The Role of Emotional Intelligence (EI)

in Project Management Over the Next Five Years

A White Paper by:

Troy Alexander, BSTM, harvestlab1@sbcglobal.net
James Caldwell, MIS, james.caldwell@sanantonio.gov
Matthew Gonzalez, Ph.D., PMP, matthew@organizationacceleration.com
David Harvey, scott.harvey@korteco.com
Bradford Nye, bnye@satx.rr.com
Charles Rodgers, crodgers10@satx.rr.com
Angela Washer, aawasher_2005@yahoo.com

February 2010
 Introduction

The world’s largest nonprofit professional organization is the Project

Management Institute (Campbell, 2009) boasting a worldwide membership of over
150,000 in 140 countries. PMI has unified and equipped project managers (PMs)
around the globe with best practice standards and methodologies. PMs of the 21st
century command and control project constraints through an arsenal of defined tasks,
hard deliverables, and standard tools and techniques. With over 40 years of research,
community exchange and precision tuning, the hard skills required for effective project
management are demonstratively established. Why is it then that so many projects fail?
If tools and techniques are ubiquitously available and consistently applied, why is it that
a majority projects fail to deliver promises within time, budget, and scope? Ask any
project manager what roadblocks typically impede project progress and nearly every
response will state “People!” Pressing the issue, they will likely add, “Because they
always resist the changes that my project requires (Campbell, 2009).” Take a quick
inventory; are you battling the same “people” challenges? Are your project roadblocks
political, environmental, economical, or social and cultural? What PM skills must be
adopted and sharpened in the next 5 years, or risk receding into the sunset?

While the project management industry emphasizes control of Cost, Schedule

and Scope as the barometer of project success or failure, renowned psychologist Daniel
Goleman and other contemporaries argue that this is only a partial valuation (Goleman,
1998). In his ground-breaking research, Goleman asserts that the bedrock of project
success is a PM’s human competencies or soft skills such as communicating, listening,
sensitivity, influencing, and motivating (Cabanis-Brewin, 1999). Conventional practice
in managing resources, empowering, developing, and analysis can deliver a project
within budget, time, and scope, but still categorically fail. The additional dimensions
such as team performance, knowledge transfer, mobilizing the business case, and
influencing stakeholder management are what really determine success. An Indy race
car can cross the finish line and win a race, but the repeatability of this success is
sustained by motivational competencies, camaraderie, and a discerning personality.
These dimensions are the fruit of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and are no less important
than the hard skills of project management. During an interview with PM Network, Issue
November 1999, Goleman reported that Emotional Intelligence matters twice as much
for success over technical skills. IQ is still the biggest predictor to land a project award,
he admits, but once you’re in, it’s the ability to handle self and others that promotes you
and makes the difference (Cabanis-Brewin, 1999). Which emotional intelligence tool
should you concentrate on? What are the critical success factors required for effective
project management over the next 5 years?

Throughout this paper, our operating paradigm is based on market conditions

over the next 5 years. Our focus will illustrate that EI skills will be required within the
realm of project management. While credentials and learned capabilities are still at the
forefront within a project manager’s arsenal, a view through the lenses of EI skills
suggests a project is better served moving forward through a mixture of adaptive
leadership and practical experience.

A Brief History of Emotional Intelligence

• 1930s – Edward Thorndike describes the concept of “social intelligence” as the

ability to get along with other people.

• 1940s – David Wechsler suggests that affective components of intelligence may

be essential to success in life.

• 1950s – Humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow describe how

people can build emotional strength.

• 1975 - Howard Gardner publishes The Shattered Mind, which introduces the
concept of multiple intelligences.

• 1985 - Wayne Payne introduces the term emotional intelligence in his doctoral
dissertation entitled “A study of emotion: developing emotional intelligence; self-
integration; relating to fear, pain and desire (theory, structure of reality, problem-
solving, contraction/expansion, and tuning in/coming out/letting go).”

• 1987 – In an article published in Mensa Magazine, Keith Beasley uses the term
“emotional quotient.” It has been suggested that this is the first published use of
the term, although Reuven Bar-On claims to have used the term in an
unpublished version of his graduate thesis.

• 1990 – Psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer publish their landmark
article, “Emotional Intelligence,” in the journal Imagination, Cognition, and
Personality.

• 1995 - The concept of emotional intelligence is popularized after publication of

Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

• 1998 – Goleman publishes “Working with Emotional Intelligence”, in which he

explores EI in the workplace.
Figure 1. Evolution of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence – What is it and why do you need it?

