Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers

Anthony Mersino

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814432785
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

You've spent years gathering the technical intelligence you need for this challenging career--now separate yourself from the pack by increasing your emotional intelligence!

As recent research has indicated that emotional intelligence (EI) now accounts for 70 to 80 percent of management success, there is no doubt that today's successful project manager needs strong interpersonal skills and the ability to recognize emotional cues to lead their teams to success--the technical expertise the position depended on so greatly in the past simply isn't enough anymore!

Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers introduces you to all facets of EI and shows how emotions can be leveraged to meet project goals. Project managers strong in technical skills but needing help in the EI department will learn how to:

• Set the tone and direction for the project
• Communicate effectively
• Motivate, inspire, and engage their team
• Encourage flexibility and collaboration
• Deal productively with stress, criticism, and change
• Establish the kind of high morale that attracts top performers

Now in its second edition, Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers includes several expanded sections on self-awareness and self-management, as well as a new chapter on using EI to lead Agile Teams and a close look at Servant Leadership.

PART 1

An Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

1
My Growth in Emotional Intelligence

A Dangerous Situation

“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is not to be in touch with your feelings?” This question was posed to me in the summer of 2001 by Rich, a therapist who has since become my career coach and mentor. His words stopped me in my tracks. Dangerous? That was a curious word choice. What could be dangerous about not being in touch with my feelings? I was thirty-nine years old and had been a successful project manager (PM) for over seventeen years. I had a record of slow but steady career progression. I had been certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) since 1995. I owned my own project management consulting business and lived, taught, and even breathed project management. No one had ever asked me about feelings before. No one had ever mentioned that there might be danger involved. What could be dangerous? What was so important about feelings?

Rich’s question resonated with me, but I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t feel dangerous to be out of touch with my emotions. However, I had a nagging sense that he saw or knew things that I didn’t. On some level I recognized that the way I approached work wasn’t always effective. Hard work did not always make the difference in the outcomes of the projects I managed. I wondered how others seemed to succeed with less effort. I also felt insecure about the lack of personal and professional relationships I had built, and I suspected that it was hurting me. As much as I wanted to deny that my career and relationship challenges might be related to my emotions, I began to suspect that Rich might be right.

The truth was that I wasn’t aware of my feelings or emotions. I was about as emotionally aware as a small green soap dish. If I could have taken an emotional intelligence test at that time, I would have been considered the village idiot.

With Rich’s help, I began to see a connection between my lack of emotional awareness and my limited success in project management. Up to that point, my project management career had been a bumpy road. While not quite a dead end street, my career path hadn’t exactly taken a superhighway either. Lately that road didn’t seem to be taking me anywhere. I had recently been passed over for a key promotion at Unisys. My career ladder had literally run out of rungs. Perhaps I had been promoted to my level of incompetence and was therefore living proof of the Peter Principle.

Eventually I found I could no longer ignore Rich’s question about the danger, and I decided to do something about it. I knew I needed to make some changes. I was ready to make more of an investment in my emotions and relationships. Initially, it wasn’t for personal reasons. It was all about ROI, my return on investment for improving my emotional intelligence. I believed that my career would benefit from it. And after spending most of the last five years working on my emotional intelligence, I am happy to report that my career has benefited significantly.

As I grew, I learned how my work relationships reflected my world view. Until then, my relationships with my project teams and other stakeholders were weak or nonexistent. That was largely the result of my project management style as a taskmaster. I was all business. Unfortunately, I placed a higher value on tasks, productivity, and outcomes than on relationships. I lacked empathy. I had a way of driving the people on my project teams that was hostile and irresponsible. My coworkers may have called me driven, but they would never have characterized me as a warm and fuzzy relationship person. At best people warmed up to me over time.

My big shift came when I began to recognize the value of emotions and relationships in the workplace. I became aware of feelings and learned to trust them as a source of information. I learned to recognize and acknowledge when I felt angry, scared, or happy. I also began to pay attention to what those around me were feeling and to consider that information when making decisions. By doing this, I was able to better manage my projects and to be a better leader of people.

I learned the importance of stakeholder relationships and invested in relationships with friends, coworkers, and other leaders. I learned how critical relationships and support were to achieving success on large projects. My relationships began to grow, along with my ability to lead others.

The results were nothing short of impressive. The investment and changes I made began to improve my effectiveness as a PM. Within a year of beginning my work on emotions and relationships, I was asked to lead a fast-moving project of twelve people. As I demonstrated success with this team, my responsibilities grew until I was managing seventy-five people across the United States and internationally. As I continued to learn and apply my skills in this area, I was able effectively to lead large teams, build strong relationships with project stakeholders, and achieve the goals of the projects I was managing.

Emotional Mastery for Project Managers

I am quite sure that many of you are thinking “of course, you idiot” when I talk about mastery of emotions leading to success as a PM. You were probably among the five million people who bought one of Daniel Goleman’s books on emotional intelligence—and then actually read it. Yes, of course emotions play a role at work, no matter what your position. They are of special concern to those of us in project management and leadership. Emotions play a direct role in our success as PMs and leaders.

I was not one of the five million people who bought Goleman’s first book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, when it came out in 1997. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what emotional intelligence was when I first began working on my emotional awareness. It wasn’t until I decided to include emotional intelligence as part of the curriculum for the project management course I taught at Northwestern University that I began to read the published materials on the topic. By then I had accepted the fact that I lacked emotional intelligence, proving, I suppose, that admitting I had a problem was the first step toward resolution. More than that, I had begun to grow, make changes, and experience greater succe...