hey folks thanks for tuning in my name is gayen low with the digital project manager we are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled get confident and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world if you want to hear more about that head over to the digital projectmanager.com membership okay today we're talking about the increasingly important role of emotional intelligence in project management and why it might become even more important than ever as we get deeper into AI enabled projects joining me today in the studio is the host of The Everyday PM podcast and VP of operations at true sense marketing an campia and thanks so much for joining me today yeah I'm so excited to be here I am excited as well because you just have such an interesting background thank you for having me on your podcast which is an excellent podcast and I'm super honored to have you on mine nice little podcast exchange here I'm excited to into this because honestly I've been everywhere I'm sure everyone's the same here everywhere I go everyone's talking about Ai and it's focal and yes today we're talking about AI but I think the thing that kind of comes into sharp relief for me and for you is just that that whole EQ piece right the emotional intelligence piece where the humanity will end up Landing amidst all of this sort of you know disruption sometimes positive disruption it's not all bad but I'm excited to dive in yeah me too it's one of my favorite topics love it and because it is I'm going to start you off with one big question to get us rolling because when we were gabbing before we planned this podcast you mentioned that you had taken a bit of time off from projects and operations to work on your doctorate what was the most jarring thing about returning to the world of Project based collaboration right as we were getting AI entering the picture yeah I guess it's exactly that it's coming into the mix of there's so much conversation around Ai and the impact to project management whether you're working in the digital PM space or traditional PM space and I just think that it's been a good and welcome disruption and forcing us to have conversations around how can we better integrate our role as project managers with artificial intelligence and kind of coming into those types of conversations people are still kind of hypothesizing about what could be the future of the two I'm excited to kind of be re-entering the space around that conversation because I think that for a very long time we've kind of been stuck in this Perpetual like okay you're going to have your Tech kind of digital facing PM you're going to have your more traditional waterfall predictive cycle PM never shall the two mix but then you know then you layer on top the EQ piece and then now you layer on top the AI piece and there's just so much for us to take advantage of at this point yeah there's so much depth to the role now and as you were saying that I was like yeah you know we used to say oh my gosh project management doesn't change quickly enough for us to like have to kind of keep our finger on some pulse that's moving around it's kind of like tried and true we've got the sort of body of knowledge for us to kind of execute and then suddenly AI right everything's a bit different yes in a good way I mean I don't know how you see it but I I see it very positively yeah I definitely think like I've been impressed with it let me say that I've been a little little bit not disappointed is not the right word but I've been a little bit hesitant about humans reaction to AI but the technology is fantastic and you know it's progressing every day is your team have they sunken their teeth into sort of bringing AI into their workflow great question and yes speaking of you know having working on my doctorate I'm a student so obviously AI has been very interwoven into kind of the educational pieces of aspects of my journey but in terms of the project management team that I'm leading at true sense yes we are absolutely starting to open up those conversations around how we can compliment AI with what we do I've got a team member who's looking at repetitive processes and areas of our workflow to see where we can further automate but use AI to kind of take advantage of that and speed up the process of the automation pieces so there's a lot of healthy conversation that is just kicking off and I think it's a perfect time to start to investigate that with your teams if if you haven't already as PMI is also putting out a ton of stuff on AI including uh how to speak to generative AI I think or how to talk to generative AI I don't know if you've taken it yet gayen I haven't it's uh you know they're really grasping at this concept of marrying our role with AI I think there's this excitement probably you know the same thing I described earlier but on that global scale of like oo project management is changing this is exciting we don't have to you know put out another risk management web not knocking RIS management webinars they're very important but you know like there hasn't been a lot of movement there and now suddenly it's like oh there's Innovation there's like this spark happening let's jump on it yeah I really appreciate it and let's get real as PMS we're maybe we were getting a little bored with the over and over again refresh of the PM boach I don't know I don't know how you've been feeling about it but I have been a little bit I think there you know there have been some really positive moves especially reflected in PMI you know with pinb seventh Edition eighth edition is uh being worked on I have some friends in my network who are involved and it's just going in a really good spot not just towards like the technology but also business and also the thing we're talking about which is like that Humanity piece I think it's getting woven in a lot more and I think it's exciting yeah I'm picturing this sort of like Captain America Steve Rogers moment of you sort of returning back to work with your team and suddenly everything's different right there's all the stuff to adapt to there's all the AI pieces and you are very much a champion of like