Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers

The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results

Author: Anthony Mersino, PMP
Pub Date: 2007
Your Price: $24.95
ISBN: 0814474160
Format: Hardcover

 

• Overview
• Sample Chapter
• Table of Contents
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Chapter 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. Up to that point, my relationships with my project teams and other stakeholders were weak or non-existent. 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, co-workers, and other leaders. I learned how critical relationships and support were to be successful on large projects. My relationships began to grow as did 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 to effectively 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 that 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 recovery. More than that, I had begun to grow and make changes and to experience greater success as a project manager.

After my own powerful experience with emotional intelligence, I conducted some research to see what experience other PMs had with emotional intelligence. In late 2005, I conducted a survey of over 100 PMs to determine their beliefs and attitudes about emotional intelligence. The results were very interesting (see Appendix K for details). Most of the PMs I surveyed thought that emotional intelligence was important to success as a PM and were interested in learning more. However, the survey also indicated that most PMs didn't know very much about emotional intelligence.

Was this surprising? Not really. Sure, PMs understand basic project management techniques and the contents of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide). They have also pursued PMP certification and become black-belt masters of project scheduling tools like MS Project, Artemis, or NIKU. In fact, those are prerequisites for success even as a junior PM; consider them entry criteria. But in order to advance your career, you will need strong interpersonal skills or soft skills. Emotional intelligence provides the framework for those interpersonal skills.

Do you see a connection between emotional intelligence and your own success as a PM? Are you trying to advance your career? Do you ever feel frustrated by lack of opportunity even though you have done all you can to improve your technical project management skills? Perhaps you are doing things the hard way as I did, working harder to make up for soft skills.

You cannot make up for soft skills with hard work.

To advance as a PM requires understanding and mastery of emotional intelligence concepts. Yes, mastery of emotional intelligence. PMs who master emotional intelligence can develop their careers by delivering more consistently and by taking on larger and more important projects. In fact, success with large and complex projects depends largely on the level of emotional intelligence of the PM.

PMs who master emotional intelligence will set themselves apart from other PMs. They will be able to achieve more with the same team. They will excel in their careers. And they will feel more satisfied with themselves and their relationships with others.

PMs that master emotional intelligence will set themselves apart from other PMs.

 

Project Management Is Competitive

Figure 1-1: Growth in Certified Project Managers (PMPs)

Most project managers feel the need to set themselves apart from other project managers. If you feel under pressure to compete, you are not alone. Project management is a very competitive field. As an example, consider the recent growth in PMP certification as shown in Figure 1-1. PMs increasingly seek certification as a way to differentiate themselves from other PMs. PMP certification has skyrocketed as a result. When I achieved my PMP certification back in 1995, I was number 4,410. By the end of 2005, the total number of certified PMs had exploded to 184,461. In fact, the number of PMs certified in 2005 alone (59,602) was more than the number certified in the first 10 years of the PMP certification program (52,443).¹

PMP certification does not in itself make a PM more capable; it ­simply proves that you have the requisite project management experience and can pass the multiple-choice certification exam. To be truly effective you need to be able to implement projects and work well with your team. Emotional intelligence will help you do that.

Emotional intelligence and certification are two very different things. However, the pursuit of PMP certification demonstrates that PMs are seeking every advantage they can get. Emotional intelligence can be just one more way of setting themselves apart. I believe that this will lead to an increased interest in developing and applying emotional intelligence to project management.

 

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

The term emotional intelligence was actually coined by two psychologists, Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, in 1990. I am a little surprised they didn't call it the Salomayer Principle or something similar. I bet if they had known that Daniel Goleman would come along in 1995 and use the term for the ­title of his best-selling book, they would certainly have used their own names. In any case, they simply called it emotional intelligence and gave it the following definition:

Emotional Intelligence: "the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to usethis information to guide one's thinking and action."
—Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer²

While Salovey and Mayer continued their research work, in 1995 Goleman wrote Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. This was the right message at the right time and soon Goleman was a best-selling author whose name became synonymous with emotional intelligence. Goleman has since gone on to write several more books on the topic. In one of their recent books, Goleman and co-author Cary Cherniss state that emotional intelligence, at the most general level, refers to:

"the abilities to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others"
—Daniel Goleman and Gary Cherniss³

As a PM, I hold a pragmatic view of emotional intelligence, thinking of it as "knowing and managing our own emotions and those of others for improved performance." I am interested in the application of emotional intelligence to life in general as well as specifically to the field of project management. In a project setting, the understanding and use of emotions helps us to have more enjoyable, predictable, and successful projects. That is what the remainder of this book is about.

