As technical skills are considered the most important aspect of project delivery, Emotional Intelligence (EA) keeps people who execute these projects. Anyone conversant with project management operations should relate to its consistent diverse teams, tight deadlines, and the never-ending pressure from stakeholders.
While charts and laid-down procedures may provide the team with the right control and emotional awareness needed for the success of the project, emotional intelligence remains the most important, yet unsung, aspect of organizational leadership.
Emotional Intelligence And the Scope?
Unlike Edward Thorndike’s 1920s social intelligence concept, emotional intelligence in an organization was made popular by Daniel Goleman, an American psychologist who defined it as the human ability to understand, recognize, and influence other people’s emotions.
Goleman had explained that people should be smart with feelings, not soft. Goleman’s model of emotional intelligence has been summarized as:
1. Self Awareness & Self-regulation
With self-awareness, team members can pick up emotions and assess their impact on both themselves and others. Self-regulation manages both behaviors and impulsive feelings. It also assesses their impact on surrounding behaviors.
2. Self-regulation & Motivation
Self-regulation manages behaviors and impulsive feelings in people. It teaches them how to remain composed under pressure. According to Goleman, motivation harnesses emotions using persistence and energy.
3. Social Skills & Empathy
Social skills manage human relationships as a way of navigating people towards the right direction. With empathy, team members can understand other people’s emotional structure.
Why EI is Considered a Project Leader’s Secret Weapon
In response to the uncertainty and the crucial nature of projects, managers and Project Management Office (PMO) leaders have adopted emotional intelligence to:
- Maintain healthy communication amid stress. This ensures it isn’t distorted as a result of the current tension.
- Constructively de-escalate conflicts. They are expected to turn conflict into opportunities for innovation.
- Encourage project teams to stay engaged. This is relevant especially during difficult phases of your operation. This helps to foster commitment and resilience among team members.
The EI Challenges Every Project Leader Faces
As important and relevant as emotional intelligence is to the project management niche, there are a few challenges that can alter a project manager’s emotional intelligence. The major ones include:
- Overdependence on the process. This happens when managers hide behind generic methods, a bunch of management theories, and Gantt charts, and neglect their team morale.
- Struggling to strike a balance. This is where managers struggle to assert the situation without being empathetic.
- Emotional exhaustion. Managers experience emotional burnout most of the time. This compels them to consistently succumb to pressure, hence making poor decisions.
Applying the Key Components of EI to Project Leadership
There are many ways project managers can introduce emotional intelligence into their daily practice.
The first method is self-awareness. Managers must prioritize taking five minutes to ponder their emotional stability before every stakeholder meeting. They must understand their emotional trigger and use either journaling or feedback from team members to assert how their mood affects the team.
Another is self-control. When a client demands a difficult task, managers are advised to respond defensively. To do this, halt, take a deep breath, and come up with a composed response. Remember, your calm reaction sets the ground running for the rest of the team.
Managers must leverage empathy through active listening. They must focus totally on understanding what the team members have in mind. They must adopt a communication style that blends with different cultures and personalities.
The Role of Project Management Office in Building an EI Culture
The PMO plays an important role in integrating Emotional Intelligence into the operations of the organization. This can happen by introducing EI training sessions into managers’ project leadership development programs.
PMOs must also ensure they introduce reflective practice into their operations. They must come up with strategies that answer the question “how’s the best way to manage stress in our project team?” They should also work on introducing emotionally intelligent systems within the organization’s governance structures.
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence has never relented in proving its worth in the organization’s operations. PMOs and managers must endeavour to apply the working components of EI to their project leadership, starting with self-awareness.
Organizations must also understand the scope of emotional intelligence that works for them, especially the one purported by Daniel Goleman. Finally, the role of the project management office in ensuring an EI culture in any organization must be well defined, starting from training managers on EI, as it affects project management office.