Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers

hey everyone this is Yannis welcome to my Channel today we'll be discussing about emotional intelligence for project managers we'll be talking about what's emotional intelligence the basic concepts and why it is very critical for project managers before that to let you know about something about myself my name is Yan haos I'm a PE and PM p and I'm hydraulic engineer and I have Masters in Municipal Water and infrastructure and I I'm also wli water Leadership Institute 2023 alumni and I also have emotional intelligence uh certification out of work outside of work I enjoy work you know reading a lot of books especially personal development books and I enjoy the outdoor and then hanging out with my family with my two kids and my wife and then I have visited some quite some places and that helped me really to understand different perspective different culture so that's that's who I am uh and then these are my certifications uh where I really invested my energy time and you know money money to just understand what emotional intelligence is what leadership is what project management is so I really focus on Project management leadership and emotional intelligence so they are they go hand in hand uh that's why I invest my you know my energy and time to really understand the concept so that I can be better leader be better project manager also to help other people so that they can be better and effective leaders uh I have I have been involved in the we or the water water a professional leadership academy uh so it's it's it has been a pleasure you know taking the courses and also sharing my experience really this on this uh video we're going to discuss about what's emotional intelligence uh the emotional intelligence pillars the impact of emotional intelligence in our daily life and how do we develop emotional intelligence skills and finally we will discuss with some uh we will complete it complete this video with final remarks so let's start with what is leadership you know if somebody asks you what's what's leadership for you what would you say leadership for me is this slide really explains it is empowering people empowering followers and inspiring people and leading change be the leader uh and show showing the way and sharing you know have people we shared VI Vision so it's really about influencing people helping people inspiring people that's what leader means for me they should be a positive you know inspiration and they should show what it means to be leading so they have to show uh they have to be responsive leaders effective leaders needs to be respons responsible uh and then they they should lead the way uh so that's really the leadership and why do we really you know most of the time we have to ask ourselves why do we want to be a PM why do we want to be leaders what's our motivation to be a leader a leader or a PM uh the book you know the book by Simon syic we have to start really with why when our why is very strong we can withstand challenge but if our why is not strong when there's a you know ups and downs and with there's a challenge we're going to we're going to stop you know trying to to get our dreams so really just think yourself to yourself what why do I want to be a PM that's very critical question to ask yourself before you try to to pursue as a PM or a leader and and in that case this this video is really to kind of give you an idea what the PMP exam look like and why emotional intelligence is very critical for this so in this case why is emotional intelligence critical for PM well as of now for the 2024 probably for the 2025 exam P MP exam the outline is uh the domain of the outline is people is 42% and process is 50% business environment is 8% and when we talk about business uh environment it's also talking with people with clients customers so really uh or with the team it you can say that it's like 50/50 the process in people it might be around 50/50 so when you talk about people that means you have to manage people you have to be a good leader you have to be a good communicator you have to uh understand your emotions you have to you know take care of know how to talk to people how to listen to people so that's why the emotional intelligence is very important just just to understand at least to get the 50% uh of the PMP exam even on the process you know you're going you will be talking with the people even though there are process that you have to follow still there will be uh um I mean people involved are involved in all but at least the rational why you need to be a good leader or emotionally intelligent leader is even for the exam it's almost 50% and in the Practical in the real world life it's it could be even more because as as a PM our job is almost 90 80 90% is communication communication with the team communication with the leadership and communication with stakeholders with the client with the customers so in that case you have to be be able to understand you have to be able to be calm so that you can you know have a good business you have to produce a good product uh for your clients but so the PM with high emotional intelligence can build stronger teams because they will be listening they will be trying to understand their situation they will try to understand their perspective they will be calmer even though when there is a challenge they will be calmer so they are able to build stronger teams and they can also enhance communication because the key skill of emotional intelligent people is they are active listeners they listen to understand when you listen to understand you enhance a communication and of course there will be some challenge conflicts between the teams and between you and the teams then they improve the conf conflict resolution techniques the I mean they they use better conflict resolution techniques and they improve the conflict resolutions so they can resolve conflicts better than with someone with low emotional intelligence or somebody who doesn't care about people or uh who doesn't understand their emotion and the impact to the team but the the main definition of really emotional intelligence is emotional intelligence by Danel Gman who wrote This Book which it says why it can matter why