The Digital Project Manager

Why EQ Is The Key To Successful AI-Enabled Projects

• Galen Low - The Digital Project Manager

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In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the role of project managers is constantly being redefined. As we delve deeper into the age of AI, one might wonder how traditional project management skills can coexist and even thrive alongside these technological advancements. Enter emotional intelligence (EQ), often hailed as a project manager’s secret weapon.

Galen Low is joined by Ann Campea—VP of Operations at TrueSense Marketing & Host of The Everyday PM Podcast—to discuss the intersection of AI and EQ in the realm of project management.

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Galen Low:

Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen 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 thedigitalprojectmanager.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 TrueSense Marketing, Ann Campea. Ann, thanks so much for joining me today.

Ann Campea:

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.

Galen Low:

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 my nice little podcast exchange here. I'm excited to dive 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, it's just that, that whole EQ piece, right? The emotional intelligence piece where the humanity will end up landing amidst all of this sort of, disruption, sometimes positive disruption, it's not all bad, but I'm excited to dive in.

Ann Campea:

Yeah, me too. It's one of my favorite topics.

Galen Low:

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 answering the picture?

Ann Campea:

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 coming into those types of conversations, people are still hypothesizing about what could be the future of the two. I'm excited to be at re-entering the space around that conversation because I think that for a very long time, we've been stuck in this perpetual 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, 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.

Galen Low:

Yeah. There's so much depth to the role now. And as you were saying that, I was like, yeah, we used to say, oh my gosh, project management doesn't change quickly enough for us to have to keep our finger on some pulse that's moving around. It's like tried and true. We've got this sort of body of knowledge for us to execute. And then suddenly, AI, right? Everything's a bit different.

Ann Campea:

Yes. In a good way. I mean, I don't know how you see it, but I, I see it very positively.

Galen Low:

Yeah, I definitely think, I've been impressed with it. Let me say that. I've been a little bit 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 it's progressing every day. Is your team, have they sunken their teeth into sort of bringing AI into their workflow?

Ann Campea:

Great question. And yes, speaking of, 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 TrueSense, 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 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 you haven't already, as PMI is also putting out a ton of stuff on AI, including 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 Galen. It's they're really grasping at this concept of marrying our role with AI.

Galen Low:

I think there's this excitement, probably, the same thing I described earlier, but on that global scale of Ooh, project management is changing. This is exciting. We don't have to, put out another risk management webinar. Not knocking risk 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. I really appreciate it.

Ann Campea:

And let's get real. As PMs we're, maybe we're getting a little bored with the over and over again, refresh of the PMBOK. I don't know. I don't know how you've been feeling about it, but I have been a little bit.

Galen Low:

I think there've, there've been some really positive moves, especially reflected in PMI, with PMBOK's 7th edition. 8th edition is 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 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. I'm picturing this sort of 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 this stuff to adapt to, there's all the AI pieces, and you are very much a champion of like high EQ teams. 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?

Ann Campea:

Oh, gosh, what a great question. I think that there is an opportunity from the aspect of a 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, 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. 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 help us from a psychological state, it 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? There's all those types of interactions you could do now with AI that will help you offset that imposter 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, from a human aspect, but you can also use AI to help balance that feeling as well.

Galen Low:

I love that word validation. And I think it's so important, especially with imposter syndrome, and especially for project management, because I have found at least in my career, like project management was a little bit lonely. In a 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 competitive and definitely not so vulnerable and humble that I was always, asking my colleagues for help or asking them to double check something and that we're busy. So usually there'd be a lag anyways, but I love that notion of just have I missed anything? And let me just double check. 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 could validate something basic, you could give it a perspective of a more senior level lens or individual. And it can be a teaching tool as well, right? And it turns out just being like, okay, yeah, I learned something in the moment when I needed it. Like I didn't have to sit down and take a LinkedIn learning course. It's just that sort of validation that double check for me.

Ann Campea:

Yeah. And really just gaining the traction and efficiency and what you just said, right? I think you can ask it 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 that one whatnot. But the aggregation of the information and obviously you have to 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.

Galen Low:

I love that. It's sort of like the efficiency look and 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. Like when you said, yeah, I, I have imposter syndrome too. I definitely do. And I know it's given me this hesitation, micro hesitations in everything I do. Cause I'm like, I don't know, really? Which sometimes is a good sense check, but yeah, to have a, you know, "buddy", sort of bounce things off of. I love that in terms of that sort of safety, right? It's like a safe spot until there's some leak and somebody gets your entire ChatGPT history. Oh my gosh, you asked what an apple is?

Ann Campea:

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. It will just give you straight data and you can do what you want with it. And to your point, Galen, it's 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 you get that's misinterpreted because it's human speaking to humans. And there's a 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.

Galen Low:

Might be good modeling for humans.

Ann Campea:

Yes, exactly.

Galen Low:

We could probably learn from that. 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 again.

Ann Campea:

I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly.

Galen Low:

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?