high EQ teams M what was it that struck you about AI as an opportunity to help us increase emotional intelligence and psychological safety in the way we work oh gosh what a great question I think that there is an opportunity from the aspect of It kind of complimenting how we even feel about how we feel about how we execute our roles and what I mean by that is I've got a team of varying levels of project managers you know some that are just entering the space some that have been doing it for quite some time and no matter what day of the week it is you can wake up and feel a very high sense of imposter syndrome around what you do you know project management in itself is tends to be very repetitive in what we do obviously the nuances come in as you're working with different types of people different personalities that introduce that human aspect to make our roles a little bit more complex obviously and I think that in looking at AI in terms of how it can kind of help us from a psychological state it kind of helps us settle in some ways around am I making the right decision have I consulted the right people do I have all the aspects of the particular topic or issue before I bring forth my recommendations I think that's really where we're starting to utilize it amongst my team is that validation or that checkpoint to where you can actually interact with AI hey does this look right hey have I drafted this correctly for my stakeholders is there something else that I'm missing that you've identified a gap in in this status report you know there's all those types of interactions you can do now with AI that will help you kind of offset that impostor syndrome that typically kicks in no matter how long you've been doing project management I still have it every almost every day and I think there's another opportunity for you to not just have to interact with your colleagues and you know from a human aspect but you can also use AI to kind of help balance that feeling as well I love that word validation and I think it's so important especially with impostor syndrome and especially for project management because I have found at least in my career like project management was a little bit lonely in the sense that usually there's like the one project manager leading the project and sure you might be on a team of project managers but I mean the teams I was on we're always a little bit kind of competitive and like definitely not so vulnerable and humble that I was always you know asking my colleagues for help or like asking them to double check something and then we're busy so like usually there' be a lag anyways but I love that notion of just like have I missed anything and let me just double check like what's that double check and then the result being that yeah like you are a bit more confident in your role wherever you are in your journey and I think that's the great thing about the sort of especially the large language model stuff where it has something for everybody in the sense that you know you could kind of validate something basic you could give it a perspective like a more senior level lens or individual and it can be a teaching tool as well right in terms of just kind of being like okay yeah I learned something kind of in the moment when I needed it like I didn't have to sit down and like take a LinkedIn learning course it was just that sort of validation that double check for me yeah and really just gaining the traction and efficiency and what you just said right I think you can ask at something very quickly how do you define this and you have that information like that yes we can go on Google and do the search and and that and whatnot but the aggregation of the information and obviously you have to kind of validate what AI is even telling you but at the very least it gives you a jump start in that search for the information that you're looking for and so as PMS I could see our velocity really kicking up just because of this complimentary state that AI is playing with our role I love that sort of like the efficiency look and like I haven't seen any reports on it but I would love to see one on the effect of imposter syndrome and its relationship with efficiency because I feel it all the time you know like when you said yeah I you know I have imposter syndrome too I definitely do and I know it's giving me this hesitation micro hesitations in everything I do because I'm like I don't know really which sometimes is a good sense check but yeah to have a you know quote unquote buddy sort of bouncing off of I love that in terms of that sort of safety right it's kind of like a safe spot until there's some leak and somebody gets your entire chat gbt history you're like oh my gosh you asked what an apple is I mean so far AI hasn't picked up a personality to where it's a little sassy when it responds to you so I do think it removes that element of a tone you know it will just give you straight data and you can do what you want with it and your point gayen it's like we're not getting that feedback in such a way where it makes it further compound how you're feeling whereas you can often get that when you're interacting with an individual and sometimes you're not even on a call you're not even face to face sometimes it's just a text or a chat message get that's misinterpreted because it's hum speaking to humans and there's em motion that's typically driving some of what you're conversating about whereas as far as I've seen so far AI has not done that piece for me so again it's like very complimentary in that you're not going to get any sorts of feelings around what AI is going to tell you it's just going to tell you what it thinks based on the information it can see might be good modeling for humans yes exactly we could probably learn from that you know you get that response just multiply cell C by cell D and you might mean well but to the other person they're like sounds like I asked a dumb question not going to do that right I'm sorry you know what I mean yeah exactly whoa calm down that might be a good segue into the flip side because I think there are a lot of positive things but what's one or a few