Speaker 1: One important skill sets in project management is having high emotional intelligence. Now if you're wondering why is that and how does that fit into project management, well stay tuned because I'm going to talk all about that in this video. The what and why. So what is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence is all about your awareness of your feelings and how you're expressing them. It's also the ability of how well you perceive other people's emotions as well. Why care about emotional intelligence and project management? Well, it's all about people. Your projects don't run on their own. They are run through individuals and every person has their own emotional aspects that they bring to projects. And as a project manager, it is really critical that you can pick up on all of those cues as it will give you the information you need to truly be successful on your projects. And so what are some of those critical things that you can take away as a project manager if you have high emotional intelligence? Well the first thing is you can be you can read the room properly and you can understand that if someone is saying one thing verbally that they actually may not be truly meaning it and that's really important. We call that the energy in the room. Someone may be saying yes to you but you have a feeling you can sense through them that they may not be on board and so that becomes really important so you can then have a private conversation with them to get them on board without assuming that they are but even more so it's you as a project manager if you have a strong understanding of your own awareness you then know what you bring to the table are you having a bad day did something happen in the morning before you went to work and that you're now carrying that with you and you just don't realize it but your behavior and your emotions are actually coming through but you want self-awareness and that's what high emotional intelligence does to go wait a minute I'm carrying I'm bringing my baggage with me to work I need to keep it I need to you know check it at the door and I need to drop it let it go so I can really focus on what it is that I need to do that's really important because think of all those scenarios of other project managers even maybe yourself and other team members who brought in their emotional baggage with them and how they just didn't have the awareness, that emotional intelligence to really check it at the door and how it impacted your project. Before we hop on to the next tip I'm going to share with you later on in the video how you can get your hands on this. This is something that I've created just for you. Self-awareness and regulation. To have really good high emotional intelligence we already said it's about understanding your own emotions and be able to pick up on those around you as well. Self-awareness and regulation is a huge part of that. Why? Because it's so easy to get caught up in the vortex of the white noise in your project. Everything going on and when that happens we've all been through this. We've got to get carried with that current and we forget about what's really happening behind us and we just start reacting. Being reactive which believe you me does not help with emotional intelligence. You need to take a step back. Being self-aware, being able to regulate, understanding what is really going on here and why am I feeling this way, acting this way, because don't forget the way we behave and act is a direct correlation to what we are feeling whether we realize it or not. That's why self-awareness and regulation is so important. So here's a quick little story from my own personal experience. When I was way back when working for a major large organization we had an SAP implementation and I don't know if any you've done SAP before but let me tell you I don't know who are the sales people they do a great job but I've never came across a great implementation of SAP. So my direct manager is like Adriana you're project managing we need to bring SAP into this department I need for you to get this stuff done and today is really important so I need you to drive this home. Boom I got my marching orders I went and I was do-do-do getting everything getting it done I felt the pressure we had this deadline we had to make and I found out afterwards because my boss called me in and said Adriana by the way everyone is telling us that you're being really pushy and they're not liking how you're addressing everything and that floored me because I'm like what the heck you were the one who told me about these deadlines and getting everything done. I did not have high emotional intelligence then. Why? Because I got caught up in the vortex of the noise of getting things done and the deadline and the fact that my boss told me but if I took a step back I could have still taken those criteria of the deadline and my boss telling me it's really important and approached it differently. I didn't. I just got caught up and as a result it created more issues that I had more work to do to backtrack to really apologize for my pushiness but to get everyone back on board to support me on completing the project on time. So this is why it's so important. I was just oblivious and unaware and it is critical for you to be very aware of yourself who you are and know how to regulate it. Empathy. Why empathy? Because when you start getting high emotional intelligence you're gonna be able to pick up on your team members and your projects when you walk in the room that something is off. This is just you know there's something going on like this person is saying one thing to me but I can really feel that there may be something else happening in the background that they're totally preoccupied even though they may be present physically in this room. They may not be mentally or even emotionally. So my high emotional intelligence allows me to really pick up on that and have empathy. I'm letting you know it's not about just driving to a task and you're here at work so therefore it's all work. People are human, we do our best to try to check our luggage at the door as I like to say our emotional luggage at the door but sometimes it's hard and difficult if you're not self-aware, if you don't have regulation. So as a project manager, which is why it's so important you to have high emotional intelligence, is you'll have to pick up on that because that will impact your project. I've had people who were very preoccupied with personal issues even though they were were at work physically they weren't at work and if I didn't understand that by picking up on sensing that something was off and then speaking to them and making sure that they had what they needed because again coming from an empathy standpoint of look I get it you know I get it I'm here for you I have your back becomes really important in conjunction with your high emotional intelligence so that you can rearrange and tweak things accordingly because ultimately setting up your team for success. Before we get on to the next tip, not only do I have this great free content here on YouTube, I have this. If you want to go to the next step with me and you want to learn more at a premium level, you can enroll in S.L.A.Y. Project Management. It's the exact process I use for all my clients, including all the tools you'll need. I put the link in the description box below. Social skills, okay. When we think of emotional intelligence, we really think of the inward aspect of feelings. What are we sensing? It's just, there's no verbal communication with it, but we sense stuff. We can just feel that something is off. Now, social skills is the outward aspect of it. It goes hand in hand when it comes to the inward. It's the outward. And what are some of those things to pick up on that will give you additional information? How about this? Yeah, I'm fine, sure, I agree. Yeah, no, that's a great idea, right? Or yeah, how about this? You're in a Teams call or a Zoom call and you don't have video on and someone says, yeah, that's a great idea and they may not even be thinking of it. So how do you know it is? Social skills become really important. Picking up on what you are seeing. How are people sitting together? Are they actually looking at you or are they like this off to the side and you're over there and they're already really saying to you, I don't care what you're saying, my back is to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Or worse yet, if you are speaking to someone in person and you just say, hey, by the way, Karina, I just have to talk to you for a minute and they stand not in front of you face to face, but already like one foot out and they're like, yeah, okay, what is it that you want? What is it that you want? And you're not picking up on that, that they don't have time for you. They actually need to go because they're trying to get out of the conversation. Those are the social skills. And if that's the case, that's okay. They have an agenda too and stuff they have to get done. And what you can say instead, because you have high emotional intelligence and you're picking up on these social cues and these skills, these outward things as, Hey, I can see you're busy. Can we set up a time where we can call? And they say, yeah, sure. Thanks so much. That alone is really, really important. You're reading the room properly, emotionally, physically, and of course, yeah, verbally what people are saying too, but you're validating it through the emotional intelligence. Now that you know everything about emotional intelligence for project management, well, listen, there's always more to learn. I'm a continuous improvement person. That is why, hello, I wrote this for you. Six basic things you need to know to make sure your projects don't fail and to ensure success. So I highly recommend you get this. And how do you do that? Under this video, there's a link. Go grab it. Make sure you watch this next video. If you still have questions about some project management skills you want to improve, I got you covered here. On that note, if you could like this video, share it, subscribe, we'd love for you to join this community, even throw us a comment. It would be great to hear from you. Until our next video, see you later.