emotional intelligence can matter more than IQ is emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize understand and manage emotions in oneself our emotions your emotions and others so in terms of the PM it's going to be does he understand his emotion doesn't he recognize his emotion does he Rec man his emotion or her emotion or does she understand recognize understand and manage her team's emotions her leaders emotions her stakeholder emotions so in this case it's really half of it half of it is about you and half of it is about others which others means in the pming world is the Clans the team your internal leadership team so it's really trying to understand uh what emotional intelligence is why it's important really for project managers for leaders but always we have to ask one question to ourselves the first question is do my emotion manage me we have to really ask to ourself that do my emotions manage me and you have to be true to yourself you have to have you need to have honest assessment of yourself what does my em does my emotion manage me means well if you just react instead of responding if you are not aware of you know your impact your behaviors your emotions impact to others and then if you don't have any empathy you just you know burst like a volcano when something happens that's where your emotion is managing you or do I manage my emotions that means something could happen this is life challenges arise but do I can I be calmer can I listen actively can I you know try to understand other people's perspective do I have do I have empathy I I you know when I'm not judging people before I listen to them that's when you manage your emotions you can you can be calm in difficult situations you can help resolve conflicts your your and your team or within the team so that's where when you say h I can manage my emotion the earlier one that's not managing emotion the the the emotion is really managing managing us so to just give you the highlight and to to get your attention the negative side of the uncontrolled emotion is it's really um when you see when you talk talk about this it's it's really scary because when you're not controlling your emotion the first thing what's going to happen is you damage your relationship personal and professional relationship because they can Toler tolerate you for a few days for a few months but then if it's continuous and then if it happens frequently you are you're going to damage your relationship the other thing is there is heal issues because of that because of uncontrolled emotion you might be stressed you might you know you might have headaches because you're getting stress you're you're not going to have a good relationship and when you damage your relationship you might damage also your health and you might definitely have impaired judgments when you decide something when you make a decision because of just emotional Outburst you will have impaired judgment and definitely you will have also decreased productivity because you're not focusing on what you should focus on you're focusing on being angry being depressed being stressed so your productivity will be going down and of course there might be legal and fin Financial consequences consequences be if something happens and if you you know if you take it too far and if you are in fight if you fight with people or if you do something there might be legal and financial consequence so that's really to give you highlight that how important it is really to manage our emotions especially um when we're working with a lot of teams this is from uh the emotional intelligence 2.0 by Travers engine this explains most of it really so as you can see from here here uh from the spinal cord any reflect or emotion comes in and then it's on the limic system around the center that you fill it and then it's at the frontal lob where you really think rationally right so it's it's the time that we give it that makes it really you know if you give it a time if you give it a few seconds and then if you take a deep breath you might not say what you should reget what you might regret later but there is a reflex once something happens you immediately say that and then most of the time it goes you might regret and it might be too late so that's why this I love this definition when saying emotional intelligence then is the awareness of the journey and the ability to direct it ensuring that feeling do not control reaction before the brain has the chance to fully process the information so before the information is processed and start thinking rationally we might hijack it that's uh called uh emotional hijacking so in that case we have to take time and really try to think about what's going on and we have to change it from reacting to responding reacting means immediately without thinking about it without being thoughtful about it but re you know react and responding is you just respond you try to understand it you try to get multiple perspective you take a few minutes or a day depending on the situation and then you try to respond so that's really important so that you have to take care of your emotions and the impact to that might create with others so what are the emotional intelligence pillars in in different books you might read there are five pillars five components the the termin terminology might be different but there are today we're going to discuss about the four pillars the first one is self-awareness do you really understand yourself do you know your strength do you know your weakness and values and what's your drive what's you go that's really self-awareness and after that is self-management do you have do you control your emotions do you selfcontrol how do you manage emotions and then we have the social awareness so the social awareness is about others the self-awareness and self-awareness and self-management is about ourselves and social awareness and relationship management is about other people or what we do with other people so uh and that's the next one and the other one is relationship management once we have once we are self aware once we have self-management skills and social awareness skills and lastly it's going to be relationship management because when we work as PMS when we work with multiple