Emotional Intelligence is a very important term in contemporary professional and private life. In general, EI (or EQ) is the ability to identify/manage own emotions and the emotions of others. Emotional Intelligence also contains a variety of critical skills that youth (of all ages) can develop and improve, in order to achieve appropriate well-being and life success. These skills lead to define EI as the outcome of five categories:

• Tuning with true feelings (self-awareness).
• Controlling emotions and impulses (self-regulation).
• Motivating yourself towards achieving the goal (motivation).
• Understanding feelings, needs and perspectives of other people (empathy).
• Managing emotions of other people (social skills).

Through the above, critical emotional and social competencies could be mastered, such as Problem Solving, Happiness, Stress Regulation, Communication, Flexibility and Conflict Management. Under that viewpoint, Institute of Entrepreneurship Development participated, along with partners from Bulgaria, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey, in the training course “Emotional Intelligence for Young Professionals”, organized by STEP Institute in beautiful Slovenian capital Ljubljana, from 18-22 June 2017, in the frame of Erasmus+ project: “Emotion to Motion: Emotional Intelligence Skills Development to Foster Youth Employability”. The project, estimating that a visible gab for specific education towards emotional intelligence development between youth exists, is based on the true needs of young people who have lack of emotional intelligence in the business world.

The two participants-trainers on behalf of iED, Giorgos Gkatas and Ilias Bampagenes, had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the term of Emotional Intelligence via a mixture of theory and practice, as well as improve their skills with interactive activities and the cooperation of trainers from partner organizations. In the Level I of the training (first two days), trainers, establishing self-consciousness as a starting-point, learned how to discover Emotional Intelligence and share this experience to their organizational environment. In the Level II of the training (next three days), trainers learned how to develop Emotional Intelligence and build EQ skills in personal and social competence circumstances. Finally, through advanced adult learning techniques, the training was aiming to help the participants to observe the function of emotions in day-to-day conditions, to re-valuate the moments at work and life – that often stay undetected or unresolved – and to acquire the soft skills needed for successful relations management and network building.