Zeitschrift für Ernährung und Diätetik

Abstrakt

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence for Building Relationships and How It Specifically Applies to Health and Fitness Practitioners

Ian Foster

Within the world of athletic performance, the ability to build genuine trusting relationships with athletes can be a crucial skill for the sporting coach. This is much the same for professionals applying their own trade privately or within a team environment. Be it as a personal trainer, a dietician, a physiotherapist etc., the importance of being able to build relationships with clientele and(or) athletes is a vital skill for both producing long-term results with our clientele and also for enabling ourselves as practitioners to sustain a fruitful and sustainable career in our respective fields. Within this presentation, emotional intelligence (EI) will be discussed with three main themes in mind: (i) How EI can further enhance our own capabilities as practitioners; (ii) How EI can be used to help practitioners ensure that they can sustain a career in the world of health and fitness long-term; and (iii) How EI can be trained and developed in individuals. At the end of this presentation, it should be clear to the listener that EI is a quality that can be developed that represents a real, tangible return for practitioners who take the time to understand their own EI and develop it further.