clients National inner interational it could be multiple different cultures we have to be able to work with them we have to we need to we don't have to be friends with everybody who work we work with but at least we need to have professional uh relationship management skills so in that case you know the emotional intelligence once you do that once you try to understand that the next step is okay what's the impact of emotional intelligence in my daily life I'm an engineer I'm a nurse I'm a you know lawyer I'm a a doctor astronaut whatever profession we have does it help me is it the same for everyone it might be different for every discipline but in our life it's very important it's important for work life relationship heal and well-being decision making communication and personal grows you know it it for work work for instance in work relationship it helps us to understand the team especially as a project manager so in the relationship it helps us people with high emotional intelligence try to listen others listen to understand so their communication is better they have empathy they can understand other people's perspective and they are better at conflict resolution so that means it's helping us to have a better relationship and how and well-being it help us to you know Stress Management we people with high emotional intelligence can have better ability to stress to manage their stress and they have emotional resilience they can be better at taking care of multiple emotions coming uh comes coming and going to their mind and self self-care self-care is multiple has multiple me meaning sometimes it could be just taking care of yourself doing exercise taking a bask being clean and eating healthy uh but also you have to take care of your you know mindset what you hear what you listen about in the social media or anywhere with a team you have to also take care of your mind so that's really uh by not being angry at everything or mad or stress you can help you know have better health and wellbeing in the work life definitely it's going to help you to be better leader because you'll be listening you'll be calm you you know you will be treating the team and the teamwork and collaboration it's as a leader as a PM when you're better when you have high emotional intelligence you will be a better leader and a better PM because you'll understand and you know how to look solve any conflict that might happen between you and the team or the team within the team so that's that's important as well and as a customer service agent or specialist you know there will be a lot of customers that they're not happy they may be yelling at you so if you have if you're developing your emotional intelligence you might understand the situation and at least you might calm yourself uh so that it doesn't really affect you what they are Shing sometimes you we take it too personal and then it really hurt us so that's also some skill that you can develop decision making definitely uh you might you know understand you can't just react and decide so and the other thing is you can consider other perspective before you decide because you listen to them you understand their perspective and uh people with high emotional intelligence will also tend to have better RK management skills they try to understand they don't just go by emotion but they try to understand uh the root cause communication skills it's a key because active listening is a key uh they might there are a lot of listening types right it could be ignoring it be it could be selective hearing it could be attentive listening but the last the best one is active listening which means you listen to understand and you give 100% Focus to the one who is talking to you so that that's important as well and the other one the other one is it helps you for conflict resolution people with high higher emotional intelligence tend to really uh help with conflict resolution and even it helps you with personal growth and learning you know that people with high emotional intelligence have self-reflection time they reflect on their themselves they evaluate their day and then they're open for feedback so when they're open for feedback that means they can grow they can be better it doesn't mean that they accept all feedbacks from everybody but at least they're open for feedbacks and they're good at adaptability adaptability means being flexible uh based on the business requirement or based on the situation doesn't mean that you fluctuate your values or thinking but at least you you'll be flexible and try to understand this the business uh situation so how do we develop emotional intelligence you know we said it's it's good to have self-awareness self-management emotional intelligence is basic for you know project management or project leaders but how do we develop them so I'm just going to tell you few of them so the self-awareness to develop self-awareness the first thing would be just journaling writing your emotions and trying to understand where they come from and mindfulness mindfulness means just assigning few minutes for yourself just be without distraction and sit down and think about your life you know you need to have intentional life there is there is something called living and existing you have to ask really yourself are you living or existing we really want to have intentional living so in that case mindfulness will help you to just take 30 20 minutes of a day or a month a week just try to be mindful and try to understand your life and just to figure out what you really like and journaling will help you with that as well and the other thing is self-reflection just have an honest assessment of yourself just ref reflect on yourself and try to understand what's going on in your life with the team and on your project uh in terms of emotional management or self liation the basic it seems so simple but deep breathing technique or exercise is very important so just develop the deep breathing exercise when something happens when you're not happy when you're stressed when you're busy just take a time and just take a deep breath in and out so that it makes it helps you to relax and positive self talk talk has been also very helpful for me when you try you know when you there is a a belief system