Emotional intelligence: a crucial human resource management ability for engineering project managers in the 21st century

Human resource management and the corresponding soft-skills or abilities are pivotal to project management success. One of the measures of these soft-skills, used in recent years, is the concept of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the capacity to grasp, appreciate and discerningly manage emotions in relationship to oneself and others. This research focused on exploring the notion of emotional intelligence and its importance as ability for project managers in the 21st century. The first step was to explore the literature and develop a construct of emotional intelligence that could be applicable to project managers. The second step was to determine whether emotional intelligence, as per said construct, is perceived to be important for project managers. A web-based survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 5444 project stakeholders across the globe, of which 395 (7.25%) responses were unspoiled. The findings from the statistical data analyses indicate that almost 90% of participants are of the opinion that emotional intelligence is a critical ability for project managers and the four factor construct of emotional intelligence is applicable to project managers, especially in the 21st century.