Kristiana Corona
Hello and welcome to the Worthy to Lead podcast. I am your host, Kristiana Corona, and I'm so glad that you decided to join us today. Today I am joined by one of my favorite people, Ginnie Plauché and welcome to the show, Ginnie.
Ginnie Plauche
Thank you.
Kristiana Corona
Before we dive in, I just want to give you a brief intro of who Ginnie is so that you know a little bit more about her. So Ginnie is a professional and executive coach who focuses on leadership identity and intentional living. And she is based out of central Texas. She holds an ICF credential as an associate certified coach or an ACC, and has earned a professional and executive coaching certification from the University of Texas Dallas, which is where we met.
She serves on the board of directors for the Texas Coaches Coalition and is an active member of her local ICF chapter. Ginnie is also a certified EQI 2.0 assessor and interpreter, and we will get into the depths of what all of that means in just a moment. She provides 360 degree assessments, leadership assessments, and group assessments for her clients to uncover the dimensions of emotional intelligence that make up their leadership style.
So she helps to improve things like emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, social responsibility, decision-making, and stress management. And with roughly 25 years of experience in the retail world, doing things like sales, leadership development, and training, Ginnie's passion is helping driven and growth-oriented individuals build strong team cultures within their organizations. She helps them to clarify both who they want to be
as well as unlocking their potential fostering growth and creating meaningful impact for both leaders and their teams. She has been married 25 years, has two grown children and a son-in-law and lives in a beautiful ranch in Bosque County located in central Texas. So today we're going to dive a little bit deeper into the various dimensions of emotional intelligence and how they impact our identity as leaders. So this includes things like.
leadership identity and intentional living and kind of unpacking what those things mean and why they're Ginnie's niche to begin with. We're gonna dive into emotional intelligence and like I mentioned, some of those dimensions that you may not know as much about and some of them may surprise you. And then we're also gonna talk about what the heck is an EQI 2.0 assessment and how those
can actually build awareness of specific areas that you need to work on and maybe build an action plan around that and what that looks like to do that. So I'm excited about this topic. I think it's a really, really good one, especially if you're not aware of how all of those tools work. So I'm excited to have Ginnie on the show to talk through that. So with that, let's dive in. Hi, Ginnie. Thanks again.
Ginnie Plauche
Hi, Kristiana I'm so excited to be doing this.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, I'm so glad that you're here and that you're going to be able to just give us some more insights around this topic. So maybe just to kick us off, can you talk a little bit about, you know, how did you get into coaching in the first place?
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, and I sometimes like to say that I just was born into a coaching family, kind of. It's weird. My dad started coaching before coaching was really a thing with also UT Dallas before they had those coaching cohorts. But also in my retail career, coaching was in the operating system. And so was familiar with the way that we spoke to our associates and spoke to each other and used to kind of
coaching to help people move forward. And when I left my career, I didn't know that coaching was a job. I left right as COVID was fixing to hit us. And I was just now finding and exploring Brene Brown's books. I was on the Dare to Lead book and she kept talking about this.
Dare to Lead certified thing and I was like, I want to do that so bad. And I was just, you know, in the middle of redefining my own leadership identity. Who am I? And really, what do I want to be doing? How do I contribute? And so I went to the website. I was looking at this Dare to Lead stuff. They weren't offering it at the time and they still aren't.
but all these people had these letters behind their names and I'm like, what is this? And so my husband's sitting there with me and we're like Googling it and we find out about this coaching, ICF Federation, International Coaching Federation, so the ICF, and what it is and that you can actually have a career in that. And so then I just started exploring how to become credentialed and UT Dallas had that full complete program. It's amazing. Awesome experience. Definitely finding you at the very beginning. And that's it. That's how I found it. And the more I learned about it, the more it was exactly like I said, I was just kind of born into it. So I felt like it just helped me fine tune the things that were already true about me. And that's it. Here we are.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, I love that explanation because I think there's so many different pathways of getting into coaching and a lot of people stumble into it by accident. Like they didn't, they maybe were, you know, doing it to some extent before or interested in it, but they didn't really know what it was or how to, how to gain that expertise. so I love that story.
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, you're exactly right. I felt like it gave a definition or a defining word to this thing I could explain and talk about. so, yeah, it's good.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. And in your intro, you talk about focusing on leadership identity and intentional living as part of your coaching experience. So can you talk a little bit more about like, what do those words mean to you?
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, leadership identity, I think is how I just finally captured this thought, maybe idea or thing I was observing, something I experienced myself leaving my career. And then all of a sudden, there's this identity crisis. And I thought about some of the leaders that I've had. And as I've gained clients, what I realized is a lot of
A lot of us leaders don't really know how to name who we are. And your identity is who you are. Your job is not who you are. Your job is what you're doing. And so when you can think about who you are and define that, what I call leadership identity, then it's easier or I think simpler anyway, to transition from one place to another because you carry your known identity with you wherever.
