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The emotional maturity of PMs and project teams is critical for successful project performance. So how can the PMO or enterprise operations successfully integrate project performance reviews for program managers with coaching in emotional intelligence?

Here are a ways to easily and quickly integrate standard project delivery with emotional maturity coaching to assure high performance projects.

• Create a coaching program:

  • Create a coaching program that is specifically designed for program managers. It should include individual coaching sessions, group coaching sessions, and joint workshops.

• Provide resources:

  • Provide resources to program managers on emotional maturity. This could include books, articles, or online courses.

• Create a culture of coaching:

  • Create a coaching-oriented culture within the organisation. This means fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional development where PMs are supported by a mentor and coach and where PMs support each other with their professional development and emotional maturity.

• Consider make coaching available to all staff:

  • Make coaching support available to all staff, not just project and program managers. This will help to create a more emotionally mature organisation overall.

Integrating PM’s professional practice with coaching in emotional intelligence is important for many reasons including:

• Improved decision-making:

  • Project and Program managers who are emotionally mature are better able to make sound decisions. This is because they are better able to manage their emotions and to think clearly under pressure.

• Increased collaboration:

  • Project and Program managers who are emotionally mature are better able to collaborate with others. This is because they are better able to understand and manage the emotions of others.

• Reduced stress:

  • Project and Program managers who are emotionally mature are better able to manage stress. This is because they have better coping mechanisms and they are better able to see the big picture.

• Improved team morale:

  • Project and Program managers who are emotionally mature are better able to create a positive team morale. This is because they are better able to motivate and support their team members.

Project management is complex and demanding and it requires a wide range of professional skills and abilities for successful performance. By seamlessly integrating routine PM practices with EQ coaching, organisations can improve program management performance and create a more emotionally mature organisation overall without adding any extra workload burden or unnecessary distraction. By making coaching part of a continuous review process and not just a one-time event, PMs have the opportunity to receive regular, ongoing coaching support for their project performance that includes working on any associated EQ barriers or roadblocks.

Here are some tips on how to make EQ coaching a continuous integrated part of PM practice:

• Make coaching a part of the PM’s standard project review & reporting process.

  • The project management plan (PMP) should include specific targets for emotional maturity and EQ development. These goals should be measurable and achievable.

• Set regular check-ins with the coach.

  • As part of (the often) weekly project progress & performance reviews, regular check-ins should include coaching to help ensure that the PMs and projects are making intelligent progress towards the objectives and deliverables.

• Provide the PMs and Project teams with opportunities to apply their EQ skills and stretch their emotional maturity.

  • PMs should be practising and applying their EQ skills in their real project situations. This involves feedback and reviews of their current project challenges, establishing tasks that may require intervention and interaction with others, or giving guidance on opportunities to lead or facilitate effective meetings and discussions.

• Celebrate the PM’s successes.

  • As PMs make progress to project milestones or outputs and as they achieve EQ stretch targets, it is important to celebrate their successes and recognise the achievements to build and maintain motivation.

• Start with a pilot program:

  • Before rolling out integrated EQ coaching into standard project performance reviews and progress reporting organisation-wide, start with a pilot program with a small group of program managers. This will help to identify any challenges and to make sure that the integrated coaching is effective.

• Set clear expectations:

  • Make sure that program managers understand what they will get out of the coaching program. This includes the goals of the program, the frequency of the sessions, and the confidentiality of the sessions.

• Provide ongoing support:

  • The PMO should provide ongoing support to program managers who are participating in the coaching program. This could include providing resources, offering advice, or simply being available to listen.

There are a variety of simple, reliable measures an organisation or a PMO can take to quantify project performance and track the progress of developing emotional maturity for a project and project manager:

• Self-awareness:

  • When a project is complex or challenging, or where it requires extensive collaboration or is facing setbacks and challenges, then high self-awareness is critical. Self-awareness is critical because the PM will need to build collaboration, increase cross-team understanding, limit biases or constraints, and better deal with stress or adversity

  • In these circumstances the PMO can set targets to be reported as part of an regular integrated EQ coaching and project performance review. As part of regular project performance reviews, a coach is particularly useful to help PMs reflect on their own behaviour on an inflight project and help to identify areas where there is a gap in self-awareness that needs to be addressed. The organisation or the PMO can establish reporting metrics for PMs to show reduction in self-awareness gaps over the life of a project. This can also be supplemented using a 360-degree feedback from stakeholders and sponsors.