ways that you see Artificial Intelligence being used today that might start to erode our understanding of emotional intelligence if we leave it unchecked that's such a great question you know as project managers and as you just mentioned you know even in the next version of the PM boach there's still an emphasis on power skills which are those EQ skills that we've called out there's always going to be this element of emotional intelligence that we have to be good at right as PMS because you're often working with people you can't predict how people are feeling about certain thing and it kind of when you break it down it's all about the feelings around something and so I think that one of the fears that we're seeing with AI is that's kind of removing the human aspect of interaction communication and how much of that is important or critical to what we do as PMS I do think there is a level that still needs to be a part of our role which is the influencing piece the way that you speak to different people I think if you take Ai and you ask them to conversate with 10 of your stakeholders it's going to do the same thing across all 10 whereas it doesn't necessarily understand that maybe one stakeholder appreciates very direct communication whereas another stakeholder May appreciate something a little bit more toned down and more personal and so the varying aspects of how we communicate as project managers I don't think that element is going to be removed by AI but I think there's a fear around the further we get into using that as our primary communication or assisting with our primary communication like if we start generating status reports that way if we start generating emails that way you very much kind of go into this ho of oh well now I've kind of removed parts of the humanity piece that we is part of our superpowers PMS is the piece that we truly have to grasp as individuals when we're in this role is how do we work with all these different types of people and I don't think AI is going to be there to do that for us I love that and I love that it's like a there's almost a poetic Counterpoint to it right we're talking about how you know uh chat GPT for example pretty safe right it's going to respond with the facts it's like you know it's not going to be offended by your question it's not going to make you feel bad on purpose yeah and then you mentioned that course right like from PMI it's like how to prompt or how to talk to Ai and then the Counterpoint is okay well what if that becomes our expectation with humans as well it's like oh wow I forgot that there's emotion in the equation when I go and ask a question I can't just be hey VP of operations act as my boss I'm looking to respond to an RFP and hear the require and they're like yes what what are you even doing there's certain elements you know and I love that because I I have just started playing around with you know respond in the voice of a 5-year-old I don't know right like but I think that we can get it to a certain point but there's still this layer of we got to do our due diligence to make sure we're not just copying and pasting what chat GPT is spitting out for us right you've got to put some sort of spin around the tone how you approach a particular topic you know your stakeholders better than the AI would so you kind of still got to finesse what it's spitting out even if I put speak in the tone of a VP of operations and I think maybe and gayen you could tell me because I think you played around with AI a little bit longer than I have which is eventually you could get it to start speaking pretty close to your language the more that it learns but I still think we're in that intermediary state where it's going to take some practice for the AI to really pick up how to speak on your behalf if that makes sense no definitely and I think the sort of nuance of all the things like I think I mean I guess we're all on a bit of a journey but I think it will help us unpack how we communicate and why because I think that yes it's learning from us it's learning from the inputs it gets from us but how much of our actions is actually Guided by something that's you know we're not providing as an input that it doesn't know it doesn't know that you were maybe victimized or bullied in grade school and that maybe you as a result have this intense anxiety around sort of group confrontations and it won't be able to learn that and yet it hopefully we'll sort of raise our own awareness of that undercurrent and like you know all of the sort of experiences that AI won't know about us because we haven't told it that still will inform the way we act and you know things we do it's funny actually because and I'm off on a tangent a little bit here no you're but I did have this moment moment as like a people manager where I kind of gave advice as me and it went South I realized I'm like oh because they're not me I did a really poor job of advising a team member because I didn't really ask the question of like can give me the context like where's the conversation at so far like okay and you know and I think that is something that could be sort of an issue that comes up in terms of how AI informs our action yeah agreed without knowing all the facts because we haven't told them yeah and I think as us as individuals as the more we get acclimated to it I'm almost there in terms of I'm using it every day for a various number of things so I can easily see myself getting to the adoption point but the extreme side of adoption to where it's too much Ai and not enough of me and then you start to wonder like how much of this is me and my thoughts around a particular topic and how much is this now just AI giving whatever responses it wants so it's a little bit for me personally I think I have to slow myself down in some instances because I'm thinking like oh my gosh does this even sound like me anymore what do I even sound like as an individual like what happened to my voice so it's one of those things where we have to temper ourselves as humans as well because especially around something like this where it's such a powerful tool that people can easily get excited about