And then the intentional living piece of that I believe is getting to choose how to live that out. So once I can articulate who I am and how I want to be, then I can intentionally choose more of the path that I want to be on or at least specifically create that path a little better.
Kristiana Corona
I can really relate to this. Obviously just making a transition myself, like really thinking about my identity and for the last 23 years, I've been a design leader. And what does it look like to pivot or transition out of something like that, but not lose my identity of what is it that I bring to the world or what is it that I brought to that particular part of my career experience that I'm now taking with me. So I love this topic. I think it's very timely.
Um, personally, you know, just reflecting on, on my journey and like getting more into coaching full time and, um, and maybe closing one chapter, uh, of specific leadership experience, but transitioning that knowledge and transitioning what I have learned and what I've learned to love over the years, um, and figuring out what is the new path forward with that. So, uh, so I love this. So, um, where do you, guess, see this being a need?
in the workplace, like as you look around the clients that you work with, the people that you've met, like, where do you see them needing this support?
Ginnie Plauche
With the leadership identity, what I've seen with my clients, and I think it's married because who they are in the workplace and then who they are at home are, I think a lot of times people try to make those two different things. And when, as we get into this emotional intelligence situation, part of the dimensions of leadership is authenticity. Well, if you're.
this person over here at work and you're a different person at home, that's not really very authentic. And there are common threads in those two duties that are my identity, they're just who I am. And so I think too, when leaders are unclear about who they are, it is harder for them to really lead people.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
in a way that feels consistent and safe for the culture at large or the team that they're leading. And so I think that's really how that identity piece comes along. Because it's like you said, who you are as a design leader and there's elements of who you are that is the same when you're being a mother, when you're being a wife and
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
And when you don't stay true to those things in every place, it gets really challenging.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. I can think of a very specific example, like the way that as a design leader, you teach your team to show curiosity. You teach your team to not assume that you know the problem so well that you don't ask questions. And so, you know, like we get in this rhythm of practicing, like going and doing research, going and talking to our users and figuring out what their pain points are and asking again and again and again.
to validate our understanding and every time we learn something new, right? But then are there other areas in life where I'm not showing that curiosity, where I'm not showing up and asking again and again and again to make sure that I'm understanding, but maybe I'm assuming that I know, right? Like, I've asked once and so I know and I don't need to do that. But really it's a best practice that I should be carrying across.
everywhere within my life. And I think that's what I love about this topic is you may be thinking about it in just one dimension of your life, but like you said, there are so many other applications where you want to say, am I being true to that, that same thing in all of these different dimensions or all of these different scenarios that I'm living in, whether it be work or family or friends or, you know, other goals.
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, I'd agree. And I think that identity piece directly connects to like those deep held values. And so some other things might change, your boundaries might change, your behaviors might change, you may even decide to entertain changing your beliefs about some things. But there's this core piece that's really that deep rooted value that's consistent. When we know that and honor it.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
I love that.
Yeah. And so as we dig a little bit deeper into just like emotional intelligence as a theme, I feel like this has been thrown around everywhere, right? Like we all know the general sense of like, emotional intelligence. Yes, I need to control my emotions or I need to have empathy for other people or things like that. And maybe we have a little bit of a limited definition of what we think emotional intelligence is. So.
Ginnie Plauche
Mm-hmm.
Kristiana Corona
I'm curious if you can just talk about how you think about emotional intelligence compared to maybe the stereotype.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, I think a lot of what's out there is that emotional intelligence and feelings are the same thing, or the feelings and emotions are the same thing. And so I think my favorite definition is in a book called The EQ Edge. so emotional intelligence is the set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships,
cope with challenges and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way. So those emotions or those feelings spark emotion that's telling us information. And then so taking that to EQ, EQ is the tool that measures
how well we use that emotional information in a meaningful and productive way.
Kristiana Corona
make sense. So what do you think like some of the myths about emotional intelligence are? Like anything that you hear frequently where you're like, not quite it. That's not actually true about emotional intelligence.
Ginnie Plauche
I think what's true about emotional intelligence is people don't really know what it is. And they think it's feelings and they think it's...
know, at least in the world I am, people just haven't really thought, that's what emotional intelligence is. And it gets talked a lot about as soft skills. Soft skills are largely in the emotional intelligence realm. So it's probably safer to say soft skills than it is emotional intelligence. And that's probably, it's definitely not the feelings piece.
Kristiana Corona
So as you dive into the EQI test, for example, or the assessment, can you talk about what are some of the dimensions of emotional intelligence that you're actually measuring using that tool?
