Western Michigan Project Management Institute Professional Development Day Keynote Presentation. Innovation and emotional intelligence (EI) go hand in hand. EI both precedes and comes after digital transformations and project managers are in the thick of it. The future of work is more flexibility, more generations working together, and more automation... all which make a project managers work harder. So, what do you do with a problem? You tackle it and find the opportunity inside. An opportunity, in this case, to up the organization's emotional intelligence, or emotional quotient... EQ. Self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills comprise EI/EQ. They can be learned, and you can insert techniques into your daily work to up the EI/EQ of your organization. It's not EASY, but worth it.

1. Innovation and
Emotional
Intelligence

4. Gulati, Richa & Reaiche, Carmen & Baroudi, Sam & Gunawan, Indra. (2020).
The Contribution of Project Managers' Soft Skills to
their Project Success.
Fioravanti, Maria Lydia & Sena, Bruno & Barbosa, Ellen. (2020).
Assessing the Development of Soft Skills for Project
Management using PBL: A Case Study.
"Soft Skills" are important.
They can, and should be developed.

6. Not a new
subject, but
certainly a
brand new
emphasis.
Innovation and Emotional
Intelligence

7. Innovation and EI

10. Flexibility - Demographics - Automation

11. Choose where,
when, and how
much you work.
Multi-gen work
teams all on
same project.
Computers do
human work
when able.
Flexibility - Demographics - Automation

12. Choose where,
when, and how
much you work.
Multi-gen work
teams all on
same project.
Computers do
human work
when able.
Flexibility - Demographics - Automation
Studies show that all of these are
counterproductive to getting
tasks accomplished and project
manager job satisfaction.

35. "The same neural phenomenon
drives the explanatory gap as occurs
when we look at a visual illusion
such as the duck-rabbit.
The drawing of the head of the
animal can be seen as a duck facing
one direction or a rabbit facing the
other, but you can't see both at once.
That is called a perceptual rivalry,
and it occurs because of neural
inhibition between the two
representations."
Rivalry in the Brain

41. Innovation and
Emotional
Intelligence