Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results,   ISBN:9780814474167

Customer Rating: 

I got a flyer from one of the professional organizations I belong to, so I went to their website to look at what they had for sale. I found this book and thought it was worthwhile to try as a way to brush up on my soft skills and learn if I'd been doing anything wrong all these years. It turned out to be an easy read and very straightforward, and it got me interested in learning more about developing my EQ.

Customer Rating: 

I found this book lacking in substance. I felt I was reading a long winded bullet list. Many of the ideas were under developed.

Customer Rating: 

A very basic intro to EQ as appiied to the PM function. None the less, worth reading, as it tunes into the human side of PM and the PMBOK.

Customer Rating: 

I'm a manager and have read several books by Dan Goleman on the topic of Emotional Intelligence (EI). I found it hard to relate the psychological and statistical methods in those books to what I'm doing every day as a manager. This is the first book I've read that bridges the gap.

What I found exciting is how the author explained emotions that I've gone through as a project manager and mapped it to the EI models. Many times I found myself saying "That's me!" when the author described instances at work where our emotional strength can be challenged and most importantly how we reacted to the situation. Many of us have heard of self-awareness, self-management, and social-awareness in the context of EI. The author spends time describing how managers use these skills ineffectively and then gives us actionable steps to become more effective in these areas.

I wrote notes in the margins and found myself circling many key words and quotes from the author because the information quickly became very personal to me. The book is short enough and broken down logically so that it can be used for reference during the work day. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Customer Rating: 

Some months ago I completed a Project Management course for which the textbook was the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) by the Project Management Institute (PMI). As I went through the 9 PM knowledge areas, 5 process groups, 44 processes and the countless tools and techniques in each process, I could not help thinking that something was missing. While the PMBOK does a good job covering project management methodologies, it barely talks about the people skills that Project Managers need for success. Anthony Mersino's "Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers" does an excellent job bridging this gap in the discipline of Project Management.
This book is broken into four parts. It starts with an introduction to Emotional Intelligence, a term that Mersino defines as "knowing and managing our own emotions and those of others for improved performance". The remaining parts deal with Self-management, Building project stakeholder relationships and Using Emotional Quotient (EQ) to lead project teams. To me, the highlight of the book was Mersino's Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management This builds upon and customizes (for project management) Daniel Goleman's Framework of Emotional Competencies.
The Emotional Intelligence Framework for Project Management has five domains:
1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management
5. Team leadership
Mersino has over 20 years of project management experience and teaches courses at Northwestern University. Overall, this book is well researched and well presented. In addition, it is an excellent compilation of resources on emotional intelligence for project management. It is a great addition to every Project Manager's book-shelf.