Emotional Intelligence Jeopardy

Self-awareness, empathy, self-regulation, and social skill in a workshop-ready quiz. Copy this free board and let participants buzz in from their phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Copies all 30 clues into an editor of your own. Free, no account needed.

Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

Know Yourself

$200
This emotional intelligence skill is the ability to recognize your own emotions as they happen.
What is self-awareness?
$400
Asking colleagues for this, as in a 360-degree review, helps reveal your blind spots.
What is feedback?
$600
This practice of paying attention to the present moment without judgment is linked to greater self-awareness.
What is mindfulness?
$800
Knowing these, the situations or people that reliably spark a strong reaction in you, helps you prepare for them.
What are triggers?
$1,000
Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham created this four-pane model of open, blind, hidden and unknown self-knowledge.
What is the Johari window?

Keeping Your Cool

$200
A classic tip for staying calm is to count to this number before you respond.
What is ten?
$400
This technique has you inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four and hold for four.
What is box breathing?
$600
This term describes a sudden emotional reaction in which the brain's threat detector overrides rational thinking.
What is an amygdala hijack?
$800
Reinterpreting a situation to change how you feel, such as seeing a deadline as a challenge, is called this.
What is cognitive reappraisal?
$1,000
Walter Mischel's famous studies of delayed gratification in children are known by this treat.
What is a marshmallow?

Empathy in Action

$200
Empathy is often described as putting yourself in someone else's these.
What are shoes?
$400
Unlike empathy, this means feeling pity for someone from a distance.
What is sympathy?
$600
Understanding how someone else thinks, without necessarily sharing their feelings, is this type of empathy.
What is cognitive empathy?
$800
This University of Houston researcher gave the TED talk The Power of Vulnerability.
Who is Brené Brown?
$1,000
This term describes the exhaustion helpers can feel from repeatedly absorbing others' distress.
What is compassion fatigue?

Motivation and Drive

$200
Motivation that comes from inside, like enjoying the work itself, is called this.
What is intrinsic motivation?
$400
Bonuses, prizes and praise from others are examples of this kind of motivation.
What is extrinsic motivation?
$600
Carol Dweck contrasted a fixed mindset with this one.
What is a growth mindset?
$800
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named this state of total absorption in a challenging task.
What is flow?
$1,000
Daniel Pink's book Drive names autonomy, mastery and this as the keys to motivation.
What is purpose?

Social Skills

$200
Giving full attention and reflecting back what you hear is this kind of listening.
What is active listening?
$400
Facial expressions, posture and tone of voice are forms of this kind of communication.
What is nonverbal communication?
$600
This sense of mutual trust and connection is what a bit of small talk before a meeting helps build.
What is rapport?
$800
Handling disagreements so they get resolved productively is this social skill.
What is conflict management?
$1,000
This author's 1936 book How to Win Friends and Influence People is a classic of social skills.
Who was Dale Carnegie?

Naming Emotions

$200
Pixar's Inside Out personified joy, sadness, anger, fear and this emotion.
What is disgust?
$400
Psychologist Paul Ekman identified facial expressions for six of these emotions shared across cultures.
What are basic emotions?
$600
Robert Plutchik arranged eight primary emotions in this shape.
What is a wheel?
$800
Putting feelings into words to reduce their intensity is known by this two-word psychology term.
What is affect labeling?
$1,000
This term for difficulty identifying and describing your own feelings comes from Greek for no words for emotion.
What is alexithymia?

Final Jeopardy — Big Ideas

This science journalist popularized the idea of emotional intelligence with his 1995 bestseller of the same name.

Who is Daniel Goleman?

How to run this board

This board walks through the parts of emotional intelligence that matter most at work: noticing your own emotions, managing reactions under pressure, reading and responding to others, staying motivated, handling relationships, and the vocabulary for naming emotions accurately.

It fits well as a warm-up at the start of a workshop, when people are still guarded, or as a recap at the end. Teams of three or four work better than individuals because the clues start conversations.

Try one house rule: after a scenario clue, the team that answered has to say how they would actually phrase it in a real conversation. It turns theory into practice without anyone having to role-play in front of the room.

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