 

Measuring Your Emotional Intelligence

Each of us has some level of emotional intelligence. The question is, how do we know what that level is? It would certainly be convenient if emotional intelligence were as easy to measure as height or weight. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There are numerous different assessments of emotional intelligence. The instruments tend to be different in three areas: the person providing the assessment, the mechanism for measurement, and the underlying framework.

In terms of who provides the assessment, most of these emotional intelligence assessments available are self-reported. In other words, the individual being assessed completes the instrument him or herself. For a more objective and complete view, there are also multi-rater instruments that can provide 360-degree reviews.

Emotional intelligence assessments also vary in terms of how they measure emotional intelligence. Some are based on traits and others are based on abilities. Examples of assessments that measure traits include answering questions about how individuals tend to respond in various situations. The instruments that measure abilities might show a photo or a short video followed by a series of related questions.

Finally, assessments vary in terms of the underlying framework of emotional intelligence competencies. As we will see in Chapter 2, numerous researchers have developed their own frameworks for emotional intelligence. Some of the best known are Daniel Goleman, Peter Salovey, John Mayer, and Rueven BarOn.

All of the assessments suffer from a question of validity. By validity, I mean the ability to consistently and reliably measure emotional intelligence in individuals. While the authors of each assessment instrument will tout the validity of what they are measuring, there are no validated instruments for measuring emotional intelligence. See Appendix J for a review of the various instruments available and the claims to validity.

Before we entirely give up the idea of measuring emotional intelligence, we should take a look at what some of the existing tools can tell us about ourselves. It is possible to get an idea of your level of emotional intelligence using a simple set of questions such as those shown in Table 1-1. Though the outcome will be subjective, it will provide some information about your level of EQ. Take the mini self-assessment by reviewing each item and checking "Yes" or "No" as it applies to you.

To score the mini-assessment, count the total number of no responses and use Table 1-2 above to interpret your results.

 

Table 1-1: Emotional Intelligence Mini-Assessment

		Yes | No
1.	Do you feel like you should be more excited about a special event than you are?
2.	Do you find yourself not crying under circumstances when you believe others would cry?
3.	Do you pride yourself on never getting angry?
4.	Have you ever been told you are abrasive, unfeeling, or uncaring?
5.	Are you frequently surprised that your expectations of others differ from what actually happens?
6.	Do you feel that the problems others have are largely their own fault?
7.	Do you find it difficult to work with people on your team whose background differs from your own?
8.	Do you find yourself upset or unable to focus when your spouse or a team member is upset?
9.	Do you blow up with your spouse, children, or project team over seemingly innocuous remarks or circumstances?
10.	Would your closest friends or spouse say that you had problems managing your emotions?
11.	Do you frequently make jokes or use sarcasm?
12.	Do you storm out of meetings, send flaming emails, or slam doors?
13.	Are your relationships with your project team, managers, or sponsors superficial and limited to the task at hand?
14.	Do you find that you have minor skirmishes with specific individuals on an ongoing basis?
15.	Do you feel like the victim of others or that you say yes when you really want to say no?
16.	Do people leave your project teams because of you?
17.	Do you find it difficult to communicate?
18.	Are you ever surprised that your team doesn't understand your project objectives?
19.	Do you experience conflict on projects that never seems to get resolved?
20.	Do you want to do a better job of establishing charisma or presence as a leader?
	Total:

 

Table 1-2: Scoring the Emotional Intelligence Mini Assessment
 

Score	What it means
17–20	You are doing great; you are in the minority of project managers who understand emotional intelligence. This book may help you to fine tune your approach.
13–16	You are doing well, but could use some improvement in a few key areas.
7–12	You have some strong areas but also have opportunities to improve in others. Some work on emotional intelligence will help you to deliver more consistently.
1–6	You have significant opportunities to improve your emotional intelligence. An investment in this area will provide a great pay-off for you in terms of project outcomes and career success.

 

The Good News About Emotional Intelligence

The good news about emotional intelligence is that no matter where you are now, most experts agree that you can improve your level of emotional intelligence. In fact, experts agree that you can continue to improve your level over the course of your life. I know this to be true because I have done it. Over the last five years I have gone from "village idiot" to being aware of and managing emotions. Maybe "emotional genius" is in reach for me!

Here is more good news. Improvements in your emotional intelligence will help your career as a PM. No matter what your emotional starting point is, if you improve your level of emotional intelligence, you will do a better job of managing projects. The remainder of this book is going to tell you how to do just that. We are going to discuss in detail the various aspects of emotional intelligence; how they apply in the project management environment, and the specific activities and exercises you can use to help you improve your emotional intelligence. This will undoubtedly also help you to succeed as a PM.