• Emotional regulation:

  • Again, when a project is facing a crisis, is under a lot of pressure or is facing resistance from stakeholders, it is vital for quality project performance that decision making is calm and objective. It is also vital that any crisis does not impact the team or generate unnecessary stress and anxiety.

  • For these circumstances the PMO can set targets where regular project performance reviews integrated with EQ coaching measure and report on emotional regulation. The simple Emotional Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) is a self-reporting measurement tool PMs and coaches can use to track the trends in Emotional Regulation. Just as project speed, risk management, and deliverables progress can all be measured and reported, the direction of travel for this key EQ dimension can be tracked and reported to help manage project success.

• Empathy:

  • When a project requires high levels of collaboration, or needs strong conflict resolution, when it will be delivering substantial end customer services or making major impact decisions or solving complex root cause problems, then a successful project needs PMs and teams with high levels of empathy.

  • Again the PMO can set targets where regular project performance reviews are integrated with EQ coaching to measure and report empathy along side other traditional project performance metrics. The straightforward Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is a widely used and reliable measure of empathy. It can be used to assess empathy levels in individuals, groups, and organisations and can be used to track changes in empathy over time. The direction of travel for this key EQ dimension can be tracked and reported as part of routine steerco and governance reporting to help manage project success.

• Conflict resolution skills:

  • Conflict resolution skills are important in any project, but they are especially important in projects that involve multiple stakeholders, differing team opinions & perspectives or challenging, high pressure & demanding performance

  • Metrics and targets for conflict resolution can be defined, along side legacy metrics for project delivery performance. The PMO can set a target for the maximum duration of unresolved conflicts or a establish a scorecard tracking the number of team and stakeholder conflicts that the PM and project is able to resolve successfully.

• Resilience:

  • Resilience is especially especially important when a project is delayed or is having its budget cut. When requirements are changed or when there are unexpected setbacks, when there are extra pressures and new uncertainties; resilience is vital to overcome the challenges and bounce back to deliver a successful project.

  • A useful benchmarking framework to qualify project resilience is published by Khalil Rahi et al from Dept of Industrial Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada in the Journal of Modern Project Management. This tool gives a helpful and objective assessment of the core dimensions of Project Resilience; Awareness and Adaptive Capacity. A PMO should benchmark their own practice and operation for resilience so individual PMs can then report variations between their own projects and that organisational benchmark. The reported variation in resilience then becomes a metric published alongside the legacy reporting of project speed, risk management, and deliverables progress for steerco and governance oversight.

These are just a few examples of why and how coaching and metrics for emotional maturity can and should be tightly integrated into legacy project management performance. The integration of coaching for both process quality and emotional maturity not only solves any concerns about extra workload or unnecessary distraction, it adds confidence to project success. By making coaching part of a continuous project performance review process & measurement and not just a one-time event, PMs have the opportunity to receive regular, ongoing coaching support for their projects that also incorporates activities to address any associated EQ barriers or gaps.

Are you are a PM or PMO leader who’s not sure how best to develop your own and your team’s Emotional Maturity? Are you an enterprise leader, directing a Digital Transformation or a complex ICT Transition or a strategic CiP program and you're unsure how to assure project performance? A coaching program that is integrated with legacy project performance reviews can be a simple, reliable way to achieve that success.

If applied EQ is too often missing from projects and there’s interest in improving the quality and success of ICT project activity please contact Applied EQ Services to discuss bespoke online coaching, mentoring and consultancy services. We optimise skill sets and deliver a sense of assurance for Project Managers to confidently conduct the "orchestra" for their own projects.