Improving Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence in Sales Representatives

The workshop aimed to improve self-awareness, emotional quotient, and cultural awareness among sales representatives. The activities included identifying the 3 WHYs for personal strengths and weaknesses, practicing saying no to oneself, evaluating flaws and mistakes, and exchanging Johari Window tests to know each other better. For EQ development, role-playing, listening habits, and action-reaction games were conducted. For cultural awareness, 'Know your Client' and case analysis activities were done. The results showed significant improvement in 4 out of 5 tests, with the need for further self-evaluation and assessment to improve cultural awareness.

The Role of Emotion and Culture in Creating Sustainable Change
Part-1- Self-Awareness
Culture and Emotion are the two major drivers of our attitude and behavior. Culture is the
ideology or belief or custom that a group of people follow. Emotion on the other hand is about
strong feeling that comes from circumstances, mood or relationship with other. Culture shapes
our thoughts, believes, perception and approach while emotion controls our excitement or
anxiety towards any event or person. Both plays a dominant role in person’s decision making
area.
Self- Awareness is all about identifying and understanding how our emotion or culture (belief,
customer, principles etc.) is interacting others and impacting on other’s emotional state. It
consists of consciousness of emotional and cultural state that can be challenging for different
reasons.
1. Your emotion and cultural aspects can change your way of looking to a particular subject
or person.
2. You may experience clash of emotion and principles to confuse at ethical grounds.
3. Emotional and cultural state can make stress situation at times.
4. It may create mental blocks at extreme cases. [Constantine, M. Get.al2001]
Therefore it is important to “know yourself” to avoid any chaos situation that can arise any
point of your life. Self-Awareness is nothing but knowing oneself better in order to have self-
control at different circumstances.
It is not just accumulating knowledge about own but also paying attention to our inner state
with an open heart. Self-awareness allows us to be conscious about the conditioning that take
place in our mind to arrive at a decision to do or not to do a task or action.
Why Self-Awareness maters?

It is important from two fronts which are emotional and cultural intelligence. It is important for
each and every individual to know and monitor our emotion and thoughts to have better
understanding on what we say, believe and do.
The people who are self-aware act consciously than those who react passively. It brings
positivity in terms of recognition in society, family and workplace and also keeps our physical,
mental and emotional status good.
The person with high score in self-awareness (cultural and emotional intelligence) predicts
more accurate than others.
The two aspects of self-awareness development
Emotional Intelligence (EI) self-awareness- It is the ability to understand own emotion that has
effect on your performance. Emotional intelligence is the scaling which tells how strong and
tough enough person you are in terms of your emotional holding i.e. the level where you hold
balanced emotion not extreme sadness or extreme happiness.
The person who has higher level of emotional intelligence can identify own strengths and
weaknesses better. They tend to work rationally than emotionally on crunch situation. A person
with low EI faces stress and anxiety quite easily even if it is a small matter.
In case of workplace, recruitment, selection and delegation of authority and responsibility takes
place on this ground many at times. [Alon, I.et.al2005]
Cultural awareness- It is the knowledge of one’s own cultural value, beliefs, attitude and
judgement that may come across at any circumstances when we interact with or work with
other people. Cultural awareness is important for all because it makes you aware of differences
that exits in our society or in our surrounding such as educational institution, house or
workplace. The person with high level cultural awareness make them aware of conflicts and
confusions to avoid while dealing with other culture while a low cultural awareness clashes with
others where coordination and cooperation issues arise. [Earley, P. C., et.al2004]

Part-2- Workshop on Self-Awareness-EI and Cultural awareness
About the Workshop
Excellent Institution is a prime MBA education institution in India that not only provides MBA
degree to the aspiring students but also conducts training sessions for the companies like Tata,
Aditya Birla, Reliance and other such premier companies of India.
The institution is providing mostly skill based training or technology training to these corporate
houses and to the students of this institution. Since last two years the institution got request in
order to give personality development training to the trainees of these corporate houses
especially the sales executives and representatives who work directly with clients.
They informed that these representatives are facing issues particularly in understanding
cultural and emotional aspects of the customers which is why either they lose client or client
stays for a short period with them due to lack of cohesion.
As this institution is providing personal development training to its students, now it has decided
to provide personal development workshops particularly for self-awareness, emotional
intelligence and cultural awareness.
Target Audience- Sales Executives and Representatives (entry level) of Tata Asset Management
and Aditya Birla Capital (total-20 persons)
Workshop Activity-1- Test
The below activities are conducted at the start of the workshop session.
1. What is your level of experiencing and manifesting life?
2. Look at the quotes and tell which one you agree or disagree?
3. Johari Window test
4. Emotional Intelligence Test
5. Cultural awareness self-assessment survey
About the activities-