 

Applying Emotional Intelligence to Project Management

The February 2006 issue of PM Network ran a cover story on emotional intelligence. It was interesting that this article appeared eleven years after Daniel Goleman's first book was published. When I began researching this book I found that there had been a previous PM network on emotional intelligence featuring Daniel Goleman in 1999. Other than these two examples and a few others, I have not found many people looking at the linkage between emotional intelligence and success in project management.

Based on my own discussions with PMs and surveys of PMs, I have come to believe that most PMs understand emotional intelligence at a conceptual level. The challenge is that they lack the tools to apply it to projects. After all, how do you apply emotional intelligence to project management? It wasn't immediately apparent to me. In my research I found that it wasn't all that apparent to others either. This book is the first book of its kind to spell out in detail how to apply emotional intelligence to projects.

The starting point for applying emotional intelligence is when we acknowledge that project management is getting work done through others. As PMs, we are dependent on others for our success. To achieve anything significant, we need a team. Big, important projects generally require large, effective project teams as well as an effective PM. As a PM, I personally want to take on larger and more complex projects since I believe that is going to advance my career. That is where the application of emotional intelligence pays off big.

"Project management is getting work done through others."

 

Emotional intelligence can help PMs to:

1. develop stakeholder relationships that support the project's success
2. anticipate and avoid emotional breakdowns
3. deal with difficult team members and manage conflict
4. leverage emotional information to make better decisions
5. communicate more effectively
6. create a positive work environment and high team morale
7. cast a vision for shared project objectives that will attract, inspire, and ­motivate the project team

Let's look at each of these benefits in more detail.

1. Develop Stakeholder Relationships That Support the Project's Success

Relationships are the key to success as a PM. This includes the relationships with our team members as well as with the other project stakeholders. Strong relationships with all project stakeholders will buffer us during difficult times, help us gather more complete information, support us when we need it, and enable us to make better decisions. We will address stakeholder relationships in detail in Chapter 6, on relationship management.

 

2. Anticipate and Avoid Emotional Breakdowns

Emotional breakdowns happen when we lose it. They are the office equivalent of road rage. Over the life of a project, we can experience significant stress. For some of us, this stress will push us over the edge and cause us to do something undesirable. In Chapter 4, Self-Management, we will discuss under­lying causes and triggering events for emotional breakdowns, ways we can recognize when we are at risk of a breakdown, and techniques for avoiding breakdowns.

 

3. Deal with Difficult Team Members and Manage Conflict

In an ideal project, there are no difficult team members and conflict is manageable. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case in practice. When we seek out high-performing individuals for our teams, we often encounter difficult team members. Emotional intelligence can provide us the tools to work with difficult individuals, help us identify ways in which we contribute to the problem, and help us to work through issues with those parties. It helps us in a similar way to address the inevitable project conflict. Emotional intelligence can help us to recognize or even anticipate conflict and deal with it before it derails the project. After the groundwork for recognizing and anticipating conflict is laid in Chapter 5, Social Awareness, we will address stakeholder relationships in Chapter 6, Relationship Management.

 

4. Leverage Emotional Information to Make Better Decisions

In their 2004 book titled The Emotionally Intelligent Manager,⁴ David Caruso and Peter Salovey identified six principles of emotional intelligence. The number one principle cited in their book was Emotion Is Information.

"Emotion Is Information"
—David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey

Our emotions are like our own personal radar. They provide us with a steady stream of information about ourselves, our team members, and our environment. When we are in touch with and able to access our emotions, we can leverage that information to make better decisions. If we are not in touch with our emotions, we are missing out on vital information about our environment.

Figure 1-2: Personal Radar Warning

Emotions provide us with the extra data points that we need to make better decisions. They give us an intuitive or gut sense of what we need to do next. In a world where being right 51 percent of the time is often enough to make the difference, those extra data points may be just what it takes for us to be successful. We will discuss emotional data throughout the remainder of this book. We will examine decision making in Chapter 7, Project Team Leadership.

 

5. Communicate More Effectively

Emotional intelligence helps us to understand ourselves as well as those around us. By understanding the emotions and motivations of our team members and other stakeholders, we can choose the words and messages that will make our point and resonate with the audience. We can anticipate dif­ficult moments and take extra care to send just the right message with the correct emotions, whether we are speaking one-on-one with a stakeholder or addressing a group. We will address communications using emotional intelligence in Chapter 7, Project Team Leadership, as well as in Chapter 8, Creating a Positive Team Environment, and Chapter 9, Excelling with Emotional Intelligence on Large and Complex Projects.

