Project Management Hacks — How Your Emotional Intelligence Help You To Become A Better Project Manager
By: Elvira Denisya
Tags: Project Management, Emotional Intelligence, Project Manager, Tech

Couple years ago, I remember having chit-chat with one of my colleagues and he asked “Elvira, you have so many One Things to think about… What do you think the true One Thing is for you as the project manager?” (I remember this conversation after we read a book “The One Thing” by Jay Papasan).

So I thought about the question and replied, “Well, first of all, at end of the day, it’s always about communication and accountability. It’s my job to track all of the moving parts on the project so that everybody knows what they need to do and when, then we’re on track.” In essence, my number one job is to communicate effectively to ensure accountability.

So by knowing this, what we know is:

A project manager is responsible for keeping the project team motivated. (number one rules)

But what does it mean in essence?

You are pushing leadership and management ideas to people.

You try to find an approach that will make a person happy at work. (for sure)

But what does that have to do with leading a project successfully? It may be a soft skill, but it’s one that is no less crucial to managing teams than the more technical ones. Your teams, after all, are made up of people. When people work together under stress, like on a project, emotions are going to flare. Boom!

“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” — Theodore Roosevelt

While most future leaders from what I heard are focusing on sustainability and the development of soft skills, they rarely address the element of emotional intelligence. As time goes by, here’s biggest thing I learned during my career:

Rule number one: Know who are your team! Not only remember!

As the team matures, members gradually learn to cope with each other and the pressures that they face. As a result, the team goes through the fairly predictable stages noted on the slide. Therefore, here is 4 stages in team building (refer to Tuckman (1965) and some- MBTI Type) that always be my benchmark:

1. Forming

Where the people of the team determines the challenges on every projects and identifies what kind of information needed. Early in this stage, it’s quite important that PM and team members understand what kind of people they’re working with. For example:

Extraverts:

Need to think a lot, they like to be heard, vocals on meetings/discussion, like to have many conversations

Great explainers, sometimes

May overwhelm others

While Introverts doing:

Need time to process task/informations

Great concentration

May not be heard, sometimes

Sometimes refuse too many meetings!

To be an effective team member, there’s some fun facts we can learn on:

Extraverts:

Be prepared to stop before you fall into redundancy and overkill your peers

Control your tendency to speak

Make a special effort to listen carefully, avoid interrupting others

Stop, Look and Listen

Introverts:

Share more quickly and spontaneously thoughts and ideas

Rule out nothing as being too trivial and meaningless

Don’t hold others to the first words out of their mouths. Push for meaning and clarity

2. Storming

This is probably most challenging stage for team members. They begin to realize that this project is different than other ones that they have done in the past, sometimes they realize the task is more difficult than they imagined! Team’s morale are sometimes on stake. Productivity decreased, team temperature become low. In this stage, PM can learn to encourage members to use their individual skills and assume more responsibility. Understanding how personality types interact can ease some of the tensions in the storming stage. Some key notes here while team fighting together on solving conflicts/problems:

Compromising — try to get others to give up some of what they want in exchange for giving up some of what you want. Sounds good yeah, but this can be lose-lose strategy because no one achieves their goals. Underlying assumption: everyone should accept less than they want because that is the best that they can hope for. (Should be tried after problem solving didn’t work) and learn on how to manage each other’s expectations.

Problem Solving — Win-win approach. Personal goals and team relationships are highly valued. Purpose to find a path forward that meets everyone’s goals and preserves group relationship rather than fight for one’s ego.

When compromising and problem solving skills are the duo combo, PM should have the overall awareness of what’s going on business-wise, what we called “level of understanding” — from internal change to strategic business priorities and more — which allows us as a PM to communicate more empathetically and lead more confidently. Even across groups with competing priorities, emotionally intelligent project managers should know how to positively influence relationships to achieve collaboration towards all members.

More silver linings here: They know that one size does not fit all.

PM needs to understand and able to modify and set a standard project implementation process to what works for specific cultures, environments and requirements are different. We highly pursue the awareness of the surroundings and the various dynamics conditions that might affect the project at hand, and we need to understand that fluidity is a must, as no two projects are the same.

3. Norming

After facing some storm weather, windy roads during work, the ship is quite broken.. team begin to work out their differences and now have more time and energy to spend on their work. In this stage, Team members realize that they are not going to crash-and-burn and start helping each other. Thus they are able to start making significant progress again. Yay!

In the context of my project, the team have probably found a mentor who is helping them and have narrowed their project focus. Now that the team is working well, it is important for team members to learn to communicate with each other including on how to constructively criticize when necessary and encourage continued team spirit is a must! There’s a guideline on giving constructive feedback:

Don’t use labels! Be specific and unambiguous, don’t use words that sounds unprofessional and immature

Don’t exaggerate and don’t be judgmental

Speak for yourself. Don’t refer to absent, anonymous people. Use “I” messages, and avoid references like “A lot of people here don’t like it when you do this…” it’s a no-no. Encourage others to speak for themselves

It’s always OK to ask for help and take the initiative

4. Performing

Hoorray! Team almost reach a better understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and developed some insight into personal and team process. We conduct retrospective to review their performance, learn from failure and eager more on the clarity on the project goal, and aiming for a new ideas.

Every team member can help!

It’s important to realize that the development of effective working relationships among team using those 4 stages is a gradual process which requires considerable time and skill.

Lastly, the one thing that we can learn is: emotional intelligence helps you seek the real you. It helps you better understand your upside and your downside equally, through your ups and downs, smiles and frowns. Besides, when you are communicating with a group of individuals on an emotional level, they explain to you about yourself in a much better way than you ever realized. If you have a keen sense of yourself and know how to handle your emotions and reactions, you’ll be able to fine-tune your instincts. With that comes empathy, the ability to communicate more effectively and, ultimately, a happy and healthy team relationship leads to a productive work!