and you just got to temper yourself around like the use of It kind of like cell phones in general you don't want to always be on your phone 24/7 I love that it went right to existential crisis who am I I don't know who I am anymore I think I'm just this chat GPT bot yes exactly what an interesting folk room too though like where you know at the top we were talking about how it can help you sort of feel a bit more empowered and valued in your job because yeah it might be taking care of some of the repetitive automatable things you have this sidekick that you can ask questions to and you're like yeah now I am strong and then it's just this like easy tip over the edge to be like wait a minute it's doing my entire job for me what do I do what is my skill right like right and I think that's kind of coming back to the very first thing you said where you said oh you removed yourself a little bit to focus on your doctorate and coming back that is definitely a commentary that I've seen across a lot of people who are actively speaking about AI that is definitely one of the fears around it is kind of going so far deep into the use of it that it's kind of taken over what we do but the whole core of this episode is around EQ and Ai and for me my my very strong stance on this is that they complement each other they date each other but they never become the same thing right they never become the same person if that's the best way to say it which means in my opinion I don't ever see AI completely taking over a project manager's role but we just got to learn how we can complement each other other we got to date each other get familiar with each other and figure out what's going to work images of like her that film kind of like Po into my head we need to date it yeah exactly that was ahead of its time by the way we can have a very spiral conversation around her but I do think that's probably what's in some people's heads who have seen that movie it's like that could be the extreme version of what could happen with AI if we aren't putting boundaries around it right let's actually dive in there and maybe not exactly the whole dating AI thing but like that weaving things together right because to your point it may not ever be the same thing and may not be a direct replacement there's a balance to be found and sort of from where you stand how can project managers and project teams weave more of the EQ into their practice as project managers as they get deeper into Ai and what would the benefit be over just putting EQ on the back burner and just focusing on just the AI stuff oh gosh yeah so putting EQ in the Forefront should be top of mind for everybody like you said it continues to be promoted by the body of knowledge and I very much believe that the most effective PMS are the ones that have figured out how to work their EQ across their stakeholders across what they do on a day-to-day and there's always going to be that element of it so to me same thing as mindfulness you just got to practice it on a day-to-day basis because you don't know if on Monday gayin turns on this computer and everyone's hot because something broke over the weekend and now everyone's temperature is you know they're on fire and you walk into an environment where the climate of the situation is heightening everybody's emotions right and so there's always going to be those instances where as a PM you cannot expect what type of environment you're going to be playing in for that day's work so you always have to be at the ready so it's a practice right you have to understand get to know people sit down with them oneon-one how do you like to work that's like one of the my favorite questions to ask somebody that I'm interacting with at work for the first time what is your method of like how you want to receive communication the more you can act maybe kind of like AI how we train Ai and we put a bunch of information into AI to get it to where it's speaking our language the same thing goes as humans like we got to interact with the people we're working with start to gather data on how you can interact with them and then you practice that on a day-to-day okay I'm going into meeting with gayen I know that he likes to speak about XY andz topics he likes to also have like very nice finesse notes at the end of the meeting with action items assigned to people you get to really understand your stakeholders and I think that's the piece where project managers you're never going to get to a point where you've mastered EQ Fair let's be real you never will because there's always going to be the element of churn of people that you work with and so you just practice it on a day-to-day as if you were trying to train for the Olympics or something right and then kind of the second part of your question how do we kind of make sure that we are also understanding how AI will I don't know not necessarily overtake that element of it but as this whole episode we've been talking about complement it we can always put AI in the back burner whenever we want right so that's something where I am trying to be very conscientious as we enter conversations with my team around the various elements of our workflow that we are going to put boundaries around okay well this part we're going to use AI it makes sense to do it here but maybe not necessarily this part and really start to understand like where we can weave it in and out to where it's not overtaking the entire process I love that and you know you said it earlier I didn't appla it enough you said EQ is our superpower for project managers for arguably you know humans in general but I love that what you said about sort of inputs right and I know it's you know like the how do you like to work it's kind of been coming up as a practice that's a little bit more widespread but the way you framed it I think most people fundamentally actually misunderstand why to ask that question and maybe don't have all the awareness of how to respond to that question because we've never really had to think about it because we haven't really been the type of collaborators who have been interested in like how do you work everyone works a little