Ginnie Plauche
So there are five realms, self-perception,
self-expression, interpersonal, decision-making, and stress management. And within those five realms are three subscales in each category, so a total of 15. So it's measuring self-regard, self-actualization, and emotional self-awareness, emotional expression, assertiveness, different than aggression, independence, interpersonal relationships,
empathy, social responsibility, problem solving, reality testing, impulse control, flexibility, stress tolerance, and optimism. So that was all of them, not a few, but.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. And I think what, what made me super intrigued, cause I did take this assessment with you and I went through it. there's way more in there than I thought. Like, I don't know that I would have imagined impulse control or, assertiveness or certain things like that, like social responsibility. I don't know that I would have mapped those to emotional intelligence. So how do, like, as you kind of go through each of those dimensions,
Like, can you talk about how people actually measure those? How do you use that information to identify or bring awareness to maybe things that they were doing that they didn't even know they were doing?
Ginnie Plauche
One recent example I can think of is one of my clients was struggling with one of her leaders in giving feedback. And she was like, she's really defensive. She has a hard time receiving my feedback. And I just can't seem to help her make movement. And so one of the considerations is that that belongs in like the flexibility.
category or subscale. And so when you think about this person's ability to be flexible, or it could even connect to their level of self-regard, right? Self-regard has to do with personal perception and confidence and how well you're willing to look at your strengths and weaknesses. So the whole person. And when you start to look into those categories and what are the
Activities connected to helping strengthen them then you can come up with a really tactical plan as You the leader to the employee But then you know if the employee is using that and they can see where those things play out in their day-to-day then They can pinpoint it and sort of make this their own self evaluation and and map out a plan to use it more often.
Kristiana Corona
Take handle that. Yeah, and I think it's also interesting thinking about this tool being something that could be used both from a leadership perspective to understand their employees and how they relate to their employees. And then also from the employee perspective, like doing the assessment and saying, how do I identify with my leader? And like finding a common language to be talking about.
Ginnie Plauche
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, yes. It was really good. I just recently did do a training for my client's team. And one of the examples says she took the EQ assessment, not all of her employees did, but we wanted to be able to bring emotional intelligence to the office so that there was a common language and things could be used in their conversations and linking it to some specific soft skills or emotional intelligence.
subscales. So this client of mine, so the leader of the office, she's the business owner, was really struggling with the amount of time it was taking to choose lunch.
It was stressing her out. It was costing payroll. So there's like payroll dollars going into this and we're not spending time with clients. Like there is a loss occurring in this time that it took up and she was really frustrated by it. And what we uncovered for her was it's a people pleasing thing. She wanted them all to be happy. Well, so if you direct, you know, we had mapped out her plan.
Kristiana Corona
interesting.
Ginnie Plauche
for her emotional intelligence and the thing she's working on was independence. Well, independence is about being able to make a decision that is not emotionally dependent on other people. It's her. And so her solution was to set it up. This is how it's going to go and these are your options. And she did it.
And she came back and it worked really well. She's really excited about it. So when we did this training, we revealed to all of them that this was her strategy and they all got it. They were like, my gosh. And you're right. It relieves so much pressure and it's such a simple thing. Right. But we don't, I mean, how many, she was calculating the total hours wasted every week deciding and choosing everybody, picking their own meal. And yeah. So
Kristiana Corona
funny.
Ginnie Plauche
like they're going to be happy that you're paying for their food. this. So.
Kristiana Corona
That is a great example. Exactly. And I'm sure they were like perfectly happy with things being more efficient and didn't feel like she wasn't taking their needs into consideration. Like there was no loss of experience from their perspective. Yeah.
Ginnie Plauche
Absolutely.
Ginnie Plauche
Right, I think what they do is they all put their favorite places in a bucket and she chooses and then they order it family style, as was her solution. And so it was still their pick. It's like the other thing about that is decision making. It is stressful. Well, we have stress tolerance on here and we have decision making on here and...
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
If you have too many decisions, then you get into indecision and then you're paralyzed and then you're wasting more time. So it really resolves a lot of things to just identify one place and how it's impacting in a bigger way. And that's a small yet very sizable example.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah.
Kristiana Corona
love that.
Well, yeah, especially if it's every single week or repeated over time. Yeah, that's amazing. Can we go through the different EQ dimensions? Can you explain what each of them means? Because I think there's a lot of really good stuff in there. And I'm pretty certain that most people are not aware of what all of those things are or what they mean. Would that be OK?
Ginnie Plauche
Yes. Yep.
And I will tell you, this may be a good place to say that there will be a link in your show notes to get this thing I'm using to tell the definitions. So it'll be available, but, it is interesting.
Kristiana Corona
Yes, yes, that would be perfect.
Ginnie Plauche
So under Self-Perception is self-regard, self-actualization, and emotional self-awareness. Self-regard is respecting oneself while understanding and accepting one's strengths and weaknesses. Self-regard is often associated with feelings of inner strength and self-confidence. Self-actualization is the willingness to persistently try to improve oneself and engage in the pursuit of personally relevant
and meaningful objectives that lead to a rich and enjoyable life. Emotional self-awareness includes recognizing and understanding one's own emotions. This includes the ability to differentiate between subtleties in one's own emotions while understanding the cause of these emotions and the impact they have on one's own thoughts and actions, and those of others.
