By: Natalie Collins, California Association of Winegrape Growers 

Many of us arrived in Fresno after weeks of dense winter fog, traveling out of valleys where visibility had been limited and days felt muted and gray. Fresno greeted us with sunshine, a reminder that weather, like leadership, is rarely just one thing for long. What matters is whether we notice it and how we respond when it changes.

That idea quietly framed our time together.

Ahead of the seminar, Class 55 read The New Emotional Intelligence. It’s a practical book, grounded in everyday behaviors and focused on how to implement meaningful change into one’s own life. But once we gathered in Fresno, emotional intelligence stopped feeling like something to understand and started feeling like something to practice. The question that kept surfacing wasn’t “what is emotional intelligence?” It was more personal than that: “what kind of conditions am I creating for the people around me?”

In our previous seminar, we spent time learning to slow down. We practiced resisting urgency, staying present in discomfort, and noticing our instinct to move quickly toward clarity. That lesson followed us in an unexpected way when, during his welcome at Fresno State, Dean Rolston St. Hilaire introduced the idea of the leadership itch – the urge to fix, intervene, or make change simply because we can. That itch often comes from care and responsibility. But slowing down taught us that not every moment of ambiguity requires action. This seminar asked the next question: “once we pause, how do we show up?”

Strong Enough to Hold, Soft Enough to Lead

As part of the leadership posture facilitated by Dr. White, we were invited to think about leadership through the image of a velvet-covered brick. The brick represents strength, conviction, clarity, and the willingness to stand firm. The velvet wrapping represents compassion, approachability, warmth, and care. Too much brick can intimidate or alienate others; too much velvet can quietly erode credibility. Leadership lives in the tension between the two – strong but kind, firm but fair. That balance matters because pressure changes behavior. When stress goes unmanaged, people slip into threat mode and conversations begin to narrow. Emotional intelligence doesn’t remove stress or conflict, but it does help us notice when it’s shaping the room.

As Cesar Mendoza of BASF Corporation reflected, building on insights from Chris McGlothlin (Class 52), he said,“Chris spoke about emotional intelligence in advocacy in a way that reframed it as a strength, not softness. He reminded us that awareness expands your range, not your restraint. That being attuned to your emotions and the room around you doesn’t limit you, it equips you. As he put it, calm doesn’t mean passive, it means prepared. And perhaps most memorably, he challenged us to be a thermostat, not a thermometer, setting the tone instead of simply reacting to it”.

That framing reinforced what we had been wrestling with all week: strength and awareness are not opposites. They are partners.

From Awareness to Action

As I thought about leadership in the winegrape industry right now, I couldn’t ignore how deeply the stress of this moment is shaping every room we enter. We’re navigating oversupply, market pressure, regulatory uncertainty, and shifting consumer behavior all at once, what I’ve described before as death by a million paper cuts. None of it alone is insurmountable, but together, it adds up.

And when that pressure builds, emotion follows. Frustration, fear, urgency, and defensiveness often take the lead. Leadership in this environment requires velvet-covered brick: standing firm on facts, values, and advocacy, while communicating with empathy, restraint, and respect. It means knowing when to hold the line, and when to soften the approach so people stay engaged rather than shut down. In our industry right now, it’s easy to absorb the heat. The harder work is regulating it, creating space for dialogue instead of amplifying stress.

In advocacy work, urgency feels constant. The pull to push harder, speak louder, or respond faster is real, especially when growers are under pressure and the stakes feel high. This seminar was a reminder that influence often depends less on the force of an argument and more on the conditions in which it’s delivered.

That idea resonated beyond my own experience.

As Kiaran Locy from the California Prune Board and CA GROWN reflected: “Having the language to go with what I feel in everyday situations, whether with my family or in a committee environment, is an incredible tool for my self-management. Knowing
where to start and which aspects to dial up or down is going to be invaluable in my ability to influence within the communities I have already built trust with.”

One Bite at a Time

We carried that insight into conversations about courage and conflict. We were reminded that conflict isn’t a failure of leadership; it’s a natural part of human systems. One of the most grounding takeaways was the idea of seeds, not solutions. It reminded me of the old saying: there’s only one way to eat an elephant, one bite at a time. Real change rarely happens all at once. It happens through small, intentional steps that make the next conversation possible.

That framing matters deeply in agriculture and policy. First conversations rarely change decisions, but they often determine whether future conversations are possible. As the seminar unfolded, we were also challenged to think about norms, not as rules, but as shared commitments about how we want to show up for one another. Who do we want to be under pressure? How do we balance accountability with compassion? How do we hold complexity without defaulting to force or avoidance?

Those questions felt especially present as we watched Class 54 approach commencement. Seeing them close out their journey was both energizing and grounding, a reminder of how quickly time moves in this program, and that leadership development isn’t theoretical. It’s already happening, in the choices we make and the conversations we stay in.

As Class 54 prepared to graduate, our class gifted each member a watercolor painting with an elephant at its core, reflecting their journey together, flowers from the regions they traveled layered into a single image. As class 55 fellow Kelly Damewood so beautifully shared, elephants create paths over generations. Their steady movement shapes the landscape, deepening trails others come to rely on while still leaving room for new paths to emerge.

That image has stayed with me. Leadership isn’t about swallowing the whole challenge at once. It’s about steady steps, one bite at a time, and being mindful of the paths we deepen and the space we leave for others to lead. As Class 55 moves forward, I find myself carrying a quieter question: what kind of conditions, and what kind of path, am I helping create?

As Drew Crane of Crane Mills reflected near the close of the seminar: “Walking out of the emotional intelligence seminar, one idea stuck with me: emotional
intelligence is the quiet force multiplier in our personal and professional lives. My personalized EQ test results gave me a clear roadmap, leveraging strengths in social awareness while committing to building stronger self-regulation. Most powerfully, we explored practical EQ applications and why crucial conversations are so vital, especially in agriculture. In moments like defusing opposition, forging coalitions across diverse groups, testifying before committees, or simply reading the emotional undercurrents in a room and responding thoughtfully, EQ turns potential conflict into progress. These insights can be the difference between being heard and actually driving meaningful change for ourselves and our industries.”

These insights can be the difference between being heard and actually driving meaningful change for ourselves and our industries. And maybe that’s the real work; not controlling the weather but learning how to lead within it.

Class 55 extends our sincere thanks to those who made the Fresno seminar possible.

We are grateful to Dr. Rolston St. Hilaire and Dr. Athanasios “Alex” Alexandrou for welcoming us to Fresno State, and to Dr. Erin Gorter (Class 50), Core Faculty, for guiding us through courageous conversations. Thank you to Chris McGlothlin (Class 52) of CCGGA/WAPA for grounding our discussions in advocacy and emotional intelligence, and to Annie Gonzalez of Fresno Unified School District for helping us develop our class norms. We are also thankful for the support and guidance of our coaches, Rob Balaam, Marla Collins, and Tina Shaw.

A special thank you to the Foundation staff, especially the Program Team,, the Board of Directors, Alumni Council and Education Team for their leadership and care. And finally, thank you to Class 54 for your generosity and for charting the path ahead of us.