SECTION 1.0

Summary of the Report

How to successfully participate and manage projects in order that projects meet their desired outcomes has become more significant over recent years, as project working has become a preferred and dominant form of work organization within an environment of increasing complexity (Sicotte & Langley, 2000; Olson, Walker, Rueckert, & Bonner, 2001). Key dimensions of projects considered to be associated with successful outcomes have been both appropriate collaborative behaviors on behalf of project members as well as transformational leadership. More recently, emotional intelligence (EI) (Brackett, Mayer & Warner, 2004; Mayer, Roberts, & Barsade, 2008) has been suggested as a unique area of individual differences that is likely to underpin the required behaviors associated with these project activities (Druskat & Druskat, 2006), although to date actual research evidence examining EI in projects is minimal (c.f. Leban & Zulauf, 2004; Muller & Turner, 2007).

To date only five studies have appeared in the literature specifically investigating emotional intelligence in project contexts, all of which have examined relationships between emotional intelligence and either leadership or project management competences. Together these studies suggest a significant role for emotional intelligence in terms of underpinning both leadership and important behaviors that have been suggested as associated with successful outcomes in projects. However, these EI and project studies do suffer a number of major limitations. The first of these relates to criticisms associated with the validity of the particular EI measures used. Another limitation is that no attempt was made to control for both general ability or personality.

Given the limitations with some of the previous studies examining emotional intelligence in projects, this research study seeks to build on the current literature in two major ways. Firstly, through investigating whether emotional intelligence is associated with a number of behaviors posited as key for successfully working in project contexts. Secondly, through using an ability-based model of emotional intelligence and controlling for both cognitive ability and personality, the extent to which emotional intelligence is able to account for variance in these behaviors over and above these other variables, can be more clearly determined. From a project management perspective there is also a need for studies that examine EI development interventions and whether these can be tracked to improvements in the attitudes and behaviors necessary for project management. Despite significant interest in the concept of emotional intelligence within project management (Druskat & Druskat, 2006), this is still a relatively unexplored concept within the field. Although some progress has been made in examining relationships between emotional intelligence and project management behaviors associated with leadership (Muller & Turner, 2007), research examining interventions for developing emotional intelligence in project managers is very much embryonic. The findings from the one evaluation study so far conducted by Turner and Lloyd-Walker (2008), although using a competence-based measure of emotional intelligence, also suggest that designing training interventions that are targeted specifically for project management may be an important factor to consider in maximizing the effectiveness of any training. This pilot research therefore sought to address the following objectives:

1. To identify the relationships between emotional intelligence abilities and specific project manager competences identified as critical within project contexts.
2. To identify relationships between emotional intelligence and transformational leadership behaviors.
3. To determine whether training can result in improvements in project managers’ emotional intelligence abilities and relevant project management competences.
4. To identify factors that may be associated with the effectiveness of emotional intelligence training.

Based on a sample of 67 UK project managers, it was found that emotional intelligence ability measures and empathy explained additional variance in the project manager competences of teamwork, attentiveness, and managing conflict, and the transformational leadership behaviors of idealized influence and individualized consideration after controlling for cognitive ability and personality. In addition, a 6-month follow-up of 53 project managers who attended a 2-day emotional intelligence training program found statistically significant changes in the emotional intelligence ability, understanding emotions. The results support a growing body of literature that suggest emotional intelligence, when perceived as a distinct set of independent cognitive-emotional abilities, may indeed be an important aspect of individual difference that can help to explain the performance of project managers in key areas associated with relationship management in projects. Further, the results suggest that such abilities may in fact be developed and improved through training and development interventions.