 

6. Create a Positive Work Environment and High Team Morale

As PMs, we are responsible for the emotional tone of the project. We can approach this in a number of ways. We can leave the emotional tone of the project to chance, or to the various members of our team. The results we get will be unpredictable. Alternatively, we can systematically and proactively manage that project environment to create the positive outcomes we are seeking. The strategic application of emotional intelligence will allow us to create a productive and successful environment with high morale and esprit de corps. We will address this in Chapter 7, Project Team Leadership, as well as in Chapter 8, Creating a Positive Team Environment.

 

7. Cast a Vision for Shared Project Objectives That Will Attract, Inspire, and Motivate the Project Team

Shared project objectives are important for getting buy-in and commitment from our project team. Unfortunately, this is not always as easy as it sounds. Establishing shared objectives requires understanding the emotions and objectives of those on our project teams and then casting a vision for the project that enables those individuals to fulfill their objectives within the project. One of my first project management mentors always told me that as a PM you are dependent on your resources for success. He used to say:

"As a PM, you live or die by your resources."

As my career has progressed, I have come to fully appreciate what he meant. The ability to attract and inspire the best project resources is going to make our projects succeed; without this ability, our chances of success are greatly diminished. We will address resources in Chapter 8, Creating a Positive Team Environment.

 

Emotional Intelligence Is Vital to Project Managers

While emotional intelligence is important to managers and leaders of all types, the unique environment of projects makes the application of emotional intelligence critical to PMs for three reasons. First, each project is unique. As PMs move from project to project, we constantly experience a change of teams, sponsors, and other stakeholders. Only rarely do we have the benefit of the same stakeholders and project team. This puts pressure on us to assess, understand, and manage the emotions of our team and stakeholders to build relationships. We need to do this each time we start a new project.

The second reason that emotional intelligence is important to PMs is that projects are temporary. Unlike general management, projects have a beginning and an end. This puts pressure on PMs to move quickly. We don't have the luxury of time to develop strong relationships and create a positive team environment. If we don't work on relationships early in the project lifecycle, our projects can get derailed and never have a chance for success. We cannot afford to get our projects off on the wrong foot.

The third reason that emotional intelligence is important to projects is the limited power and authority of the PM. In most cases, PMs do not have direct authority or power over the project team members. They cannot ­simply direct others to do what is needed. PMs need to use more sophisticated strategies to get their team members to achieve the desired outcomes. Without an understanding of the application of emotional intelligence, PMs may struggle to get the work of the project completed.

Figure 1-3: Project Management Areas of Expertise

Given the importance to PMs, it may surprise you to find that emotional intelligence is not directly addressed in the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide), which addresses the technical aspects of Project Management in detail. The closest the PMBOK^® Guide comes is in the area of interpersonal skills. In Figure 1-3 from the PMBOK^® Guide, interpersonal skills are one of the areas of expertise needed by PMs. Not just an area of familiarity, but an area of expertise. Interpersonal skills are further defined in the PMBOK^® Guide by the following:

• effective communications
• influencing the organization
• leadership
• motivation
• negotiation and conflict management
• problem solving⁵

You can see that there is quite a bit of overlap between the PMBOK^® Guide and the emotional intelligence topics. I believe that our ability to leverage these interpersonal skills is dependent on our level of emotional intelligence. Unfortunately, the PMBOK^® Guide falls short of providing steps on how to develop and apply the interpersonal skills listed above. This book will provide the detailed guide to developing and applying those interpersonal skills.

If this emotional intelligence business seems a little daunting, take heart. Improving your awareness of emotional intelligence and applying it to projects is not difficult. It has the potential to provide rich rewards for you. Even small steps can make a large difference in your life and in your projects. All it takes is the desire to learn and grow and the courage to step out of your comfort zone. It may even require change.

Change is difficult for all of us. In fact, we resist change because it is easier to let inertia keep us on our current course. Staying the course was familiar to me, yet on some level I knew that it wasn't giving me the results I wanted. Once I realized how much danger was involved in staying on my previous course, I became very motivated to try something new. One definition of insanity is trying the same thing and expecting different results. If you want to get different results or different project outcomes, consider trying something different by learning about and applying emotional intelligence techniques.

¹Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI Today. Project Management Institute, Inc. 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005.

²Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer. Emotional Intelligence, Imagination Cognition, and Personality, Volume 9, No. 3. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Co., 1990.

³Cary Cherniss and David Goleman. The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001.

⁴David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey. The Emotionally Intelligent Manager; How to Develop and Use the Four Key Emotional Skills of Leadership. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004.

⁵Project Management Institute (PMI). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) Third Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc., 2004.

 

© 2007 Anthony C. Mersino.
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