Kristiana Corona
Hmm. So there's a lot in those three things, like in that particular category about recognizing, like recognizing the pattern of how emotions work for you and like what actions they lead to or what, what behaviors potentially.
Ginnie Plauche
Exactly. That example I talked about earlier about feedback. if I, the person delivering feedback, then I receive the feedback, it's on me to determine, you know, my own emotional response instead of just going to, they are meaning to cut me down.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
But if I can hear feedback and say, regardless of delivery, they're giving feedback, they're taking the time, there is a message for me here to learn. And going with that first and just believing in most cases that this person wants me to know some information.
Kristiana Corona
So there's an important translation, it sounds like. Like an important translation of the information that's coming in. How am I going to receive that? What am I going to believe about myself from that information? And am I going to take it as a knock on my expertise or my ability? Or am I going to just see it as, like you said, information and someone is trying to teach me something or trying to help me learn something?
And I need to make a change because of that.
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, understanding the cause of my emotional response that has nothing to do with that other person necessarily. That other person may have triggered something, but my emotional response is about me.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, I love that. So that's a really powerful bucket. So that's self-perception. What's the next bucket?
Ginnie Plauche
Mm-hmm. So self-expression, emotional expression, assertiveness, and independence. So emotional expression is openly expressing one's feelings verbally and non-verbally. Assertiveness involves communicating feelings, beliefs, and thoughts openly, and defending personal rights and values in a socially acceptable.
non-offensive and non-destructive manner. Independence is the ability to be self-directed and free from emotional dependency on others. Decision-making, planning, and daily tasks are completed autonomously.
Kristiana Corona
Hmm. So that's interesting because there's quite a range of things within self-expression, right? From both how you express your emotion to how does that lead you to be assertive or not be assertive? And then I think you mentioned earlier, like being codependent on someone else or like being too dependent on people pleasing or what other people want. And so there's a sense of like,
You know what the bounds are for self-expression. You know appropriate self-expression. Like what is appropriate for this circumstance in this type of a relationship that, that means that I'm not going to be destroying that relationship. I'm going to be doing something that will affirm the relationship or at least not detract from it. And also that I can make those decisions on my own. Like that's, that's an interesting span. Anything else about that bucket that really stands out to you?
Ginnie Plauche
I just assertiveness really gets so confused with aggression. People think they're being assertive when they're really being aggressive. And one of the things that I've learned to differentiate between the two is that aggression is more like bullying. It means I win, you lose. And when you think about assertiveness, assertiveness means we both have a task to complete and we both have a give and take in it.
Kristiana Corona
Hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
It's, you know, one of the examples that comes up in the EQ Edge book that I like to reference is this boss and his assistant, and it's her just going somewhere for her anniversary. And this thing comes up that's pretty urgent that they need to get done. And so they have a conversation. He says, I understand this is inconvenient for you.
I know you're supposed to be going on the same with your anniversary. Here's what we need to do. What's our strategy? She gives some input. He gives some input. If that can't happen that way, what's our backup plan? And she says, well, the truth is our anniversary is actually not till next week. And so if I had to put it off, I could do that. And he says, and this would always be great if this could happen right, but he says to her, great, I have a connection.
on tickets to this other thing, I'll get you those tickets in exchange for this. And whether that's exactly the reality of how goes or not, the point is he's considerate of her and not demanding. He is not bullying her into completing this thing. It goes back to her being seen and heard and cared for in the process and her also giving back a sense of, care.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
about your success too and I want to participate because your success is my success. So there's some ebbs and flow to it, if you will. And I think it can be a touchy thing to be responsible for non-offensiveness because I think it's really hard to gauge what's offensive to every person. And so I think as far as that goes, that would be kind of the other thing.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
you know, doing your best to be curious, genuinely curious and, and, and open, like I said, considering both parties.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, that's a really different definition of assertiveness than I think people might have had in mind. Like you mentioned before, it may come across as like, I just need to be the fist-pounding person in the room, and that's how I win, and that's how I express myself. But that's not at all how assertiveness comes to life within emotional intelligence. Yeah.
Ginnie Plauche
Right. This is just how I am. No, that's aggression, not assertiveness.
Kristiana Corona
So I assume that when you uncover things like that within an assessment, you can dive a little bit deeper to help people understand the difference or the nuance between how that shows up and whether that is serving them or not.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, and oftentimes that's a place where people want to grow. And they realize that they really aren't, you know, I think that kind of links back to the leadership identity. If I understand who I am, I'm clear about what my values are, then I can be assertive in a way that's supportive of that versus aggression. Aggression is not that. It's, you know, a defense mechanism. And so.
