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In recent years, project management has been identified as a practice of creating and increasing the competitive advantage of companies. Organizations have started depending on projects to stay ahead of the competition (Ju et al., 2020; Anantatmula, 2010), due to which the role of project managers has gained much attention. The project managers are constantly facing pressure to handle the challenges and several problems to meet the expectations of stakeholders. “By tradition, project management has concentrated on the management of projects on a single location either within one organization or between two or more organizations. At this moment, emerging trends are altering the way projects are structured and managed, creating new challenges in project management research and practice” (Mandson & Selnes, 2015). Our focus was captured by a recent report that delved into the essential skills and experience that will be required by Australia's prospective workforce in the forthcoming decades, as highlighted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) in the year 2015 (CEDA, 2015).
A project manager has a diverse set of responsibilities and duties like coordinating customers, conducting meetings, preparing budgets, etc. (Shastri et al., 2021; Howard, 1999). In the case of software projects, both developing and mature countries have a high proportion of project failures (Ebad, 2016). As the project's success has been considered as a result of project managers' efficiencies and competencies. “It is not just the technical factors in a project that impacts project performance but there are some behavioral attributes that practitioners need to have in order to cope with project difficulties and then add to project outcomes” (Zaman et al., 2019). Hence, several skills set, and leadership styles have been studied to identify the critical success factors for a project manager's performance. Along with several hard and soft skills, the emotional intelligence of project managers has also gained importance. Emotional Intelligence is defined as “…the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to differentiate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions (Salovey & Mayer, 1990)”.
Due to the critical nature of projects across each industry and several problems and responsibilities faced by project managers, the question arises that how to combat these problems and what skills are necessary for a project manager to equipped with to enhance their work performance? Researchers like Kerzner (2010), found that most of the project performance can be credited to the individual characteristics of the project manager e.g., behavioral features such as attitudes and interpersonal understanding and abilities (Lechler, 1998), are linked to project performance. Companies give the project managers complete obligations regarding guiding and conveying project results. Hence, the project manager's tasks are to assuming liability for planning and incorporating activities in different specialized and technical lines and communicating with stakeholders.
Project Managers' diverse skill set is essential for their work performance and ultimately project success. As, it has been observed in the previous research that the “project failure rates are high, and interestingly much of the project failure is not related to knowledge or know-how, but to project participants' lack of social intelligence, personal skills, poor leadership, inadequate communication and inability to solve conflicts” (Srica, 2009). This means that project performance is dependent upon human skills. Clarke (2010) identifies that the emotional intelligence of project managers helps them to enhance problem-solving skills of solving new challenges and problems. This trait may also help them to inspire and motivate their other team members.