Why One Biopharmaceutical Company Starts Leadership Development With Emotional Intelligence
Why One Biopharmaceutical Company Starts Leadership Development With Emotional Intelligence
Publish Date: 2026-06-02 16:19:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
Whether it’s role-plays or simulations with AI personas, leaders get better by practicing real conversations and receiving feedback.
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“Pretty much the first thing we do in our leadership development program is train emotional intelligence,” Lorna Hutchison-Milloy told me. As the Associate Director of Leadership Development and Coaching at Amgen, she leads a “small but mighty team” focused on developing over 100 first- and second-line field leaders per year.
Kicking off with emotional intelligence is intentional. “We regard emotional intelligence as the sort of foundation of all leadership development,” Hutchison-Milloy explained. In practice, that means any aspiring and newly promoted field leaders take an emotional intelligence (EQ) assessment, engage in a workshop, and put together a strategic action plan for EQ growth.
Only then do they move deeper into the longer six- or nine-month leadership journey. Her team’s reasoning is simple: “If you look at coaching skills, performance management, situational leadership, and team leadership skills, they all require emotional intelligence.” You can teach a leader what to do, but if they lack those social-emotional skills, the training won’t hold.
Across more than 40 interviews with talent development leaders, Hutchison-Milloy’s approach stood out for how her team treats EQ as foundational. Rather than make EQ a side module, it’s the soil that makes everything else grow.
Lorna Hutchison-Milloy, Associate Director of Leadership Development and Coaching at Amgen
Hutchison-Milloy
Why Emotional Intelligence Is the Foundation of Amgen’s Leadership Program
“We regard emotional intelligence as the sort of foundation of all leadership development,” Hutchison-Milloy said. “That’s because we believe that the most successful leaders are those who possess emotional intelligence.”
Her team trains leaders in the four core skills of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social…