Emotional Intelligence is the area of cognitive ability involving traits and social
skills that facilitate interpersonal behavior. While intelligence can be broadly defined as
the capacity for goal-oriented adaptive behavior, EI focuses on the aspects of
intelligence that govern self-knowledge and social adaptation. The term first appeared in
1985, in Wayne Payne's doctoral thesis, “A study of emotion: Developing emotional
intelligence”. Payne's thesis centered on the idea that society's historical repression of
emotion is the source of wide-scale problems such as addiction, depression, illness,
religious conflict, violence and war. Goleman later popularized the term and developed
related concepts in his influential book, “Emotional Intelligence” (1995). In “Working with
Emotional Intelligence” (1998), Goleman explored the function of EI on the job.
According to Goleman, emotional intelligence is the largest single predictor of success
in the workplace.

Goleman describes EI as "managing feelings so that they are expressed

appropriately and effectively, enabling people to work together smoothly toward their
common goals." According to Goleman, the four major skills that make up emotional
intelligence are:

• Self-Awareness
• Self-Management
• Social Awareness
• Relationship Management

EI has become a vital part of how today's leaders meet the significant challenges they
face. EI can further help leaders in a difficult leadership role, one that fewer and fewer
people seem capable of fulfilling, and can provide developing leaders with the
competitive edge they need to succeed. As EI evolved into a finite attribute among
leaders and managers, it has become clear that without EI, projects would continue to
fail at an alarmingly high percentage. It is these author’s foci that 1) Communicating with
Impact, 2) Persuasive Leadership, 3) Conflict Management, 4) Change Management,
and 5) Adaptive Personality will serve as the most vital EI skills over the next five years
for successful project/program management implementation.

Communicating with Impact

Everyone wants to be significant, important and to make an impact with other

people when they speak. Communicating with impact is conveying your messages to
other people clearly and unmistakably. Communication is also about receiving
information that others are sending to you, with as little distortion as possible.
Communication is at the heart of everything we do. It is impossible not to communicate,
and further possible that we communicate even when we are not actually speaking.
Non-verbal communication, such as body posture, gestures and facial expressions can
be more powerful and more genuine than the spoken word.

Communicating with people in the workplace can be challenge. Maximizing your

communications skills is vital to developing relationships, improving customer service,
increasing productivity, building teams, managing change and increasing the bottom
line. Communicating with impact is what sets you apart from other individuals both in
your personal life as well as your professional career. Communicating with impact is a
must for everyone who hopes to climb the ladder of success.

If communication fails, is it possible to be successful? As discussed,

“Communication is at the heart of everything we do”. While many articles, books, and
training seminars on the topic of effective communication seek to foster growth, the
impact has not received as many accolades. Thus, it is these author’s collective view
that communication starts with the leadership itself.

What is Persuasive Leadership?

Persuasive leadership is a leader’s ability to move people from their current

position to a position that they don’t currently hold. Persuasive leadership requires a
leader to not only make rational arguments, but also frame ideas, approaches and
solutions in ways that appeal to diverse groups of people with basic human emotions.
This is further based on what we consider to be the top 5 EI skills that a project
manager must be able to articulate his/her position while effectively managing the
conflict(s) that it may stir up, while employing practical change management solutions
throughout the various projects life cycles.

According to Krakoff, there are four steps to successful persuasion. First,

establish credibility. Second, understand your audience, identify key decision makers,
stakeholders and the organizations network of influence and pinpoint their interests and
how they view alternatives. Third, reinforce your positions with vivid language and
compelling evidence. Fourth, connect emotionally, the persuasive leader must be able
to connect to their audience and demonstrate both intellectual and emotional
commitment to their position.

Project Managers are constantly faced with the challenge of managing people
who don’t report directly to them, assuming a matrixed environment. That means a
project’s success often depends upon the PM’s ability to influence and persuade team
members and stakeholders at multiple levels. We believe that in the next five years the
project management industry will become more collaborative, extending beyond cross
functional teams and peers, merging into multi-cultural/global business partnerships.
We see that the future of project management will entail project managers becoming
more diverse, entailing them to be more familiar with virtual communications and
nanotechnology. The project manager will become more global centric and requiring
them to be better at influencing stakeholders that are in different parts of the world and
not just in their immediate “sphere of influence”. As such, it is imperative that the Project
Manager develop his/her persuasion skills to engage those outside of the local business
partnerships.

Conflict Management

Conflict is defined as the process which begins when one party perceives that
another has frustrated or is about to frustrate (Thomas, 1992). Conflict Management
can be divided into two positions based on positive and negative emotions (Desivilya,
2005). First, positive conflict management often exhibits behaviors that are integrating,
compromising, and obliging. Secondly, negative conflict management yields dominating
and avoiding behaviors.

