Emotional Intelligence in Internships: Help Interns Grow

Internships represent for many young people the first step to moving from formal education to the job market. This transition requires strong efforts both for the interns, to get acquainted with this new social environment and its dynamics, and for the employer, who has the crucial task of supporting interns in their path to build and shape a professional career.

In this framework, awareness about emotional intelligence plays a main influence on the satisfaction level of the internship and the future employability of interns. By developing the skills required for the i-Coach expert profile, our consortium gave great importance to the role of Emotional Intelligence within a successful internship programme.

But what does Emotional Intelligence mean?

It is the ability to understand and manage emotions in positive ways to adopt effective communication and empathy with others, as well as to avoid stress and conflicts. It is not an innate quality, as it can be developed and trained with practice, especially in the workplace.

How can a mentor’s emotional intelligence support effectively the intern in their professional path? Here are some key topics:

Open Dialogue: enhancing employee communication abilities to share his/her emotions, which would prevent negative emotions from prevailing and break up into large problems.
Stress management: focus on the psychological well-being of employees
Employee development: create opportunities for your intern to grow from the experience by encouraging them to reflect on stressful situations and learn from them. Moreover, canalizing employee skills to guide them.
Give guidelines and feedback on intern work, in order to provide a linear path in their internship experience and find strengths and weaknesses.

Check these sources for further information:

INNOVATIVE TOOLBOX FOR INTERNSHIP IMPLEMENTATION

Emotional Intelligence in Internships: Help Interns Grow