Ann Campea:

That's such a great question. As project managers, as you just mentioned, even the next version of the PMBOK, 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 a certain thing. And 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 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. If we start generating status reports that way, if we start generating emails that way, you very much go into this hole of, Oh, well, now I've 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.

Galen Low:

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, ChatGPT, for example, pretty safe, right? It's going to respond with the facts. It's it's not going to be offended by your question. It's not going to make you feel bad on purpose. 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 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 here are the requirements. And they're like, what have you been doing?

Ann Campea:

There's certain elements, and I love that because I, I have just started playing around with, respond in the voice of a five year old. I don't know. Right? 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 ChatGPT is spitting out for us, right? You've got to put some sort of spin around the tone, how you approach a particular topic. Your stakeholders better than the AI would. So you 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 Galen, you can tell me, cause 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.

Galen Low:

No, definitely. And I think the sort of nuance of all the things I can 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, 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, hopefully, we'll sort of raise our own awareness of that undercurrent and 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, things we do. It's funny, actually, because, and I'm off on a tangent a little bit here, but I did have this moment as like a people manager, where I 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 okay, give me the context. Like, where's the conversation at so far? It's okay. And I, and I think that is something that could be sort of an issue that comes up in terms of how AI informs our action.

Ann Campea:

Yeah, agreed.

Galen Low:

Without knowing all the facts because we haven't told them.

Ann Campea:

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? 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 like cellphones in general. You don't want to always be on your phone 24/7.

Galen Low:

I love that it went right to existential crisis. Who am I?

Ann Campea:

I don't know who I am anymore. I think I'm just this ChatGPT bot. Yes, exactly.

Galen Low:

What an interesting fulcrum too, though. Like where, 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?

Ann Campea:

Right. And I think that's 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 going so far deep into the use of it that it's 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 compliment 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. We got to date each other, get familiar with each other and figure out what's going to work.

Galen Low:

Images of like her, that film, like pop into my head. We need to date it.

Ann Campea:

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 that could be the extreme version of what could happen with AI if we aren't putting boundaries around it, right?

Galen Low:

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 it may not be a direct replacement. There is 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 AI stuff?

Ann Campea:

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 Galen turns on his computer and everyone's hot because something broke over the weekend. And now everyone's temperature is, 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 gonna 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 one-on-one, how do you like to work? That's one of the my favorite questions to ask somebody that I'm interacting with that work for the first time, what is your method of like how you want to receive communication? The more you can act, maybe 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 Galen. I know that he likes to speak about X, Y and Z 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. Let's be real. You never will because there's always going to be the element of turn 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 the second part of your question, how do we 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.

Galen Low:

I love that. And you said it earlier, I didn't applaud it enough. You said EQ is our superpower. For project managers for arguably, humans in general, but I love that what you said about the sort of inputs, right? And I know it's, like the, how do you like to work? It's 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 of the awareness of how to respond to that question. Cause 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 I don't know, do I like detailed notes? I guess I do. Actually, and it's like a new thought for me, but I really like that idea of learning one another, not just like teaching machines. Like it's actually it has this interplay of Oh, yeah, if I'm doing this for AI, then maybe I should be doing it with my team as well.

Ann Campea:

Exactly, exactly. I think I promote you start there first before you even start talking about AI and its complements 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.

Galen Low:

I love that. I thought maybe to round it out, we can take a glimpse into the future. A little bit. We're going to speculate. Okay, let's get 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?

Ann Campea:

Gosh, right now, what I've used it heavily for is, 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, Galen, 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 ChatGPT 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 was a few months ago. And so the rate of change of generative AI and how it is learning and expanding to somewhat be "emotional", 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 ChatGPT bot or whatever.

Galen Low:

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 Hey, now we released this feature. And I'm like, that means there was a sensor there all along. And, then they decided to 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 how it's interpreting our prompts. And, that could go a lot of different places. And then it 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? AI's in a bad mood that day, right? You're like, Oh, I gotta be careful. I gotta be really polite in this prompt because AI is just on edge because of that thing that happened on the weekend.

Ann Campea:

That's what I'm scared of. That is essentially what I, that existential thing that we just talked about. It's 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 in PM-ing again, and it's just 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, 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 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 getting some of those tools aligned standardized across the project managers. Having the AI do the initial legwork for them so that they freeze their capacity up to really focus on the EQ elements that we're talking about. Imagine if your PMs could, 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, our executive team is expecting us to present on this particular topic. Let's brainstorm, let's do the human elements of our job a little bit better. So I think that's where I see 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.

Galen Low:

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 is that whole reframe of 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.

Ann Campea:

Absolutely. I agree. A hundred percent.

Galen Low:

And thanks so much for spending the time with me today. I appreciate your insights. I appreciate your perspectives always.

Ann Campea:

Absolutely. This was fun.

Galen Low:

It was fun. Wasn't it? Let's do this again.

Ann Campea:

Sounds good.

Galen Low:

Alright 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 thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.