The pace of change confronting organizations today has resulted in calls for
more organizations to work in teams; in turn, many scholars have noted that leadership
may have important consequences for groups, suggesting that a focus on the group
level is important. Lowe, Kroek, and Sivasubramaniam (1996) found that leaders who
exhibit transformational leadership behavior are associated with higher levels of job
satisfaction, involvement, and performance of their subordinates. Organizations such as
General Electric, Motorola, Toyota, Unilever, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman have
employed the use of training in Leadership models for new and future leaders. Some of
the fundamental concepts taught are managing change, ethical leadership, working with
teams, and motivation and inspiration. An unexpected benefit of this training was
discovered with improvement in communications and cooperation among subcontractor
elements had dramatically improved.
 Research has indicated that emotional competencies are twice as important as
IQ and expertise in contributing to excellent and effective performance. It seems to be
the consensus between leading authorities that EI generates delegating, open
communication, and proactive behavior, which can bring positive outcomes to an
organization. A study done in Thailand demonstrated that PMs and project engineers
with higher EI scores tend to use more open communication and proactive styles of
leadership than those with lower EI scores. As stated by Charles B. Daniels, “the
implications for engineering managers seem clear. As globalization becomes even more
profound on the economy the pressure for companies to achieve continually higher
levels of quality will increase.” That being said, it is evident that there is an importance
for a focus on emotional intelligence in the workplace.

Change Management

A project is a unique, temporary endeavor with a definite beginning and end.

Translation? Change is coming! Every project overtly or covertly introduces
organizational changes in order to achieve a desired future state. The myriad resulting
impacts to the project team, end users, direct stakeholders and other project affiliates
are espoused, marginalized, or rejected – largely dependent on the project manager’s
leadership style and comportment throughout the project lifecycle. A project manager is
a change agent and must intricately guide both team and the organization through
change. Succinctly put, a PM must incorporate EI elements into change management
strategy to effect change and produce 360◌º ۫ results.

By the 1980s and 1990s, the school of leadership shifted its focus from
situational leadership to leading an organization through change (Geoghegan &
Dulewicz, 2008). Two types of leadership styles were defined: transactional and
transformational. Transactional leadership emphasizes task completion by rewarding
followers for achieving performance targets. Examples include guiding, directing and
managing constraints. Transformational leadership, alternately, focuses on people
development to achieve performance goals. Examples include providing motivation,
intellectual stimulation, challenging followers, developing vision, engendering trust and
pride, etc. Respect, personality and creativity are all hallmarks of the transformational
leader. Which style contributes more to project success? Studies conducted by
Keegan and den Hartog (Tuner & Muller, 2005) predict that a transformational
leadership style is more appropriate for PMs. However, direct correlations that link a
PMs leadership style and project success are untenable; this is largely due to a lack of
relevant studies.

Much research over the years has been published around committing to and
accommodating changes in a project, including how to overcome resistance to change;
how to communicate change in a positive way; how to lead change with great results,
etc. Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams
and organizations from the status quo to a desired future state (Campbell, 2009).
Voluminous studies in leading change attribute project success to the manager’s
personality and social skills in particular.

Participative management is one such tactic and suggests the importance of

getting team buy-in at the beginning of a change initiative. Or, by tactful pursuit, the PM
may facilitate change by cleverly leading his team into an “ah-ha” moment where the
team identifies the change requirement and takes credit for the good idea. People are
much more likely to take ownership and commit to change if it was their idea to begin
with. A project manager’s ability to cooperate and associate with the perceptions of his
followers bears directly on his effectiveness in introducing change. The Center for
Creative Leadership demonstratively concludes that satisfying relationships have a
direct connection on how well peers judge a leaders ability to institute change
(Leadership, 2003).

Almost all changes birthed in a project endeavor filter through four dimensions:
technology, economics, demographics and culture. Most organizations and teams
embrace new change in technology, new economic structures, and new team members,
but cultural changes are viscerally resisted. Culture is essentially the beliefs we have
about the way things ought to be (James, 2006). Examples of cultural barriers include
ineffectual leadership, poor timing, and inadequate behavior management (Council,
2008). Further examples include, but are not limited to the following:

• Disagreement between top leaders can produce an inconsistent change vision.

• Insular leadership and traditional corporate culture can prevent the recognition of
risks and opportunities.

• Minimal involvement by top management can diminish company-wide

enthusiasm for change and slow implementation.

• Attempts to complete broad changes simultaneously can prompt a total rejection

of the change program.

• Changing the largest or most profitable business units first can preempt “warm
up” learning opportunities.

• Disengaged groups can become islands of resistance, preventing the broad

promotion of change.

