In the past few years, online teams of various sizes has proliferated dramatically, especially with the recent work at home movements. I believe that emotional intelligence is now needed more than ever as project managers may have less information due to online focused work environments. For example, at home work culture limit project managers in person interactions. This makes it difficult for project managers to read body language and expressions, which are significant in helping the employer understand their employee work condition.

Given the changes in work environment and culture, the most prominent skill in a project managers toolset for emotional intelligence is definitely social skills. That is because project managers have to be able to express themselves with clarity and leadership through an online medium, which is a lot less efficient.

One skills that is less relevant in these specific situations is self-regulation. It's psychology a lot easier to communicate through an online medium and often it's easier to hide body language and expressions. This in general allows meetings to be more professional but at the same time, more personal interactions may significantly help a project manager understand their coworkers status. Therefore, social skills have grown in significant relative to self-regulation, but overall emotional intelligence is now an even more desired skill than before due to the growth of online work cultures.

One of the times where I had to reevaluate my emotional intelligence was probably during my senior capstone project. Even though my group members and I were part of the same major we hardly had similar classes together so I never really interacted with them as much. And most of my group projects previously were structured in a way where each person could do their part and toward the due date each person would look over it and then turn it in. But for my senior project we had to interact and work together differently, we all had to pitch ideas and have more contact with each other to ensure tasks were completed. One of the skills I had to work harder towards was my social skills in a group of new people, all of which had already known each other previously. Communication in this environment was one that allowed the team and I to have healthy relationships with one another and for the work and tasks to be easily discussed and understood. Pertaining to which areas are important, all of them are important. It is important to understand the emotions being felt, and why they are being felt and from this point it is crucial to understand that each team member would be going through their own emotions and to put that into consideration as well as work with that to complete the end goal while ensuring a healthy work environment. It is something that can’t be perfected on the first run but can always be improved on with continued group work and self reflection.

Emotional intelligence is extremely important to project success is 70% due to interpersonal skills compared to 30% due to technical knowledge. Typically projects are run by teams. In order to successfully collaborate, interpersonal skills, specifically emotional intelligence is essential. Reflecting on my undergraduate experience, I had to evaluate my own emotional intelligence when working on semester long projects. I noted how each area of emotional intelligence contributed to how the project progressed. Of the five areas of emotional intelligence, I think based on my experience, motivation is the most important. External rewards such as money and fame may be fleeting and temporary. Whereas, people who feel rewarded through actively engaging in the project are more action-oriented. They are continuously looking for ways to improve, rather than having an arbitrary goal. The process/journey is just as important as the end result. The desire to seek improvement through learning from previous projects sets up these individuals to be better prepared to achieve future success in projects.