coming a negative belief system coming to your mind just try to bounce back and say yes you can do this I can do this even if this is a failure it's going to teach me you have to say that you have to say this positive selft talks to yourself so that you can it can help you build a confidence and then of course physical activity you just have to do exercise with a destruction then it's going to help you to calm down your uh emotions in terms of social skills the first key technique that you have to use is really active listening you can know a lot of things from a person when you sit down and talk to them and just active listening without distraction you will see what they think you will see their fa facial expression their gesture so that's how you really understand people and empathy is critical just show love show empathy to people be compassionate and then you will try to understand and they will be opening up themselves th that's why H that's how you know really how to work with people and live with people and the other one is assertiveness assertiveness is telling showing you know your boundaries telling people with boundaries without a negative you know attention or intention so in that case just tell them what you want in a clear word but without affecting their you know being empathetic and assertive so it's it's really trying to understand try to listen try to get the trust and the mutual interest will help you to develop your social skills in terms of relationship management uh PE you know try to learn about how to resolve conflicts first of all you have to understand conflicts we raise you can't you can't say why conflict happens but the key is really try to learn from different you know resources just try to understand how to help resolve the conflict and then work on build trust building trust you have to earn it so that means when you try to earn it first be consistent do what you promis to do to the team and just just be trustworthy and then they will try to trust you it might take some time but you have to practice thrust building stuff like being being there being with them helping them being consistent will be helping you to build the trust and then setting boundaries sometimes if you don't say your boundaries your own boundaries they might trespass the boundaries and then you will have a bad bad relationship so in that case just set the boundaries and make sure that they understand any team understands your boundaries that they can pass through that and then that would make it very clear so what's the importance of emotional intelligence for PM then well as we discussed the first thing is really it's a personal development you have to start with an youu when you work on yourself when you have a good personal development when you are good person trying to even have self-awareness having a grow mindset it will help you to be a good pm and then it will help you building strong team the team which might come from different you know gender color uh nationalities culture everywhere you don't have a control who you're are going to manage but at least you can control how you manage that and you can manage team so that they can build a stronger team and definitely we said this so many times it's resolving conflicts it's going to help you being mediating conflict understanding other people's perspective so that would be very helpful and the other thing is definitely fostering client relationship or customer relationship so that you can have better relationship and you do business with people that's how you Foster Cent relationship trying to understand yourself and other people's emotional intelligence is key and then effective leadership at the end of the day you will be effective leader when you know about yourself when you know about other people when you use those techniques to develop emotional intelligence that would be very uh helpful for being a good PM so at the final remark this is really an you know a summary of emotional intelligence this is to give you a heads up like em tional intelligence is important for project managers and then the PMI will ask you a lot of questions about people how you treat people how you you know what how do you solve conflicts and when something happens between teams what do you do so that's a mind that's the mindset of PMI so it will help you to really to answer a lot of questions from the PMI exam and we have to learn more about emotional intelligence you have to learn you have to take trainings you have to read books you have to watch more resources YouTube or any article so this is just giving you a highlight that it's important but then go further and just learn about it and just show little respect to people around you especially the PMI exam PMP exam it helps you it asks you a lot of questions about how you treat people so you first of all you have to treat people with respect you have to understand other people you have to be a good active listener and then you have to treat them well so in that case just have that mindset that you have to respect people and finally be intentional in what you do whatever you do be intentional about it and that will help you to have a better you know life and better professional and personal life and one of my favorite books that I read all the time that I have here in my office is Optima by by Daniel Gman and kri chernish chice and then the E emotional intelligence 2.0 that's also a good book especially for just telling you techniques how to develop and then Daniel Gman the first one is really the emotional intelligence why it can be matter more than IQ that's by Daniel Goan as so you can read one of them or all of them so that you can develop your emotional intelligence skills you can have the awareness and help really your team uh shine yeah so if you have any questions you can send me you know put them on the comment section and I'll try to read all of them and respond to you and thank you for your time and we can join you can join me on the scan the code barcode and you can join me on LinkedIn and this yeah thank you so much for your time and I will see you again on other videos about PM PMP exams and communication emotional intelligence and Leadership and yeah thank you for listening have a good day