Activity-1- This particular assignment is carried out to know what the person thinks about
himself or herself in life situation. It is about basic self-awareness level that an individual should
know. The test consisted of 14 statements which the respondents are required to answer all
the statements.
The evaluation of the question is done as per Likert scaling method where the factors like
qualitative, meaningful, purposeful, evolutionary factors etc. are given higher ranks due to
positive factors where altruism, spiritual, negative feeling etc. are given lower ranks due to
negative factors for the profession they are in. The desired outcome estimated to be 70.
Here is the link- http://www.higherawareness.com/awareness-level-test.php
Activity-2- It is another test where we have mentioned 5 quotes to the respondents. Here the
quotes are representing one or other aspect of the person that he or she believes or not. Here
the respondents need to provide on which they agree and on which they don’t.
The evaluation is done similar to the earlier test where the affirmative sentences is given higher
ranks than negative sentences. The desired score is 3.
Here is the test-

Activity-3- Johari Window is one of the important test for self-awareness where we put 20
scenarios where each of the scenario is given with two actions. The respondents needed to
answer the statement by giving ranks to each action from 0-5. The maximum allotment to each
action is 5 and minimum is zero. They are required to give responses like 1-5, 5-0, 2-3 etc.
The evaluation of the test is done on 2 grounds which are solicit feedback and willingness to
self-feedback or gives feedback. The statement alternatives with points are added and then
finally plotted in a graph where solicit total score plotted vertically and given feedback
horizontally. The interaction will tell on which block of Johari Window, the person lies in. The
desired score is .
Here is the link of the test-
http://www.humanresourcefulness.net/CypressCollege/docs/HUSR224/
Johari_Window_Questionnaire-package.pdf
Activity-4- This is the test for testing Emotional Quotient (EQ) of the respondents which is much
more essential in sales and marketing profile. It was a set of 20 statements which the
respondents have to respondent as per the instruction. The statements are indicating a given
situation where the respondents will give their response as degree of agreement and
disagreement.
The statements are provided with a 5 rating Likert scaling. Each of such statement is measured
with certain points. The highest score per question is 5 which is strongly agree and lowest is 1
for strongly disagree. The average EQ score we set is 68-75.
Link for the test- https://www.ihhp.com/free-eq-quiz/
Actvity-5- This is the test for cultural awareness of the respondents. The test brings out the
cultural competency of individual. This test was important as the sales representatives are
having client base of different culture and their investment decision varies with their cultural
aspects such as values, ethics, believes and principles.

The test involved 10 cultural awareness statements that are given with 4 options starting from
never to always or very well. Each of the respondent required to fill one option for one
statement.
The evaluation of this test is conducted on the basis of Likert Scaling where never given the
lowest score and always given the highest.
The desired score we set was- 30-35.
Workshop Activity-2- Result and feedback
After all tests conducted over a period of 1.5 months’ time, finally each and every individual
was provided with their individual scoring. As individual scores presentation is not possible, we
are here providing a summarized result in comparison to desired result with feedback.
Test Desired result Actual Result Feedback
Activity-1- 70 59 60% of the trainee
found to be giving
negative responses
Activity-2 3 2 More or less showed
positive feedback on
quotes
Activity-3 20-25- solicits
feedback and 20-25-
willingness to self-
disclose
14-15-solicit
feedback and 15-16-
willingness to self-
disclose
Sales representatives
are majorly unaware
of own potential.
Activity-4 68-75 62 12 out of 20 fell
within 65 scores.
Activity-5 30-35 28 9 out of 20 scored
less than 30.
Workshop Activity-3- Improvement program