Kristiana Corona
And so they're not at odds. It's not like if you're assertive, you can't demonstrate emotional intelligence. They can coexist. They can be within this entire picture. It shows up a little bit differently, it sounds like. OK, so let's talk about interpersonal. Tell me more about that.
Ginnie Plauche
Interpersonal, so we have interpersonal relationships, empathy and social responsibility. Interpersonal relationships refers to the skills of developing and maintaining mutually satisfying relationships that are characterized by trust and compassion. Empathy is recognizing, understanding and appreciating how other people feel. Empathy involves being able to articulate your understanding of another's perspective.
and behaving in a way that respects others' feelings. Social responsibility is willingly contributing to society, to one's social group, and generally to the welfare of others. Social responsibility involves accepting responsibility, having social consciousness, and showing concern for the greater community.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. And as you know, this one is dear to my heart. when I went through the EQI assessment, this was a particular social responsibility in particular was a bucket that I was like grading myself very low on. And I had like all these ideas in my mind of, a truly social responsible person does this, you know, like they're, they're out volunteering. They're spending lots of hours, doing stuff at their kid's school.
they're, you know, part of their spiritual community, like active, like taking the lead, doing all of these things outside of their job and their family and their house. And, that was like a really revealing and interesting conversation because it was completely my belief that I wasn't contributing. yet when we assess that, right. And we looked at all the places that I was contributing through work or family or other things within my life.
There were a lot of things I was not giving myself credit for. And I found that to be really powerful because I was imagining like this checklist of all these other things I was going to have to start doing that I was failing in. Right. And it was so helpful to go through that process of just reflecting like, okay, what are you doing? Where are you doing something with a certain intention? But really there, there could also be this other.
Kristiana Corona
benefit coming from that, that could be benefiting your community or benefiting a larger group of people. And how do you recognize that? How do you celebrate that? How do you do more of that? And it can look like a lot of different things within your life. So that one in particular is powerful for me. What else would you say about this category?
Ginnie Plauche
I think I would think about empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is you before me in understanding the perception. you know, recognizing you before I say anything about myself. It is...
Kristiana Corona
Mmm.
Ginnie Plauche
really contributing to the other person being seen and heard the way they need to be seen and heard, not to the level that I need to do it.
Kristiana Corona
Interesting. So when you think about people who are maybe over indexing in, would you call it sympathy or like over indexing and empathy where they feel like they need to take the burden on for someone else?
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, taking the burden on is really, I would put that in the people pleasing. There's something you're attempting to get out of that, some sort of recognition, your identity is skewed, it's a value validation for self. Empathy isn't about me. And that, yeah, I would say.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
sympathy for sure, but overdoing it is about fulfilling a personal need I have to be validated.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
And that's a really interesting one. Like, I feel like people could really dive deep into that and understand and recognize where maybe they're either not showing enough empathy or they're over, over indexing on empathy to the point that they're carrying the weight of everyone else around them. And I coming from a team of high empaths, I have seen that happen for sure. Where it's like, this thing isn't even happening to me.
But yet I am carrying the weight or the concern or the stress for someone else on behalf of them. But I don't even know if they're stressed out about it. Like I'm assuming these things and taking them onto myself before I even know necessarily whether that person needs that support or whether this is even a helpful exercise. It may just be something I'm doing to myself.
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, you're right. And as you say that, what comes to my mind too is the whole thing we talked about earlier, a codependency. I'm not being independent when I'm overly exercising empathy or being an empath and taking on somebody else's something is not helpful to them. That's definitely when you get into codependency and
Kristiana Corona
Yeah.
Ginnie Plauche
enabling, and you're just in the person's way of learning or growing through or you know that that important part of struggling that helps that person make their way through it. So.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, I love that. OK, super powerful. What's the next category? Decision making. Perfect.
Ginnie Plauche
Decision making, we're on decision making. Yeah, so we've got problem solving, reality testing, and impulse control. So problem solving is the ability to find solutions to problems in a situation where emotions are involved. Problem solving includes the ability to understand how emotions impact decision making.
Reality testing is the capacity to remain objective by seeing things as they really are. This capacity involves recognizing when emotions or personal bias can cause one to be less objective. Impulse control is the ability to resist or delay an impulse, drive or temptation to act, and involves avoiding rash behaviors and decision making.
Kristiana Corona
Where do you see people, I guess, as they go through this decision-making bucket, so problem solving, testing reality, and then understanding how to control their impulses, where do you see people really needing support the most?
Ginnie Plauche
Hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah, I think the most underutilized skill here is reality testing and perhaps impulse control, oftentimes in relationships with other people.
so and so does something, sets up, it gives the feedback, right? And I'm receiving the feedback and I have an emotional response to the feedback, so I decide the person is mad at me with no substantial evidence or they don't wanna be friends with me anymore or they must really hate me, like, just.
Kristiana Corona
Mm.
