At SIGGRAPH 2018 Vancouver, Claudia Davis hosted a Birds of a Feather session which suggested that team leaders needed to use emotionally intelligent methods on collaborative pipeline-based projects. Working through her reading recommendations is helping me see more.

In Emphasizing Empathy in the Pipeline Process, a packed room talked about the issues and solutions that revolve around a project manager's empathy and communication. Claudia shared a fascinating model of key abilities a good project manager needs to succeed, which I tried to capture in my rather cryptic notes.

Perhaps you doubt that engineering involves a process pipeline? If you can define a work flow between multiple parties that you use to reliably complete repeatable work, your engineering practice involves a process pipeline.

From my cryptic notes, a good project manager needs to:

• Have high overall empathy
• Strive for individual empathy
• Harness their own empathic response
• Advocate for participant well-being as well as end result

Everyone's experiences are relative.

Starting with some of Claudia's tips from her own experience, attendees shared other tips in the short time available and I found a few to note. Though I did miss several, and discussions continued informally afterward.

• Practice common consistency for team to prevent favoritism and leaving out members; transparency with context
• Encourage cross-empathy among team peers
• Monitor signatures and complimentary closes in emails for signs of a person's feelings
• Monitor people's communication styles for signs of change in overall feelings
• Monitor each other for empathy burnout
• Make traffic in and out of a manager's office a routine thing

Claudia's point is very important for team leaders and managers, especially as we enter a time when our humanity is the only thing beyond what our computer systems can do.

1. Caruso, D. & Salovey P. The Emotionally Intelligent Manager: How to Develop and Use the Four Key Emotional Skills of Leadership. 2004. Print.

2. Freedman, Joshua. At the Heart of Leadership: How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence. 2007. Print.

3. Gardner, H.. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. 2011. Print.

4. Gardner, H. & Davis, K. The App Generation: How Today's Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World. 2014. Print.

5. Goleman, D. Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. 2007. Print,

6. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P., Caruso, D., & Cherkasskiy, L. (2011). "Emotional Intelligence". In R. Sternberg & S. Kaufman (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 528-549). doi:10.1017/CBO9780511977244.027

7. Salovey, P.& Mayer, J.D. (1990). “Emotional Intelligence.” Imagination Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185-211

Plus,

1. Rogers, Fred. Meaningful Communication Through a Screen.