• Silent resisters can undermine the change vision by promoting personal

agendas.
 • Poor alignment between rewards and expectations can present an ambiguous
change message and discourage changed behavior.
Adaptive Personality

Due to the infinite similarities to other management skills in today’s world, we

have provided several concepts of adaptive personality from each of these authors foci,
as it relates to other emotional intelligence skills presented in this research paper.
Caldwell suggests a PM can diffuse each of these barriers to change, but doing so
requires tactful, deliberate EI application. The PM must first gauge his team’s
motivation and acceptance of the change impact, and subsequently adapt his
leadership style to effectively implement the change. In most cases, the team will not
immediately adopt or be inspired. As a result, the PM must selectively employ adaptive
leadership techniques to effectively lead change. Adaptive leadership is a discerning
and calculated transformation by a PM in order to facilitate cultural dynamics and
simultaneously galvanize team performance. Such traits are required by the PM in
order to survive future requirements and diffuse cultural change barriers in a highly
competitive/evolving project environment (James, 2006).

If you exhibit an adaptive personality trait, Washer believes you are most likely
able to tune-in to verbal and nonverbal clues further allowing you to make adjustments
to maintain your effectiveness in ever changing situations. An adaptive personality
allows you to quickly build and maintain positive relationships while motivate and focus
others to achieve success. To ensure future success in project management, leaders of
all facets of business will need to thoroughly understand and practice adaptive
personality. This EI skill may become the most important tool in ones toolbox.

Rodgers further believes emotionally intelligent program/project managers must

have an adaptive personality in order to survive future requirements in a highly
competitive and evolving project environment. To describe what an adaptive personality
is, we must first look at adaptive behavior. Adaptive behavior is any behavior that
changes to fit another behavior or situation. Adaptive behavior should be thought of as a
master concept. It covers all types of behavioral compromises and adjustments (French,
Bodgers, Cobb, 1974). In looking at a salesman, we find that he or she will change their
behavior based on the customers’ actions and reactions.

The practice of adaptive selling is defined as the altering of sales behaviors

during a customer interaction or across customer interactions based on perceived
information about the nature of the selling situation. (Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan, 1986).
Given these definitions we can see that adaptive behavior is a result of stimuli from an
adaptive personality. This stimulus affects behavior. The emotionally intelligent manager
can correctly apply the right stimuli at the right time to achieve effective / efficient results
from team members’ performance. The manager possesses an adaptive personality.
 Adaptive Leadership

Nye proclaims adaptive personalities exhibit a positive conflict management trait

resulting in a positive emotion. This adaptiveness encourages integration,
compromising and obliging. EI allows one to understand what behavior style they might
use in conflict. A higher degree of EI will allow one to select whether a positive or
negative approach towards conflict management will provide the most desirable results.

Several personality traits indicate a person’s probability of adaptive or non-

adaptive personality (Wrobel, 2007) and outward behavior. Adaptive vs. non-adaptive
personality has been measured on a Schedule for Non-adaptive and Adaptive
Personalities or SNAP scale. The SNAP is comprised, in part, by 13 diagnostic scales
of personality disorder (APA, 1987). The outcomes of a 2007 study by Wrobel found
that high degrees of extraversion tend to lead toward a positive or adaptive personality,
while pessimistic behaviors lead to a more negative or non-adaptive personality. Thus,
this researcher concludes that a portion of adaptive personality is adaptive leadership.

Harvey suggests it would benefit a leader in today’s world and in the future to be
adaptive in their leadership styles. S/he should be able to exude self-control, provide
sound judgment, and be culturally aware to be successful in our ever changing fast
paced diversified world. “FM 22-100 (US ARMY Leadership Manual) stresses that
leaders must be able to adjust their leadership style to the situation as well as to the
people being led (Army H. D., 1999).” Managers should not limit themselves to one
leadership style in a given situation and, with the direction of the work-force today and
tomorrow, being able to adapt appropriate styles will help in influencing employee’s
success.
Conclusion

Projects are essentially risky and PM’s require a multitude of tools to succeed.
Some of these tools are tangible, measureable, and certifiable. While others are
intangible, non-certifiable and noticeably missing when absent. Inarguably, all PM’s
understand that a project has 5 Process Groups (PMBOK 4th Edition, 2008):

• Initiating
• Planning
• Executing
• Monitoring and Controlling
• Closing

In fact PM’s can test and certify that they have expert level knowledge of the
above written processes. Even PMP’s following proven processes find their projects not
meeting the desired outcomes. As this paper has discussed, the key to successful
project management resides in the intangible, vague, elusive realm of Emotional
Intelligence (EI). As stated, EI is not a tangible, certifiable process. It is however, a
teachable, learned skill that involves leading people. During our study of EI and how it
relates to project management, we have defined the five most needed EI skills for
project management:

• Communication
• Persuasive Leadership
• Conflict Management
• Change Management
• Adaptive Personality

Until such a time when people are not needed to manage project management
processes, PM’s will need a high level of EI to attain successful project outcomes. By
understanding EI, PM’s can use their emotions to build their interpersonal skills and
influence. The better PM’s are at developing and sustaining relationships, the more
successful we can expect the end result of projects. EI provides the edge for excelling
at interpersonal skills and building the relationships necessary to succeed within project
and program management.
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