Kim Wasson - The Socially Intelligent Project Manager: Soft Skills That Prevent Hard Days

THE SOCIALLY
INTELLIGENT
PROJECT MANAGER

Soft Skills That Prevent Hard Days

*BECAUSE ONE UNHAPPY PERSON
CAN RUIN YOUR BEAUTIFUL PLAN.

KIM WASSON, PMP

Interior Illustrations by Stephen L. Wasson

The Socially Intelligent Project Manager

Copyright 2020 by Kim Wasson, PMP

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-8710-5

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8711-2

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8712-9

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-8714-3

2019-1

Set in Electra LT Std Regular by Westchester Publishing Services; Cover designer: Susan Malikowski, DesignLeaf Studio; Cover illustration: Lisa Haney

With thanks to my patient husband, Tris,
who has sat through every major presentation
Ive ever made (often multiple times) without complaint
and who has given me endless encouragement.

Weve all had those days when we leave work thinking if people would just DO THEIR JOBS this project would be fine. (Every day was one of those when I was a new project manager, in fact.) Of course, if it were that easy, no one would need project managers. Projects run on people, and thats where most of the work of project management lies.

In 1995, Daniel Goleman wrote a book on emotional intelligence. It was the seminal work on the subjectpart behavioral psychology, part neurologyand has been used in many different fields by many different kinds of practitioners. The book itself was a definition of the term emotional intelligence, which is a little unwieldy for a quick reference. Wikipedia has a nice definition though: the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve ones goal(s).

It sounds squishy and hard to work with, but theres real science on our side when it comes to the people side of projects. We can use that science to help keep projects in just fine territory.

A dozen years after publishing Emotional Intelligence, Dr. Goleman followed it with a new book, Social Intelligence. After further research both behavioral and neurological, Social Intelligence took on the same material from a different viewpoint. While much of emotional intelligence is introspective, social intelligence is more about collaboration and continued interaction with others. In other words, the connections.

For project managers the translation of all this is that to really be effective we need to understand what makes the people we work with tick, communicate effectively with them based on that understanding, and help them connect with each other. Its a tall order, but its critical to project success.

Because one unhappy person can ruin your beautiful plan.

Project management is a balancing act. We need to constantly balance people with process, common goals with individual goals, and immediate progress with sustained improvement. Its a lot to manage.

Dealing with the people side of the equation can be like nailing Jell-O to a tree: it changes from minute to minute; its slippery and wiggles around a lot.

Those days of wishing everyone would just do what you tell them happen a lot more to people who focus only on the process side of the work and largely ignore the people side. If youre a process aficionado, emotional and social intelligence concepts and tools can help make the people side of the equation more process-like and easier to get your arms around. If you love the people side and enjoy the challenge of understanding and connecting with people, these concepts can put a few more tools in your project management toolbox.

Any project is largely dependent on the people working on it. The people landscape changes constantly, and without a solid basis its hard to keep up. Over my career, the more projects I worked on and the more management positions I held, the fewer people I encountered who were actually lazy or incompetent (not that there havent been some of those, but theyre really the minority). People didnt do their job because they had other priorities, had other work on their plate, were unmotivated, or were overloaded. Their understanding of their job was not necessarily the same as my understanding of their job, and their priorities were not always the same as mine.

I found that the more I connected with people and talked in a language they understood, the more attention they paid to what I had to say. Everyone is busy, and everyone has their own priorities. By using emotional and social intelligence tools, you can help make your priorities theirs too.

At this point youre probably wondering what exactly I bring to the party. The answer is that Im, um, seasoned (well seasoned even). Ive been doing this stuff (project management and management) a long time. Ive made just about every mistake you can make, and Ive had to deal with the aftermath. As a result, Ive built my toolkit with things that can help me avoid making those mistakes a second time. At one time or another Ive pulled out and applied every tool and concept Ill show you, and I can testify that each and every one works. Ive put examples of problems and techniquestrue storiesthroughout. Every true story really happened to or around me. Some of them are good examples and some are cautionary tales, but youll see why the longer Im at this, the better I understand how important the people side of project management is to project success.