When Being Emotional At Work Is A Good Thing

To understand this skill useful in project management, we must first understand what it truly is and what it really is not. Emotional intelligence is best understood as a term that is used to describe how well someone understands emotions when it comes to the context of collaboration and working with other individuals or groups. By using emotional intelligence, an ability to sense, understand, manage, and then apply the information that has been learned and help guide those emotions into a strong source of motivation, influence, and connection within a project team. Emotional intelligence is a topic that can be broken down in to four core areas: social skills, self-awareness, empathy, and self-management.

The Four Core Areas Of EI

The first core area that is being talked about when it comes to emotional intelligence is social skills. The area of social skills is about how social influence is necessary when it comes to relationship-building that is needed for project aims. Having social skills can help people’s ability to influence, coach and mentor, and resolve conflicts in very efficient ways with little adversity along the way.

The second core area of emotional intelligence is social awareness. While being understanding and able to manage your own emotions is something that is especially important, being able to understand and manage the emotions of other individuals or even multiple people is just as important. This is where social awareness comes into play, which is described as the ability to recognize the emotions and dynamics of those around you. Being strong in social awareness shows that you have a strong understanding of empathy, another core area that will be talked about soon. Being able to relate and comprehend the feelings and perspectives of others enables you to effectively communicate and collaborate more with those surrounding you.

The third core area is empathy, which is described as an understanding of emotions and being able to relate to them on a more personal level. There is a difference between being empathetic and being sympathetic. Being sympathetic means that you can understand the feelings of someone else without having truly experienced those feelings or that circumstance as well. Being empathetic shows a stronger connection in feelings as this means you can not only understand the emotions of someone but can connect to those feelings on a personal level as well. Being able to show empathy to someone helps create a stronger type of connection with those around you.

The fourth and final core area in emotional intelligence is self-management. With self-management, this area is referred to as the ability to mange your own emotions, especially in stressful moments and being able to find positives when negatives are presented. Those who struggle with self-management have a much more difficult time with keeping their own impulses in check and tend to react more so. The more in tune you are with your emotional intelligence shows that it is easier for you to respond rather than react when situations arise.

Why Is This Good for Project Managers?

So, what do these core areas and emotional intelligence overall have to do with project managers? In project management, plans can change like the wind, issues can arise faster than predicted, and the unexpected can come at any moment. Being able to adapt, learn, and grow so that moving forward can remain an option is needed when these moments occur. With project managers being the ones that lead the entirety of a project team, it is imperative that they have the necessary skills to handle these moments. If a project manager were to not be able to work under pressure or not be able to come up with a sensible solution to a problem, then project teams would be unable to function and not able to complete the tasks that are laid out for them.

Emotional Intelligence in An Agile Environment

Emotional intelligence is needed for project managers in a regular environment, but with agile project management styles it can be even more of a need. Agile project management styles are very much more fast paced with no plans on slowing down or taking steps back to regroup, and this can cause a much more stressful environment for those who work in it. Being able to handle and maneuver in this management style is crucial to a project’s success. For another reason, since agile is meant to be a fat moving project management style, there has been evidence of how project teams where a good understanding of emotional intelligence is present can increase the morale of the team and thus the productivity as well.

Being emotionally intelligent does not only have to be important in everyday life, it also can provide routes to greater success when completing jobs and preforming tasks. Being able to learn this skill is something that will benefit many in personal ways as well as professional. If more teams focused on having emotionally intelligent project managers and project teams, greater success in completions would be seen and this can be carried over into future projects as well.

Work Cited

Agile EQ Assessment | DiSC Emotional Intelligence Test. (n.d.). Www.corexcel.com. Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://www.corexcel.com/disc-assessments/disc-emotional-intelligence.php

Bell, M. (2021, January 13). Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers. Project Management Academy Resources. https://projectmanagementacademy.net/resources/blog/emotional-intelligence-for-project-managers/

Casper, C. M. (2002). Using emotional intelligence to improve project performance. Pmi.org.           https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/emotional-intelligence-improve-project-performance-1019

Georgieff, M. (n.d.). The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Agile. Www.agilesherpas.com. Retrieved March 18, 2023, from https://www.agilesherpas.com/blog/emotional-intelligence-in-agile

How Emotional Intelligence Can Make You Better at Your Job. (2018, September 21). Big Sea.           https://bigsea.co/ideas/how-emotional-intelligence-can-make-you-better-at-your-job/

Landry, L. (2019, April 3). Why emotional intelligence is important in leadership. Harvard Business School Online. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/emotional-intelligence-in-leadership

Smith, A. (2017, February 20). Emotional Intelligence And NLP: How They Are Related. Practical NLP. https://nlppod.com/emotional-intelligence-nlp/