The March 31st deadline is looming eerily close. The project has been progressing well but there have been some unexpected bumps in the road. Charlene, the manager, knows the difficult news she must deliver to the team: it’s going to be several late nights for the next two weeks until the project deadline. Charlene carefully crafts how to deliver the tough news to the team, trying to put a positive spin on the situation. The team’s morning smile quickly melted to a depressed, disgusted attitude. Charlene knew she had one hope, Marco.
Marco has always been the lifeline of the project team. He’s always upbeat even in the most stress laden and down trodden times. The team could hardly go a day without seeing his smiling face or laughing at one of his lighthearted jokes. When Marco heard the news, he took it in stride and smiled, cracking another joke. Immediately the team’s mood shifted. The positive attitude Marco carried, almost instantly spreading to the rest of the team.
Then in walked Nellie. She was always complaining. In fact, no one ever wanted to work with her because all she would do is complain about anything and everything. When she heard the news, Nellie’s attitude got even worse. Whenever the manager, Charlene, got up from the workroom, Nellie would talk bad about Charlene, complaining about her poor management. When Nellie went to get coffee in the break room, she saw another team member and started complaining again about the long work hours and how terrible this job was. This quickly became reflected in the second employee and before long the negative attitude had once again resurfaced on the team. Gradually, each team member began to share Nellie’s negative attitude.
Emotions are often triggered by both events and occurrences and the people by which we are surrounded. Whether your team has a Marco or a Nellie, or both, emotions are contagious, period. The challenge for any manager is how to manage emotions and leverage positive emotions to improve the team’s effectiveness and efficiency. This chapter focuses on emotional intelligence and the way in which we manage and leverage emotions, essential for teams.
Many managers often think of emotional intelligence or emotional management as a “soft” part of the job that is extraneous to the main responsibility of the job: managing a project. If managers think of their job as managing people as opposed to managing projects then emotional management takes center stage. Emotions must not only be managed but can also be leveraged to enhance the team output.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/allyaubryphotography/2535453766/
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