bit differently tell me your preferences and knowing your own preferences like I don't know do I like detail notes I guess I do actually you know and it's like kind of a new thought for me but I really like that idea of learning one another not just like teaching machines like it's actually has this interplay of like oh yeah if I'm doing this for AI then maybe I should be doing it with my team as well exactly exactly and I think I promote you start there first before you even start talking about Ai and its complement to the role at your organization is get your people up to speed on how to interact with people that way you don't ever lose that element your team understands that it's a practice not a journey where there's an end point I love that I thought maybe to round it out we can take a glimpse into the future a little bit we're gonna speculate okay the yeah let's the ball I'm just wondering if you could make a hypothesis about how EQ will manifest in AI in the future if AI was able to know how we felt and maybe even felt emotions itself how would we start using it differently gosh you know right now what I've used it heavily for is you know write this email in the voice of a VP of operations right for example so those are the prompts I know right now which is write it in the voice of whatever but I wouldn't be surprised gayen if in the very near future it starts to then pick up tone because we see there are options there for tone do you want this to be direct do you want this to be casual do you want this to be friendly amicable like it already has some of those cues with built in within it so then it's just a matter of is it going to get to a point where the language actually feels human I think it will I think it will get very close because if you've ever and I know you've played around with chat GPT quite a bit if you change even just between the tones and you give it the same prompt it's so interesting what it spits out and then months ago versus today it's even more different than what it was a few months ago and so the rate of change of ative Ai and how it is learning and expanding to somewhat be emotional quote unquote I think that it will definitely get pretty close to a place where you might think that you're hearing me but you're actually hearing whatever the prompt was that I put into the chat GPT bot or whatever it's so interesting and I think you're right in a sense like I'm thinking of follow me on this one I'm thinking of like an Apple Watch for example and somewhere along the line the software gets upgraded it's like hey now we released this feature and I'm like that means there was a sensor there all along and you know then they decided to kind of it's been Gathering data and I think you're right that like the tone is built in there is a sort of emotional inflection built into to how it's interpreting our prompts and you know that could go a lot of different places and then it kind of takes me back to the beginning of the conversation which is like oh yeah does that then make our interactions with AI as complicated again as our interactions with humans like AI is in a bad mood that day right you're like oh I got to be careful I got to be really polite in this prompt because AI is just on edge because of that thing that happened on the weekend that's what I'm scared of that is essentially what I you know that existential thing that we just talked about it's like it's going to know more about me than I know about me and so I don't know I'm so amazed at the advancements it's done even since I've really started to get my feet wet and pming again and it's just like holy moly in just a short amount of time how much you're able to do how much it's expanded to not just like verbal or word prompts like Graphics you know I know that was always something with mid Journey when it started but there's just all these other elements that you can furnish and so one of the areas that I'm very curious about that I'm going to start tapping into with my own team and this is not future future state but kind of near future which is generate a status report for us get to a point where it's something that the AI can just do for us in automation week over week those are the types of things where I think I'd like to see the near future state for my team is kind of getting some of those tools aligned standardize across the project managers having the AI do the initial leg work for them so that they it frees their capacity up to really focus on the EQ elements that we're talking about you know imagine if you're PMS could you know like every week generates the status report they don't have to worry about Gathering all the data putting it in there they're just validating that it's correct and it sends out so then they can go over here and focus on oh well you know our executive team is expecting us to present on this particular topic like let's brainstorm let's do the human elements of our job a little bit better so I think that's where I see kind of the near future stay at least that's what we're trying to achieve with my team and I'm hoping and I'm sure other project management teams are doing something similar what a great opportunity to have a team recognize that EQ is their superpower right because we have ai that can assist with a status report and it kind of it's that whole reframe of like yes I know it could like tip right over into existential crisis but right now what a great moment in the near future to be like you get to re-evaluate what your value is even in your role and that could be a very empowering thing absolutely I agree 100% And thank so much for spending the time with me today I appreciate your insights I appreciate your perspectives always absolutely this was fun it was fun wasn't it let's do this again sounds good all right folks there you have it as always if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management Champions come join our Collective head on over to the digital projectmanager.com membership to learn more and if you like what you heard today please subscribe and stay in touch on the digital projectmanager.com until next time thanks for listening