Empathy: The Project Management X Factor
What’s the difference between a good product manager and a great one? Project Management at its core is about planning, managing and closing a work effort. It’s all about the execution. Can I get from Point A to Point B on time and within budget? I’ve worked with Project Managers throughout the years that took their role literally. The drive and desire to get to the finish line was paramount. The colleagues or related tasks left in the PM’s wake were not given a second thought. Anecdotally, these driven and task-oriented employees were praised as “good PM’s” with a “but”. They were good BUT no one wanted to work with them. When these highly functioning PMs were assigned to big projects that involved multiple cross-functional stakeholders the announcements were met with silent groans and eye rolls. Observing “good PMs” helped hone my own personal management style. Very early on I learned to value how I got the job done over just getting it done.
The great PM looks beyond the individual tasks and execution components of the project. He or she manages not only the project but also the community involved in delivery. The stressed manager, the overworked technologist, the business analyst who is spread too thinly. Dealing with and respecting the personalities and emotions involved separate the great PMs from the pack. Empathy, simply defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, is key. Empathy, an element of Emotional Intelligence, is often dismissed because it is confused with sympathy. And who isn’t sympathetic? That is a basic perception we all have as human beings. However, feeling bad for Joe who just got chewed out by his boss is not the same as understanding Joe’s upset.
Practically and tactically speaking, the information we ingest through empathetic interaction makes PM’s better listeners and ultimately more successful. This is so for two main reasons:
The empathetic ear can garner more support from stakeholders and the individuals required to complete project tasks. A PM without internal support and buy-in from the doers has greater difficulty closing individual tasks per plan.
The likability of the empathetic PM boosts the morale of the project team and rallies the doers to get their tasks completed.
Throughout my career I've seen PM's attempt to bring soft skills into their projects with mixed results. In my view, those who believed in the value of relating to their project teams were far more accomplished than those who never looked up from their project plans and opened their ears.