EI - Oh yeah
I have a love for writing and speaking, so I am doing the happy dance for this great platform to bounce off my experiences and ideas, and most importantly, Motivate! I celebrated a birthday last month (bet you can’t guess my age as I’ve been told I look younger), married for 21 years, and have a college-bound son. I’m proud to be a Project Manager, managing both IT and business initiatives. I worked in IT consulting, food, financial and now I work in the safety industry.
I’m an uber-learner, so I earned an MBA part-time while starting a family and working full-time, have a few certifications under my belt, and currently studying to be a PMP (Project Management Professional). I love to volunteer, having worked with Habitat For Humanity, Feed My Starving Children, and Junior Achievement. I also love to speak, so being a guest speaker on Career Days at local schools and recently taking on the role of VP, Public Relations for Toastmasters, compliments my passion for talking a lot!
I am transitioning into an Empty-Nester, and need an outlet to divert my energy from 18 years of raising a child to focusing more often on things I’m passionate about. I played softball growing up, and after 15 years of watching my son play baseball, being a peanut in T-Ball, having fun in Little League, and killing it competitively in travel and high school ball, I also saw him mature in a way that sports teach. Which brings me to my topic: Emotional Intelligence.
Knowledge is power, but have you expanded that ability to the way you interact with others? What we learn doesn’t stop at our technical skills. How are you continuing to learn outside of the technical aspects of your job?
What exactly is Emotional Intelligence (EI)? It is the ability to effectively interact with others through recognition, connection and managing emotions. If a pitcher strikes us out as a batter, what do we do? Do we throw a tantrum or do we learn from that at-bat and strategize the next time? If the other team is taunting us to try to get to our heads, do we put our heads down and submit to their words, or do we show them what we’ve got? My die-hard baseball fan husband always repeated these words to my son growing up, which resonates with me “Success in sports depends on 3 things – Skill, Luck, and Effort”. Our effort is driven by our motivation, which is one component of EI.
Another component of EI is Empathy. Project Managers often become pseudo-psychologists. Throughout the years I’ve been in situations where business partners reveal to me they are under pressure to meet their goals quicker than IT can deliver and demanded a Go-Live date that was unrealistic. I’ve met in confidence with IT developers and testers venting their frustration on how many projects they were assigned to and how they are struggling to balance all of them to meet the deadlines with the best quality. There was even a time or two where I had to intervene in a dispute between colleagues, which if I didn’t, may have negatively impacted our ability to deliver. I am a trusted and non-judgmental ally, and am expected to remove any obstacles to a successful, on-time and on-budget project. That means establishing and maintaining relationships with my project team, being empathetic to their needs, and strategizing on how to mitigate their issues and concerns so the project can move forward.
Self-awareness is yet another component to EI, which if used effectively, can do wonders in personal and professional relationships. Have you ever taken the Gallup/Clifton StrengthFinder or any other leadership personality assessment? If not, I highly recommend the activity. The assessment helps you recognize your strengths so you can play on them much more to be successful in meeting your goals, but you have to answer all the questions honestly. The assessment then delivers Signature Themes as your results, and mine were really on point!
According to Gallup/Clifton, I am an Achiever, Discipliner and Learner. The results described characteristics and tendencies of someone with those strengths. You learn even more by reading StrengthFinder 2.0 from Gallup: Discover your Clifton Strengths by Tom Rath, as there are great examples of strengths at play from leaders of successful organizations. So what did I do with this information? I found opportunities to highlight these talents, I have a knack for bringing people together to meet a common goal, I am determined to constantly learn, no matter how long it takes, and I take on new challenges as much as my mind and body can handle.
I’m doing some continuous soul-searching to figure out how to improve my relationships with friends, family, and the workplace even more. I constantly play that mental game to find out what it means to build on those ideas to become better in tricky situations. Recognizing and acting on emotions in a healthy way is the first step. Motivation, empathy, and self-awareness are important to uncover within ourselves so we can thrive in our roles. So how are you continuing to search for this within yourself?
-Gail
