What role does emotional intelligence play in your success as a project manager?

In a sustainable project aimed at reducing organizational waste, I noticed early tensions among team members from different departments, each with their own priorities. To address this, I encouraged open communication and created a safe space for everyone to share their concerns. This empathetic approach helped us understand each other better and led to a collaborative session. As a result, we developed a plan that balanced immediate operational needs with long-term sustainability goals. I believe the project’s success was partly due to the strong team dynamics we built through emotional intelligence.

Identifying issues between humans is vital to leading teams, helping them develop trust and mitigating conflict while encouraging honesty, openness and constructive disputes. It would be best to have empathy for this and self-control, both aspects of EI.

Today we can use AI tools to improve our empathy, emotional AI, and 25 years ago, I used the team morale index (TMI) to understand trends in team cohesion.

La inteligencia emocional es crucial para los gestores de proyectos porque ayuda a comprender la dinámica del equipo, gestionar el estrés y fomentar un ambiente de trabajo positivo. Al empatizar con los miembros del equipo, puede motivar y resolver conflictos de manera más efectiva, lo que conduce a una mayor productividad y éxito del proyecto.