Six behaviours to better Project Management
Advance your people skills.
Improve your results
There is an abundance of research on the impact emotions have on an individuals’ performance in the workplace. It shows that people often perform their worst when they experience unproductive feelings, such as feeling frustrated, concerned, stressed, inadequate, and fearful.
Research also shows that people perform their best when they feel involved in purposeful work that develops who they are… and when they feel confident, valued, cared for, consulted, respected, informed and understood.
So, how can developing your project management behaviours help you to ensure your teams feel and perform their best?
Information informs your estimates, your mitigation strategies as well as how you control your project.
As a project manager you need to, not only manage the processes that your particular governance model requires you to execute, but you also have to facilitate performance, i.e. get your team (and possibly even third party teams) to do their best, and to deliver their work effectively and efficiently in order to bring the project in on time, cost and quality.
One of the most robust, consistent findings in the area of social sciences is that there is a direct link between the way people feel and the way people perform. As a leaders in the business you need to be skilled at the technicalities of your ‘job’ in order to get things done, but research now shows how critical it is that you are also skilled in identifying, understanding and influencing emotion within yourself and others in order to consistently inspire performance and motivate self and others to deliver on expectations.
Emotionally intelligent leadership is about intelligently using emotions to facilitate high performance in yourself and others.
Project Management is about obtaining and interpreting information. Information informs your estimates, your mitigation strategies as well as how you control your project. Without these inputs you would not be able to deliver on time, cost and quality.
The workplace is, however, becoming more complex and fast-paced. Your clients and stakeholders more demanding and stressed. All of this requires quick, expansive decision-making.
Often all the facts and technical data are not readily available and you rely on gut feel and intuition to guide your way forward. Feelings and emotions are therefore an essential fourth source of information that you, as a project manager, needs to consider because they contain important information. For example, if a stakeholder is demonstrating frustration or stress, these feelings provide insight that they are going to be less open and supportive of new ideas and information. By leveraging this ‘information’ you will start to collaborate, influence and negotiate with ease and in the direction of your ultimate goal: successful project delivery with a satisfied client
As a leader your mood can be very infectious and can, therefore, be a powerful motivator in the team; one that can be both productive and unproductive.
The Emotionally Intelligent Project Manager understands “how they show up at work” determines the success of their projects. By exploring and practicing the tools and techniques for applying emotional intelligence in the workplace you can start to create the conditions that will allows others to achieve success - even high performance.
People are influenced by emotion; if you fail to consider how your team and or stakeholders are likely to feel and react to decisions made, you may not achieve the appropriate buy-in or support for your decisions.
When you become aware of how you are showing up as well as understand how your team and stakeholders are feeling (and possibly even how they’d ideally like to feel) you can start to do something about it. This kind of information allows you to be informed in making decisions for your project that consistently inspire your team to be a great team to work with.
The Genos model of emotionally intelligent leadership, which Revo specialize in, has been developed from over a decade of research work examining how effective leaders use emotional intelligence abilities in their leadership of others.
The model comprises six emotionally intelligent workplace competencies. These competencies represent skills and behaviours based on underlying abilities and experiences that are measurable, observable and critical to successful job performance.
The six effective Project Management behaviours (EI competencies!) are:
Self Awareness - A PM's behaviour can positively or negatively impact the performance and engagement of the team. In order to objectively evaluate events, the PM need to know how they interpret the world and how this either helps and/or limits them
Awareness of Others - This is essential for the PM to effectively influence and facilitate performance within the team because the way the PM's team 'feel' at work is directly linked to their performance
Authenticity - This helps the PM create understanding, openness and feelings of trust in others. PM's who are inappropriately blunt or guarded about the way they feel can create mistrust, artificial harmony and misunderstandings.
Emotional Reasoning - The complexity and pace of todays workplace demands quick and appropriate decision making. Gut feel and intuition are important in these environments. PM's who fail to consider others’ feelings towards decisions may not achieve appropriate buy-in or support.
Self-Management - Moods are contagious. The PM can be a powerful influence that can be both productive and/or unproductive. To achieve, maintain & enhance success, PMs need to pay conscious attention to how they manage time, own behaviours & their leadership of others
Inspiring Performance - Managing with rules and KPI's alone produces an “expected” result. Managing with an inspiring leadership style often results in “unexpected” high-performance.
Learn how you can start to develop and apply these 6 effective Project Management behaviours in your workplace by participating our Emotionally Intelligent Project Manager Programme - either online or in person
Participants first partake in a personal Genos Emotional Intelligence Leadership Assessment, in order to understand “how they are showing up at work” and then use these insights to explore techniques for applying Emotional Intelligence in leadership, and creating high performance in their teams and others
To get started download our handy Project Manager Behaviours Infographic and contact Alison to discuss next steps alison@revoconsultant.com
“Your talent determines what you can do.
Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do.
Your attitude determines how well you do it.”
This article was written in collaboration with Genos International Europe. Alison Coates is a certified Genos EI Practitioner.
Revo regularly host Emotional Intelligence based online Masterclasses. Our webinar calendar is available HERE.
The Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers Introduction (50 min) is also available to watch via replay.
We ask for $10 contribution towards these recordings. Please Contact Us to request.
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Next steps
When you are ready to talk further you are invited to book a complimentary one-on-one call (online) with Alison. Choose a time that suits you best and let’s discover how you might rethink your challenges.