Ginnie Plauche
lots, lots of stuff that really probably our own level of emotional self-awareness or self-regard kind of gets in the way. And so then we don't reality test and then rumination occurs. Like that's kind of the extreme of that. And then we start treating the other person in such a way as though that's real and never checked in to ask. And then which leads to impulsive behavior in many cases. So, you know, we block them or we avoid them or we, you know, decide to be angry at them. And so now we have these feelings that are controlling our emotional response to that person.
Kristiana Corona
That's super interesting. So when you think about reality testing, are there certain ways that you encourage people to try to do that?
Ginnie Plauche
Well, in many cases, I just ask people to kind of fact check. Did they say this to you? What was specifically communicated or what did they ask? An example, so in this training I was doing with this team.
one of the girls was talking about how she had asked multiple times for help in some specific thing that she wanted. And now she had decided that they were just disrespecting her because they hadn't responded. And I said, well, what are some possibilities? And she thought, well, you know, they could be really busy. And another option was that she hadn't
asked for it to be fulfilled in a specific time frame. She didn't express how important or urgent it was. No priority level was given to it. And so the truth is the other person has their own stuff going on.
Kristiana Corona
Mmm.
Ginnie Plauche
the reality of that situation is that this own person has their own cares and concerns and priorities. And so if they don't understand or maybe they're overwhelmed or maybe they don't have the skill set, maybe we're not asking the right person. And then we've just jumped to they're disrespecting me.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. Yeah.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, this is an interesting one because I feel like there are so many different ways of being able to pause and then go back and check if our lens at that moment is accurate, right? And how often do we just skip right over that and then keep moving forward and make assumptions? But yet, maybe we just weren't clear. Maybe our ask wasn't clear, you know? Like I could...
probably go back and ask it a different way and be very specific and put some sort of accountability to that in order to see, okay, is the other person not understanding that that's what I needed or whatever? But oftentimes we just rush right past it and make an assumption that the other person doesn't want to do it or yeah, they're not interested or whatever. But to your point, we're often just really busy.
Ginnie Plauche
Yeah.
Ginnie Plauche
Well, and it's true, and I got this from my reading of Brene Brown's material, that it is our nature to just fill in emptiness with negativity. And so because I know that, mean, that is another reality check for me. I know I'm more than likely going to fill it in with the worst case scenario. And
Kristiana Corona
Hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
And if I'm feeling like, I need to fix this and all I need to do. And then I, you know, even for myself, I think, okay, well, hold on, let's go back to my self-regard. What is, you know, what is my own self-confidence issue in this situation? And, you know, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? And what do I want to do different here to grow my own skillset?
And then that starts helping my own reality testing and it grows my self-regard as well. And I think, yeah, that's, I mean, we just fill it in with the most negative thing. And I trust that that information is true. now I can...
Kristiana Corona
love that example.
Sorry, I'm gonna cut this out. I got a cough. That was a beautiful answer by the way.
Kristiana Corona
okay. It's like so dry in here. all right. So let's see. We're on last. We're on the last bucket now. Stress, stress management. Let's talk about stress management.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, stress management, flexibility, stress tolerance and optimism. Flexibility is adapting emotions, thoughts and behaviors to unfamiliar, unpredictable and dynamic circumstances or ideas.
Stress tolerance involves coping with stressful and difficult situations and believing that one can manage or influence situations in a positive manner. Optimism is an indicator of one's positive attitude and outlook on life. It involves remaining hopeful and resilient despite occasional setbacks.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, there's so much goodness in this bucket and so much work to do, to be honest. Like when we think about the situations that we deal with all the time, from a work perspective, from a life perspective, just the stressors that are out there, this in and of itself, like getting better at flexibility, getting better at how we handle stress, and then how we create a level of optimism about what's going on.
Ginnie Plauche
Mmm.
Kristiana Corona
Like I can imagine this just being a tenfold increase in happiness and fulfillment and purpose and everything. If you can get those things right. can you talk about just any examples or stories you've heard of people that have increased in this area and like what it's done for them?
Ginnie Plauche
Hmm, increase. I would say, I can give my own example. So the first time I took an assessment that was not this one, but flexibility was on it and I scored low, it was like, no way that that's true. And I was kind of sharing it with my sister because I thought, well, I do stuff short notice and on a whim. And I thought that was flexibility.
Kristiana Corona
Great.
Ginnie Plauche
And so when I shared with my sister, was like, yeah, I scored low on this flexibility. And she said, you're surprised? And I was like, okay, well, maybe not. And then I took it again here. It was up a little bit with my EQ assessment, but that would definitely be one of the things that I began to really think about and what it means to be flexible.
and how I emotionally respond and adapt to situations. you know, perfect, I think, kind of combo here is generally when someone is low flexibility, they're
also low impulse control because they're more likely to be impulsive in their emotion and make rash decisions out of fear. Notice fear is not on the emotional intelligence of this one. It's a feeling that shows up for me, fear and anger. And so by creating a way to put yourself into cooler feelings will help you make
decisions through that so that you can be more flexible, think.
