How can project management advisory help companies manage emotional intelligence and drive project success?
Summary
What makes a successful and valuable employee has changed over the years. In the current landscape, emotional intelligence has emerged as a valuable characteristic that can drive project success.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to not just understand and glean information from emotions but also make it a source of energy, unique skill, and power in the workplace.
The connection to project success: Research reveals that high-performing teams also report high levels of emotional intelligence. This is likely because emotional intelligence gives its bearer better communication skills, empathy, critical thinking skills, the ability to manage stress and deliver better performance. Lower emotional intelligence, on the other hand, can create disharmony within a project management team that lacks perception, as well as the ability to adapt swiftly to changes.
How does a project management advisor help foster emotional intelligence: A project management advisor helps foster higher value-added characteristics such as emotional intelligence in your business by optimising your critical functions. When your functional framework is optimised, you make more room for innovation, training opportunities, and the project success this brings.
The external perspective of project management advisors also makes it easier to drive changes in a corporate culture much more seamlessly.
How we view the ideal employee has changed over the years.
What used to be a qualifications-heavy approach, has now become a more balanced approach focusing on the neurodiversity of each candidate and more value-added, unique aspects of each personality—including emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence can be defined in many ways. A paper put forward by C.M. Casper in 2002 defined it as, ‘The ability to sense, understand, manage and apply the information and power of emotions as your greatest source of energy, motivation, connection and influence’.
This is not just a personality trait, however. Emotional intelligence has long been linked to measurable changes in the success of projects.
In fact, the value of sensitive strivers—team members who are simultaneously highly sensitive and high achieving; displaying characteristics including empathy, emotional intelligence, and perception—in the workplace has reached an all-new peak in contemporary times.
This may seem counterintuitive in a world that increasingly relies on technology and sophisticated, digital systems. But the rise of technology seems to correlate closely with the rising value of sensitive strivers and the value they bring to business operations.
The World Economic Forum predicts that by the year 2025, the characteristics and skills of these emotionally intelligent and intuitive workers will be in high demand.
The correlation between project success and emotional intelligence
Several studies have delved into the relationship between the success of a project and the emotional intelligence of the project’s team members.
While this knowledge has been accessible for the better part of the 21st century, the COVID-19 healthcare crisis exacerbated the emotional and mental aspects of management and work culture around the world. These changes have contributed to the resurfacing of the discussion surrounding the personal characteristics that predict and support sustainable success in the modern landscape.
Research conducted on emotional intelligence in project management has repeatedly shown that teams that achieve, and retain, high performances also showcase high levels of emotional intelligence.
A project team or project manager with lower emotional intelligence fosters behaviours that cause disharmony within the team. They may also lack tactful communication skills, and may fail to adapt quickly to changes in the environment due to their lack of perception.
Project managers or teams with higher emotional intelligence, on the other hand, fostered more productive and positive behaviours that were rooted in their interpersonal skills, ability to motivate and empathise with fellow team members, and perform better under pressure and increased stress.
How does project management advisory foster emotional intelligence?
While emotional intelligence may be a skill that certain team members are more predisposed to than others, the individuals themselves are only one part in the process of creating a neurodiverse workplace that can benefit fully from the broad range of skills their team members bring to the table.
Organisations must have a framework and environment in place to allow these individuals to shine and take advantage of their skills and the opportunities they bring.
The most sustainable way to achieve this is to ensure that the structure upon which your critical functions, including project management, are based are optimised.
Optimisation ensures that your project management function is running as smoothly as possible while adhering to the most up-to-date industry best practices and technologies available on the market.
Having this optimised and reliable base for your function creates room for higher value addition in the form of training programmes and transformation that will allow your teams to value characteristics such as emotional intelligence and empathetic communication. Characteristics that will drive future project success.
Because of the innovative prowess of projects, and the teams that are assembled to complete them, embracing diverse thoughts and approaches will also enhance the innovative capability of your teams. An advantage that will drive the success of your projects even further.
Project management advisory can help your company benefit from customised optimisation strategies geared towards your specific project management goals. This automatically sets the scene for sustainable project success.
The value of project management advisory is that these professionals are able to bring in a new perspective to your company. Their professional experience and insight into the challenges your project management function may face allow them to facilitate not just functional transformation but a transformation in corporate culture.
Leverage project management advisory for contemporary business success
Embracing the changes wrought by revolutionary waves sweeping the industry is essential for any business looking to succeed in the current market.
Project management advisory and the project management transformation it helps create is an essential part of this transition.
