revenue directly. This is because marketing and distribution innovations that could have an effect are mainly a head office responsibility.

The Wollongong store’s inability to counter the threat from smaller, more nimble trade suppliers has been the main reason for the revenue deficit. Naturally, the atmosphere around the store and in the management, team is subdued, and a few managers have discussed leaving the organisation; other managers have responded by pushing unreasonable sales demands onto their sales staff.

You are now feeling pressure to do something: to act contrary to budget planning and cut costs or to increase pressure on others to offset poor performance in other areas. In your opinion, this leadership behaviour was disrespectful to all the managers, created unnecessary concern about job security and undermined trust.

There has been a clearly negative flow-on effect down through the store, which is now affecting people at a lower level. You are justifiably angry at the manager’s behaviour and blame her for making a bad situation worse with poor leadership and poor emotional awareness.

8. Review the case study – scenario 1 and answer the following questions.

Describe what you think is the best way to respond to the Store Manager’s behaviour. Describe how you would model positive leadership behaviour. (60 words)
Describe the principles of emotional intelligence that the Store Manager did not demonstrate. (60 words)
Describe how the Store Manager should have acted and communicated. (60 words)
Describe the connection between the Store Manager’s behaviour and store morale. What is the effect the Store Manager’s behaviour could have on staff performance? (60 words)

Case Study – Scenario 2

An employee has come to you with an issue involving a co-worker. In general, the sales team is a cohesive team, but now a relatively new member of the team is rubbing people the wrong way.

She never participates in drinks or other social occasions outside work. She never involves herself in normal, day-to-day conversations about family, popular movies or culture.

The team is beginning to form the opinion that she is too aloof and doesn’t like the other team members and is quite upset about it. On the sales team, it’s really important to be able to feel a connection with other team members. When you feel this connection, you know you’re able to rely on them – to relieve you when you need some personal time, feed you information as you need it and help you serve customers.

You happen to know that the sales staff member in question is a valuable staff member with good customer skills and product knowledge; however, as a foreign-born, conservative, religious woman, she is having trouble relating to the other team members.

Many team-bonding opportunities involve activities that she cannot participate in, such as out-of-hours parties, alcohol or confusing cultural references.

She is in a bind because she would like to be accepted as a member of the team, but when all avenues to team-bonding are closed off, she feels stigmatised and perceived by others as an unfriendly person.

9. Review the above case study – scenario 2 and answer the following questions

Provide at least two examples of possible misinterpretations of expressions or behaviour that may arise in the context of a diverse, multi-cultural workforce. Length: (60 words)
Describe how you would explain to the employee who complained about this worker’s behaviour, how cultural expressions may be misinterpreted – and have been in this case. (60 words)
Discuss how the team can raise their awareness of cultural expression and promote effective communication to avoid misunderstandings to resolve the differences. (60 words)

Create a plan of at least 3 actions for identifying and responding appropriately to a range of cultural expressions of emotions

Action Plan	Person	Due Date

Part C – Coaching Emotional Intelligence

Refer to Case Study – Scenario 1 (see below) and your answers to question 8.

You are the regional sales manager and this situation has been brought to your attention by one of the staff at the Wollongong store. You have arranged a meeting with the store manager to discuss the situation and put in place measures to address this behaviour.

Case Study – Scenario 1

You are now feeling pressure to do something. In your opinion, this leadership behaviour was disrespectful to all the managers, created unnecessary concern about job security and undermined trust.

11. Assume that you will be conducting a meeting to resolve the issues in the scenario above. Imagine you are the regional manager. You will need to prepare a coaching session

You will need to fill in the table below, In the session how would you ensure you would:

Introduce the session positively by establishing why the coaching is occurring and ask the store manager for input.

Build the store manager’s awareness of their emotional intelligence weaknesses and strengths.
Build the store manager’s awareness on how emotional self-awareness and empathy can help identify personal obstacles to success with their goals, peer relationships and help the whole team and organisation to succeed.

Establish and discuss how the store manager could have better handled the situation.
Establish 3 actions for the store manager to help them improve their emotional intelligence and deal with stressful situations

Use the following template to help you prepare for the meeting. Fill in each section and answer the questions

Emotional Intelligence Coaching
Introduction	Summarise the reasons for the coaching session: How would you ask the store manager for input, to describe own perspective? Talk about how their behaviour effects other staff:
EI Strengths and Weaknesses	What questions would you ask to establish the store manager’s understanding of emotional intelligence strengths and weaknesses
EI Benefits	What questions would you ask to establish understanding of the benefits of emotional intelligence to team performance and relationships:
Options to handling similar situations	What questions would you ask to help generate options or opportunities to better handle similar situations in future:
Proposed Actions to agree on	List 3 actions you could agree to with the store manager and yourself to help them improve their emotional intelligence and deal with the job’s stresses and triggers.

12.You wish to ensure that the staff in the Wollongong store, all have the opportunity to develop better emotional intelligence and team atmosphere. Describe 3 ways you can achieve this. (60 words)

Part D – Using Strengths and Weaknesses

During this task you are required to show how you would use emotional intelligence to maximise team outcomes.

Scenario

You are the owner of a small health and well-being retreat centre called Healthy Beings. You have decided to set up a team to speak at a free local wellness seminar, helping to promote Healthy Beings and better health in the community.

Here’s the format for the presentation:

Introduction (5 minutes)	Introduce the importance of health and wellbeing, introduce what Healthy Beings does to support health and wellbeing in the community, discuss benefits of becoming a part of the Healthy Beings Community’.
Topic One (10 minutes)	Loving fresh: The importance of being mindful and making healthy choices consistently – to fuel our bodies with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Topic Two (10 minutes)	Living fit: The importance of being active and connecting with other people socially through exercise – to feel strong, powerful and motivated.
Topic Three (10 minutes)	Logging out: The importance of relaxation, downtime and switching off from modern life – to better connect with our ‘centre’ or sense of self.
Conclusion (5 minutes)	Plugging Healthy Beings product and service offerings. Offering discounts for sign-ups. Leaving audience with a feel-good message.

The team consists of Nikola Deed (General Manager, Alternative Therapies Lead, Naturopath, Yoga Instructor) Blake Randall (Coaching and Mentoring Lead), Cindy Yen (Marketing and Sales Lead) and yourself playing the part of Jeff Irvine (Fitness & Nutrition Lead, Personal Trainer, Fitness Instructor and Nutritionist). Each person has to speak at least once.

Here’s a quick overview of their top five strengths:

Jeff Irvine	Nikola Deed	Cindy Yen	Blake Randall
Honesty Teamwork Leadership Awe Enthusiasm	Humility Kindness Spirituality Curiosity Self-control	Enthusiasm Courage Optimism Teamwork Social intelligence	Perseverance Judgment Gratitude Prudence Fairness

13.Using the following template, choose at least one speaking role for each team member and explain why he/she is the best person for this role. Justify your choices in detail by describing how he/she will help to achieve the objective of each role.

Topic	Presenter	Justification for selection
Introduction (5 minutes)
Topic One: Loving Fresh (10 minutes)
Topic Two: Living Fit (10 minutes)
Topic Three: Logging Out (10 minutes)
Conclusion (5 minutes)

End of Assessment.

Congratulations, you have completed this assessment task.

Please ensure all questions are answered and upload the following:

This completed workbook containing the answers to Task 2.
3 x Emotional Intelligence Feedback Forms
If studying online – video of role play with two participants.