Kristiana Corona
Hmm. So there's a lot of connection points between these different buckets. Like you're drawing a lot of, well, if you're low in this area, you're likely low over here, over here, or you're high over here and over here. Cause they're very, they, they intersect. It sounds like.
Ginnie Plauche
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes. choosing one that's going to impact the others. Like I was thinking, if you can recognize or use the strength of your optimism to help you navigate increasing your use of flexibility, then you've used a higher one to help improve another. when you start looking at your assessment and deciding what to do, it's not that you want
to decrease use necessarily of any of them, but how do you use the strengths to pull the others up with you?
Kristiana Corona
Gotcha. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about what does it look like to take this assessment? What can they expect? What happens after they take the assessment? Do want to just talk through kind of what that looks like?
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, so the general process is you get the EQI 2.0 assessment, you can choose the leadership assessment or what's called a workforce assessment. Most of what I do is going to be in that leadership category. Sometimes when people choose workforce, it's because they're afraid to own their leadership, especially if it's not in their title.
but they're really leaders and they find out that they're leaders. but in that leadership assessment, it gives you a graph, it's self-assessed. So it is how you perceive yourself to be. And then you can see the way you think about it. And then when you get the assessment back, you have a...
well, the way I do it would be to have an hour and a half debrief, just discussing it and kind of exploring through the ins and outs of the assessment. And the assessment has kind of a system that I'll help lay out. you know, these pages have the definitions and some examples of what you can do. so once you look at the graph and figure out what your strengths and
and areas of opportunity are, you can narrow down on what you want to focus on. At the back of the report is this really neat smart action plan. So you choose the areas of focus, you think about characteristics that you want to possess and how elevating these emotional intelligence areas will increase the way people see that.
characterization that you would like them to see and put together very specific things, even as little as the example we talked about when it came to lunches. I also, I definitely recommend and prefer for follow-up coaching sessions in regards to this, or if they're working with another coach for sure to continue, if they're serious about improving
Ginnie Plauche
emotional intelligence. is something you continue to talk about, focus on, exercise, create exercises. There's an ABCDE exercise that helps you kind of identify the core issue, reality test it, what are some facts, what do you know, things like that to work through it. So does that cover?
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I, I would also just like call out that the workbook is really good. It's very comprehensive. you get not only like, here are all the different dimensions and what they mean, but like you said, there's lots of examples. And I think there's a lot of really good prompts and questions, that they have you think through to try and figure out before you start, you know, action planning or whatever. And then I loved the process of the debrief.
sitting down with you, going through the report, figuring out like what surprised me and maybe what I was like, yep, I knew that I would see that on there. and like how to interpret it, like where, where's there a belief in here that maybe isn't serving you. and what do you need to maybe adjust moving forward so that you can really live into that, that dimension. so I love that the workbook is great. The action planning is great. And then, yeah, like you said, the followup is really important. Just.
Cause you're not going to fix it in one day, obviously. You're gonna, it's going to take some time.
Ginnie Plauche
great.
That's true. It also measures, there's an element in the EQ assessment that helps use very specific emotional intelligence subscales to measure happiness, overall life satisfaction. And in the leadership assessment there are four leadership dimensions that are associated with these different leadership abilities.
Kristiana Corona
I think I have it. Authenticity, coaching, insight, and innovation. Right?
Ginnie Plauche
insight and innovation. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristiana Corona
Okay, so like for example, when I went through it, you get these different dimensions and then they're sort of ranked within authenticity, coaching, insight and innovation. And then they also had like derailers, like as a leader, these are gonna be things where if you like don't get this under control, this may limit your ability as a leader. And so you need to like really focus on these specific things, which I thought was helpful.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, absolutely. And I would say that this is the area that the intentional living comes into play because authenticity, and I think I said it before, but that's the whole of who you are. I'm not sure that you can really be authentic at work only.
Ginnie Plauche
and not be authentic at home. Maybe I don't know that I know a person that does that. I don't know that that's really the definition of authenticity that qualifies, I do love.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah. I don't know anybody that, yeah, that would.
You're half authentic, just halfway. Yeah.
Ginnie Plauche
Right. I do love how that leadership assessment specifically takes these emotional intelligence subscales and plugs them into each of those dimensions of leadership. So coaching has some listed authenticity, innovation, what was the other one? Insight. So when, you know, on the insight piece, if you struggle to take feedback or share
with others, it will specifically identify the emotional intelligence area for you to practice in. So.
Kristiana Corona
Yeah, super good. Maybe just to wrap up sort of this evaluation of the EQI and emotional intelligence, like if you could give leaders who are skeptical about like needing to spend time on this or, you know, spending more effort learning about emotional intelligence, maybe just one piece of advice, like what would you tell them?
