I happen to live about 3 minutes away from an IKEA, meaning that my IKEA experience is very different than most. I very often “pop into” IKEA for a 15-minute door to door experience because I need (for example) a single frying pan, I know exactly where they are, and IKEA is genuinely the closest and cheapest place to my house to buy one.
Here’s what I’ve learned after 6+ years of living this close to an IKEA: on any given Saturday morning, when I’m “just popping in”, the people around me jostling for carts or standing impatiently (sometimes audibly so) in line might have been traveling from 3 hours away. Some of these people genuinely woke up before the sun, stocked up on cold brew, and then piled into the car to go buy an Ektorp or a Hemnes. When said Ektorp or Hemnes is not available even though the website said it was going to be, here’s a screenshot, why aren’t you listening to me!!!!! some of these people lose their everloving minds. This is actually the minority, though; many more of these people do a sort of soft grumble and then stand right behind me in line just radiating silent fury and being extremely unpleasant to stand next to even though I have absolutely nothing to do with why they’re angry.
We’re having really different mornings, I always try to remind myself when trying to be gentle with them. We’re coming from really different places. It usually works.
This, of course, is the project management application: managing projects (especially complex ones) means managing many different types of stakeholders, and delivering many different types of messages. Somewhat frequently, you are going to need to manage their anger, their disappointment, their frustration, or any number of other negative emotions.
Managing Your Own Project And Others’ Emotions
Some of these stakeholders are not very emotionally intelligent. They get angry just because… it’s what they do. It’s how they’ve managed (or mismanaged) their feelings over their entire career and they’re not going to stop now, for you. Others are rightfully angry, but directing at you, which is misplaced.
For example, perhaps a supply chain issue caused a vendor to deliver late (not the vendor’s fault) and they tried to make it right (but couldn’t) and now there are delays to the project, which are completely unforeseen and couldn’t have been mitigated by anyone on the team, least of all you. You share all of this with a program director, attempting to soften the blow by reminding them that the project’s due date wasn’t tied to a market projection and doesn’t actually impact the portfolio if its delivery date is pushed out a month. So — in theory — this should be a relatively minor issue.
The program director explodes anyway.
Why? What’s going on here?
Sometimes, we don’t get to know.
Perhaps they’re just an exploder. It’s what they do, and they’ll come to you later and apologize. If you commiserate with another PM, they’ll share with you that this director behaves this way frequently.
Perhaps this project delay is the latest in a string of late deliveries under this program director’s watch and they’re under pressure from their own boss to deliver on time for the rest of the year. You can’t know that, the vendor couldn’t know that… the supply chain which is not even a sentient being, and so of course couldn’t know that, wouldn’t have changed anything even if it did know that. The fact is that this project was inevitably going to be delayed, and this director was inevitably going to explode. And none of this has to do with you.
Perhaps they’re having a terrible day that has nothing to do with their typical demeanor or the problem at hand. Perhaps this means you’ll never be able to put dots together that make the explosion make sense.
Whether you’re enduring frosty-bordering-rude behavior from the person in line next to you at IKEA or some frustration from a program director… life often throws other peoples’ emotions at us and expects us to deal. It’s one of the most frustrating things about project management, and it requires a lot of careful boundary work to not take on the frustration, or even anger, of others.
I talk to a lot of folks who’ve made the PM pivot (some from HESA, some not) and we unanimously agree that one of the challenging parts of making this jump well is about keeping boundaries in place. Here are some things that can help us keep this top of mind:
- Remember what’s yours to solve, and what isn’t. Scope helps us with this because it helps us understand what our projects require of us. Strategic thinking helps us with this because it helps us understand which stakeholders will continue to influence our programs & portfolios. At the end of the day, though, remember that project managers aren’t acting alone — we have bosses and supervisors. If you’re spending a lot of time managing others’ emotions, this is a good flag to check in with your supervisor.
- Project managers are problem-solvers, but you shouldn’t have to bend yourself into a pretzel to avoid disrespect. We’re always looking for new and unique ways to solve issues that come up for our projects, but we also don’t need to bend over backwards to avoid other peoples’ anger or disappointment when we can honestly say that we (and our project teams) have put in our honest, genuine, best effort.
- Similarly to the above, project managers are resilient, but you also don’t have to accept disrespect from others. Disappointment from an invested stakeholder is one thing. Beyond that, even when a project manager makes a mistake, genuine feedback aimed at helping project managers and their project teams improve is one thing. Disrespect is another. No matter how fast-paced your organization or team culture, disrespect from those around you is not normal.
These are some red flags that can help you understand navigating two situations:
- Navigating emotional boundaries in “normal” situations and cultures where team members are frustrated;
- Understanding when situations or cultures are not normal and what that might mean for you as a project manager.
Most of all, I want to encourage you to continue balancing the need to function as an effectively emotionally intelligent project manager without taking on the emotional baggage of others. Keeping your emotional intelligence sharp should benefit you, not just the people you’re gifting it to!
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