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An EQ Team Tool : Affirmation

A senior female leader at the center of an informal team huddle in a modern office, engaging openly with five colleagues from above, representing the natural executive presence, authentic authority, and psychologically safe team culture that identity-first leadership cultivates in organizations
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I’m often asked for practical ideas to support building emotional intelligence. I love working with teams and this exercise is a powerful one that I use sometimes in team development workshops. My business peer coaching group did this together during the holiday season and I found it extremely impactful.

The Affirmation Tool is powerful for your work team or even with your family. I recommend building it into the regular rhythm of work life and family life. Use it quarterly with your team or perhaps on the first of each month with your family.

The tool blends gratitude and community, each powerful and important in their own right but even better together. I’m including a downloadable link below. Invite other team leaders in your organization to check it out and download it here too!

​Experiencing Affirmation on Your Team Tool & Worksheet.pdf​

How we did it: We have 10 people in our group. Our coach listed all of our names alphabetically and we affirmed the person above our name and below our name. We took a few minutes in our session to write our list and make some notes. Then we took turns affirming one another in the presence of the whole group.

We also put our lists in the chat so we could save them. I saved mine to my desktop so I can pull it out when I need an encouragement boost!

It’s a great exercise for face to face or virtual meetings.

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