Ginnie Plauche
I would say think about where you are struggling. First and foremost, if you're struggling nowhere, have you stopped growing?
But for sure, think about where you want to be because emotional intelligence is something that absolutely has capacity for continued growth and development. Studies show well into your 80s, whereas things like IQ are determined already and they don't change a lot. So,
Kristiana Corona
Mmm.
Ginnie Plauche
EQ is definitely one of those places where you can continue to develop and grow and explore. And so some of the places that are hard set, even in your personality, you can use emotional intelligence to help you soften or figure out how to be better received and things like that. So.
Kristiana Corona
Hmm. I love that you can, that there's like research done that they can continue to grow into their eighties. Like there's no excuse then. There's really no excuse.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, it says! It does start to taper off. So, there's still hope.
Kristiana Corona
And then eventually we reverse back into just being, you know, really cranky all the time and like, I want what I want. I don't care what anyone else says. No, I don't, I don't think that's true. this was awesome. Thank you so much for diving into this. think it's a really, really interesting topic and one that not many people actually really know all the dimensions of. So I'm really glad we got to, to spend time going through that.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes.
Kristiana Corona
So if my listeners are interested in learning more about you, like where can they go to find out more?
Ginnie Plauche
Sunshineclimateco.com, my website. And I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
Kristiana Corona
Perfect. Yes. And I will include all of this in the show notes. So people will have the link. And then you offered different services. I know we talked a little bit about the EQI assessment. Can you just run through, like, what are the different things that you offer, maybe both around emotional intelligence and then just in general?
Ginnie Plauche
So the EQI 2.0 is an individual assessment. There's also the option to do EQ 360, which allows others to weigh in and give some input to how they perceive you. So some reality testing there on what others see versus what you see, very helpful.
Kristiana Corona
Mmm.
Kristiana Corona
Very cool.
Ginnie Plauche
The group is not individualized. So everyone takes it and it's this average of where everybody is. So it helps you see also what is my team looking like? Where's our lows? Where's our highs? Because it will show where the lowest person was and where the highest person was. It just doesn't generate their specific report to them.
Kristiana Corona
Mm-hmm.
Ginnie Plauche
Also very helpful to narrow down what as a team we should be focusing on or could be focusing on to improve the culture, soft skills in general, communication definitely is connected to this, and adaptability really as we continue to change and grow and all of those things.
I also do one-on-one coaching, so to continue to focus on these areas or other just specific areas where leaders want to spend some time on their identity, who and how they want to be.
the intentional living piece of that, setting goals for themselves. And up next for me very, very, very soon is an adaptability certification. So it's that AQ assessment, measuring adaptability and helping people figure out how to navigate change better. So in my mind, yeah, a deeper impact on this, a deeper impact on this flexibility piece that's just really needed.
Kristiana Corona
Super interesting. I'm excited to hear more about that.
Ginnie Plauche
I think I read somewhere that we're going to experience more change in the last in the next 10 years than we have in the last 100, which is mind blowing. So. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristiana Corona
I didn't know that was possible. Yeah. That's, that's wild. So, so you do the assessments, the EQ assessments today, you're going to be, offering the AQ assessments in the future. You do one-on-one coaching and then you also do like some limited, trainings as well. Is that right? Like emotional intelligence trainings.
Ginnie Plauche
Yes, yes, emotional intelligence trainings, group trainings, and actually really exciting, very much also on the horizon is a group kind of a community that will get to focus on these. So asking questions, hearing other people's examples and situations and working through how to strengthen emotional intelligence in certain categories. I'm really excited about that community piece. And so
I will have the emotional intelligence that we read through today available in your show notes. It'll also be on my resources page, on my website, along with a link to book a call with me if you want to ask more questions or explore ways that this could be helpful for you. Those will be available.
Kristiana Corona
Perfect. That's awesome. Thank you so much for offering that. So again, free resource you guys could get access to in the show notes. then Ginnie is graciously offering like a free consultation or a free call to learn more or to dive a little bit deeper into this topic. So thank you so much for doing that. It's been such a pleasure to have you on the show and to just talk about this topic more.
Ginnie Plauche
Thank you.
Kristiana Corona
I don't know if I did a good enough job of expressing how important and interesting this was for me to go through in my process going through it. So I just want to again, acknowledge this is a really, really helpful tool. And there is so much here that you may not know that's beneath the surface for yourself around your own emotional intelligence and areas that you can work through. So definitely take advantage of doing this at some point in your career or
doing it as part of a team or doing a 360 version of this, that's super awesome. I think you're gonna learn a lot. So thank you, Ginnie, really appreciate you.
Ginnie Plauche
Thank you. I'm really grateful to participate in your podcast.
Kristiana Corona
Thank you.
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Don't worry if you didn't catch all the details of our conversation and all of the links and the resources that we talked about, because I will be putting them in the show notes for this episode. And you can find those show notes at worthytoleadpodcast.com / 14.
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