How I Used Emotional Intelligence to Manage Stakeholders

What if you're wrong? See things from other’s perspective to get a better understanding.

The best and worst project you can work on are creative projects. Imagine a group of “creatives” with a variety of ideas and opinions. The brainstorming sessions are phenomenal, but the execution is where it gets a little cloudy. We all knew the deliverables, but the journey taken to provide those deliverables in a creative project differs based on your perspective. It was my job as the Project Manager to diffuse conflict and make informed decisions to ensure success of the project. When you are all creatives, you have to shift to an agile and inclusive team because you all can be “right” depending on your perspective. I wondered why the stakeholders were being so disruptive and aggressive, and then shifted my thought to, maybe that’s passion.  It was time that I used emotional intelligence to manage my stakeholders.

I had already mastered self-management and had the ability to manage my own emotions when frustrated about the situation. Being self-aware allowed me to decompartmentalize my thoughts and separate the person’s actions from the objective. It was time for me to be socially aware of my stakeholders and recognize their needs in an empathic way, so they felt comfortable. I decided to shift my focus to relationship management and learning what it took to inspire and influence my stakeholders instead of strictly work communication.

Once I got a better understanding of who people actually are, what struggles they go through personally, how they think, and their perspective this changed everything.  and taught me that if you take care of people, they will take care of the business. Going forward, regardless of how passionate I feel about a situation, I ask myself “What if you’re wrong?, what perspective are you not seeing to gain a better understanding.