Developing emotional intelligence skills for e-negotiations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a low-cost, effective way to teach emotional intelligence (EI) skills for email communications by utilizing Dale Carnegie’s 30 Human Relations Principles. Our teaching approach is based on an actual multiple-party negotiation that included an executive from a Fortune 500 Company. Utilizing negotiation enhances students’ critical thinking about real-world, business decision-making scenarios. Active learning is incorporated into the project through student collaboration and reflection. Finally, the project can be administered completely online through the school’s learning management system, which reduces demand on valuable class time. We provide extensive resources to assist instructors in teaching EI and administering the project.

Keywords:

• Emotional intelligence
• e-negotiation
• electronic communication
• soft skills

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ note

We appreciate the comments and suggestions of participants at the Georgia Gwinnett College Teaching, Learning, and Research Symposium 2021. We thank members of the Dale Carnegie Organization for permission to use email correspondences; they are Kara Noonan, Mark Roberts, and Allyn Walker. We thank Kyle Motley for his support in developing our pedagogical approach and an anonymous referee for suggestions.

Notes

1 As with many real-world business negotiations, our students had to use someone from their network to reach the executive because they did not know him personally. This created a multiple-party negotiation that required the students to overcome impasses with both counterparties because of political and emotional concerns arising from their ongoing relationships and the need for professional success.

2 As an added enhancement, we recommend that students be required to incorprate critique comments and suggestions into a revised e-mail that comprises part of their overall grade on the project.

3 To maintain anonimity, we refer to the company as BigMfg.

4 We recommend the instructor participate in the critque process to ehance learning and increase reflection.

5 Kara is referring to the email John sent to Kara.