Importance of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in Project Management (PM) and its success

Project Managers must develop certain skills that allow them to have a good relationship with both their staff and prospective customers. This would significantly assist in building better relationships, motivating teams, negotiating and managing change which can augment the chances of a project’s success.
What it mean is that the emotions have to be considered in the 2 ways: from the Project Manager to others and from others to oneself. As far as the assessment of a successful project is concerned, it is difficult to identify the correct parameter to judge. Engagement of Project Manager with project team and key stakeholders increases the chance of project’s success and improvement in the project experience. Emotional Intelligence is particularly significant for anyone who strives to be an effective leader and project manager. At times interpersonal relationships do make a difference. People are unique and it takes a very unique level of intelligence and experience to not only manage an impact relationships in a positive and effective way but also to engage in long term relationships.

Personal competence includes general awareness and overall management. Relationship management is really an important factor it includes what we do and how we do, basis our social awareness. High emotional intelligence is good as such people can manage their emotions better, use them in thought and understand their meanings better.

Emotional intelligence requires effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of the brain, though it is god gifted but one can improve it. It is a gut feeling that enable the project leader to sense things (these are hardly said but they have huge impacts in projects) that are happening with team members or even project stakeholders. The ability to sense unhappy team members is a good example of emotional intelligence. A good leader ensures healthy environment and put all his efforts to find out the cause of discontent, before it affects the project negatively. In order to define Project success one needs to beforehand define Project success criteria as the standards by which the Project will be judged at the end to decide whether or not it has been successful in the eyes of the stakeholders and related parties.

The parameters for project’s success must be conveyed clearly to the project team, so that it is done efficiently. The six factors for determining the success of a project are:

  • Schedule
  • Scope: What do you need to get done within the time frame
  • Budget : Total expense of the project
  • Team satisfaction
  • Stakeholder and Customer satisfaction
  • Quality of work and delivery

Personal qualities undoubtedly contribute to a project’s success. It depends on how we apply these practices in our project. To ensure realization of benefits for the undertaken project, a through testing in pilot phase can be part of the total project time before handing it over to the permanent operations. Project success is related to customer’s satisfaction. The project manager is responsible and accountable for setting genuine and attainable boundaries for the project and to accomplish the project within the approved baselines.

 

About Aditi Malhotra

Aditi Malhotra is the Content Marketing Manager at Whizlabs. Having a Master in Journalism and Mass Communication, she helps businesses stop playing around with Content Marketing and start seeing tangible ROI. A writer by day and a reader by night, she is a fine blend of both reality and fantasy. Apart from her professional commitments, she is also endearing to publish a book authored by her very soon.

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