The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Emotional Intelligence Trumps Data | FF22

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

As leaders we should always be aware of the emotional health of our team. This will always be more important than data points and tasks.

Hey everyone, welcome to Foundations Friday 22, Emotional Intelligence Trumps Data. I'm your host Kevin Pinnell, I appreciate you coming back and listening and being part of this journey of podcasting and sharing information with me. Check out more on pupilprocessprogress.com, all the other links are there, we're on social medias and everything. So emotional intelligence, that's the ability to recognize how your team's doing, particularly for project managers, but in the field or whatever kind of leadership you're in. Looking at your people. Do they look stressed?

Do they look sad? Are they doing great? How's their body language? Are they engaged? Are they not engaged? But really trying to be in tune with the people on your team and how they are doing and being able to pick up on their emotions and on their affect, meaning how they look, how they're acting. And why does that trump data? Well, we can pull data all day long, but data is just a thing, right? It's not a person. It's not

the most important, just like the name of this podcast. The most important thing is people. So like I am, we're at the end of a long week here. We had a big launch at work. I'm traveling. Folks are tired. So you got to pay attention to how much you push for data. People have been working long hours. And that's on any project or a long deployment in the incident management world or the military

or a call where you're there for hours and hours. It doesn't have to be a multi-day thing. But I think we should, and I have to be a multi-day thing. But I think we should, and I try to as a project manager and leading folks on projects, really pay attention to how they're doing. And I've spoken to this before, and you all have heard this from other folks of just, you know, not every conversation you start with, particularly in those kind of quiet times at the beginning of a meeting when it's only one or two folks, of just not sitting there and looking at your phone and being silent, but really talk to people, get a sense. How you doing? How's, you know, what'd you have for breakfast? Like questions that don't have anything to do

with the tasks you're going to run down or the data you're going to share or the plan you're going to build, but more the engagement of that person. Your teams will appreciate it. You would appreciate it, right? If your leaders did that for you, I know I would and do when they check in. So I think that's a thing for us as project managers and leaders in public safety and the military and whatever area of business or life or anything out there, all of you that are listening to this do, emotional intelligence and Google it. There's tons of great resources about it, but it's really important for us to be in tune with how our people

are doing mentally, physically, emotionally, right? Emotional intelligence, more so than whatever data is coming out of it. Now that doesn't say the data doesn't matter and tasks and all that kind of stuff, but people, just like people, are the foundation before we work a process and before we all make progress. Our people need to come first and we need to be able to recognize how they're doing. I'm doing pretty well and appreciative and thankful for all of you that have listened to the show. Please share it. That'd be cool. And reach out to me, peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com for topics you want to hear about, people you want to hear from that we can try and get on,

suggest them. They can either email me at the email address I just mentioned or go to peopleprocessprogress.com and there's a be on the show link there. And let me know. But I wish all of you the best. I hope someone is asking you how you're doing today. And if not, how you doing? Let me know. Reach out to me. Take care. Stay safe out there.

Wash those hands. And Godspeed.