As a part of its ongoing Learning Circle Webinar series, the Packaging and Processing Women’s Leadership Network completed a deep dive into emotional intelligence, including misconceptions about what it is and how important it can be to career and relationship success. PMMI Media Group Senior Marketing Manager Rebecca Welsby moderated the discussion with PPWLN leader Jan Tharp, Infinium Spirits President and CEO, and Dr. Cranla Warren, Organizational Psychologist. The following are a few exchanges from the Webinar, which can be found at pmmi.org/womens-leadership-network. The Q&A has been edited for clarity and space.
Rebecca Welsby: How is emotional intelligence defined?
Dr. Cranla Warren: Emotional intelligence, also often referred to as EI, is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions while also tuning into the emotions of others. I'd say there's two sides to EI. There's looking at the intra-personal experience. There's this internal dialogue we have with ourselves.
Then there are interpersonal skills. Those are social skills. Emotions drive our behavior, so we feel and then we act. So one aspect of EI is the experience that I have within myself. The other is my experience in how I engage with people.
Rebecca Welsby: How does cultivating EI benefit us as women in the workforce?
Dr. Cranla Warren: Emotional intelligence can be a strategic advantage for women in the workforce. It can help us navigate unique challenges like balancing empathy with authority and overcoming stereotypes and biases around emotional expression. When we have high EI, we can communicate our needs, advocate for ourselves, and advocate for our team members with confidence and clarity. It also allows us to communicate our needs assertively and read nonverbal cues better.
Jan Tharp: It's a balancing act; you're in a situation, and you're really collecting data. Does the guy across the room have his arms crossed? Are they listening? Do they have a scowl on their face? You're taking in body language, people's tone, and how you feel; they're all data points. EI is the ability to take all those data points and figure out, okay, what's my next step? How will I use this data to move this discussion forward constructively?
Dr. Cranla Warren: Another thing that popped to mind about EI and benefiting women in the workforce is that so many of them feel pressured to do it all. They're managing family, children, and work. EI can help us to recognize and set personal boundaries. To your point about data points, we're taking in all these data points so we can recognize what's coming in and set up our personal boundaries. By understanding and managing our emotions, we become role models for each other. That's another thing I've been trying to set up in the workplace regarding peer role modeling and advocating for a balanced and healthy work culture. So I think there's a lot here for women to dig into about what it is here for you: developing, honing, practicing, and being in lifelong practice with EI skills.
Jan Tharp: To your point, emotions drive behavior and are just the culmination of everything that's happened to you. So if you've had a bad morning and you sat in traffic and everything was wrong and then you go into a meeting and you haven't taken the time to decompress and level set your head, then you're bringing all that baggage into the meeting. And that could absolutely drive your emotions, which will then dictate the outcome. So you mentioned it, it's self-regulation, understanding how your body talks to you and what those trigger points are so that you could pause and say, "Okay, I'm going to take five seconds before I answer that question." Instead of saying something that you might regret because you're just saying whatever comes to your head.
Rebecca Welsby: Have that one moment for your brain to scream and then say, "Okay, we're done. Put that away now."
Dr. Cranla Warren: When looking at emotional intelligence and the competencies, the first thing is a pause, and you've talked about that already, Jan. And the second is breathing or oxygenating. We need to get oxygen to the brain because otherwise, we're shutting it off.
Rebecca Welsby: What do you think are some things we can do as leaders to help those around us develop their emotional intelligence and ways we can encourage that growth in those people who look to us for guidance?
Dr. Cranla Warren: One of the most powerful ways we can foster EI in others is by modeling it ourselves. Practicing active listening, managing emotions and reactions, showing empathy, and creating environments where the foundation is helping people to feel seen, heard, acknowledged, valued, and appreciated. It's about creating safe spaces where curiosity about emotions and open communication are valued, tested, and played with. For instance, if a team member makes a mistake, a leader might handle it with understanding rather than anger or frustration and talk about this mishap to encourage growth and learning. What am I learning? How am I moving forward?
Rebecca Welsby: Is there a way to determine where we're at in our emotional intelligence journey, discover our strengths and what we need to work on, and find some of those resources?
Dr. Cranla Warren: There are lots of tools online that can help us assess our emotional intelligence. I used to work at the Institute for Health and Human Potential, and they still offer a free EI quiz online. Assessments like this can really highlight strengths and areas for improvement. For example, if you score high in self-awareness and lower in self-management, you might focus on techniques for managing stress or reactivity and self-regulation of how you respond under pressure.
They're a great starting point and can help guide where we want to invest our time and our energy for our own growth.
Jan Tharp: Whether you are in a leadership position or wherever you are in your career, have a personal board. The people who are on my personal board don't even know they're on my personal board. But they are people who I know will tell me, "You know what? You were wrong there." Or, "You know what? You probably shouldn't wear that again." It's a mirror, and it's not the people who always tell you, "Oh yeah, that's great. That's perfect." You want the people who will give you the feedback and tell you when you're out of line because, trust me, we are all out of line. We're humans, and thank God that we are not perfect because it would be boring if everybody was perfect. But you do want to have that feedback with someone that you trust and someone who cares about you and your personal growth to give you that feedback.
Rebecca Welsby: What would you say is one takeaway everyone should have from our discussion today?
Jan Tharp: I would say that emotional intelligence is a lifelong journey. And celebrating that journey is a pretty incredible experience because you're growing as a person.
Dr. Cranla Warren: So well said. I guess for me, emotional intelligence is an essential skill and strength. It's foundational to how we behave and react. It is worth putting the time into exploring what that can look like for you, cultivating and growing your EI skills.