This was the important phase of the training session where we have conducted several
programs in order to improve the results that we obtained during preliminary round.
This is conducted in 3 ways-
1. For self-awareness development
2. Emotional Quotient Improvement
3. Cultural Awareness Improvement
For self-awareness development
1. The three WHYs- It is the development activity where the trainees were given scenario and
then they were asked to find the 3 WHYs which stands for Why me, Why this is important to
me and why no one else? These three helped the respondents to identify the strengths and
weaknesses with respect to situations.
2. Practice of saying no to yourself- This activity is conducted in order to reduce the resistance
to change as identified in self-awareness tests. Here the trainees were given situation
where their exiting practice was being twisted with new method. The employees were
asked to take the method or develop any new method to do a work without saying no.
3. Self-mistake or flaws evaluation- It is the activity where the trainees were put in a
simulation which is close to real life scenario and where asked to perform the task by
maintaining a check-list of mistakes and flaws. Each trainee were given 3 scenarios to test
flaws and mistakes.
4. How well do you know me?- It was an exchange of Johari Window test, where the trainees
were given 15 days’ time to know each other by dividing in pair. At the end of 15 days, this
test was conducted and result announced. It was done in order to see improvement in
trainees reading self-awareness and the ability to understand other people.
For Emotional Quotient Development
For developing EQ level of the trainees we conducted the following things-

1. Role playing- It is the simulation where the sales representatives are given scenario to deal
with imaginary clients who are put in 3 condition where one is new client, one is your long
term client and last one is the client leaving your service. Each trainees are given 3 chances
for improving better in next time.
2. Listening habit- This is the test where the employees were allowed to listen not to speak at
all. Each trainees were given 5 clients who spoke their queries and problems and the task
was for the trainee is to listen until the 5 client finishes. It helped in testing the patience of
sales representatives to deal with clients without showing extreme emotion.
3. Action-Reaction- It was a game where each trainees are given a scenario to describe their
action and reactions on such action. The scenarios were presented on emotional grounds.
For cultural awareness development-
1. Know your Client- It was the activity where the trainees were asked to approach the
imaginary client not with business motive but to know about the client personally
particularly believes, values and tradition they follow. The trainees were to note down key
aspects of clients values, believes and following.
2. Case analysis- It is the case study based activity where the trainees were given cases related
to cultural differences in sales. The trainees were expected to come up with answers to
solve the cases.
Part-3- Result or outcome of the workshop
The workshop development activities are carried over 3 month. It is not that all activities are
done at a time rather shuffling of activities were done in order to bring overall development in
self-awareness level of the trainees.
For ex- If in a day self-mistakes or flaws evaluation is done then on the same day after the test
case analysis for cultural awareness was conducted. Each of the development activity was
demonstrated by the trainer for the first time and then for rest two times the trainer would
only note down the improvement and issues with the individual. After each test, the trainer
informed about the improvement and flaws.

To wrap up the work shop, we again conducted the tests earlier taken by doing Jumbling of
questions. Moreover as the scoring of preliminary test was not disclosed, it helped us to
maintain the authenticity and validity of the test.
The final result we got as-
Test Desired result Actual Result Previous
result
Feedback
Activity-1- 70 64 59 85% of the trainees
scored more than
62.
Activity-2 3 3 2 All scored 3 and
displayed a
positive approach
towards quotes
Activity-3 20-25- solicits
feedback and 20-
25- willingness to
self-disclose
18-21-solicit
feedback and 21-
23- willingness to
self-disclose
14-15-solicit
feedback and
15-16
willingness
to self-
disclose
69% of sales
representatives
have done SWOT
analysis of own
after the test.
Activity-4 68-75 71 62 11 out of 20 scored
more than 70 and
only 2 scored
below 65.
Activity-5 30-35 29 28 10 out of 20 scored
between 26-29.
Need of cultural
awareness is
required by doing

self-test.
The above result provided the fact that significant improvement has been noticed in 4 out of 5
tests. In Cultural awareness, they need to improve score which can be done with self-
evaluation. If they continue the assessment, they will become more self-aware of themselves
which will help them to understand client.
References
1. Constantine, M. G., & Gainor, K. A. (2001). Emotional intelligence and empathy: Their
relation to multi-cultural counseling knowledge and awareness. Professional School
Counseling, 5(2), 131.
2. Alon, I., & Higgins, J. M. (2005). Global leadership success through emotional and cultural
intelligences. Business horizons, 48(6), 501-512.
3. Earley, P. C., & Peterson, R. S. (2004). The elusive cultural chameleon: Cultural intelligence
as a new approach to intercultural training for the global manager. Academy of
Management Learning & Education, 3(1), 100-115.