3: Internally-Focused Core Skills
- Page ID
- 124183
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Of the five core skills of emotional intelligence, two are internally-focused, and they are self-awareness and self-management. Internal focus refers to "self," both in terms of awareness and management of emotions.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Internally-Focused Core Skills from the EQ Framework. (CC BY 4.0; Ravi K Ravikumar) Alternative description of the image.The red rectangle in the figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) highlights the two skills, self-awareness and self-management that will be covered in detail in this chapter. It also points out the fact that the two skills are internally-focused and the objective for you as the reader is to become more self-aware and learn to respond, not react to emotions. By learning to respond, you will project a better image of yourself in all professional situations which becomes the foundation for a better career.
Self-awareness is your ability to recognize and understand your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and the impact of resulting behaviors on others. In project management, if you are self-aware, you would understand the impact your feelings and actions have on your team and hence, your project outcomes. The reality is that most people lack self-awareness. They go about their day unaware of their emotions, allowing the corresponding reactions and behavior to follow. Poor behavior causes undesirable results. Managing that behavior is self-management.
Understanding our emotions can help us reduce stress and make better decisions, especially when we are under pressure.
Learn and apply self-awareness and self-management skills to bring out the best in you by:
- Recognizing and becoming aware of your own emotions.
- Becoming aware of behavioral flags and their impact within you.
- Recognizing emotional triggers within you and their impact. before reacting to them.
- Consciously prevent reaction and practice self-regulation.
- Consciously get into the practice of applying self-management techniques.
- Learn and apply ways to improve self-awareness.
- Learn and apply ways to improve self-management.
- Learn self-awareness and self-management from real-life case studies.
Real-Life Scenario - The "Everything is Under Control" Manager
The Situation
Alex, a project manager, presents a calm demeanor to his team. However, he is known to stress out his team with his emails marked "urgent" and demanding urgent completion of tasks like:
- Delivering a project ahead of the schedule, or
- A deep-dive analysis of a past project as an add-on deliverable, while the person responsible for it is already stretching to meet the current project timeline.
Discussion Points
Alex has done this many times in the current year. Here are some questions and possible answers from observing Alex. For each question, think about what else could be driving Alex to do what he has been doing.
- What could be driving Alex to do so?
- Maybe requests from his management.
- What emotions might Alex be struggling with?
- It could be fear or fear of negotiating with his management, or trying not to display weakness to his team.
- Do you believe Alex is aware of his emotional issue? Is he trying to overcome it?
- Not if such emails are a common occurrence.
- Not if such emails are a common occurrence.
- How is Alex impacting the project and his team?
- By not being honest with himself and his team, Alex is losing the team's trust.
- How would the team feel if this happened multiple times during a project?
- Overworked, disappointed, and demotivated!
Would you like to be a project manager like Alex?
Do you see the importance of self-awareness and self-management?
We will now dive into self-awareness and self-management, the first two critical skills.
- 3.1: Self-Awareness - A Core Skill
- This section describes self-awareness in detail, including the sub-competencies emotional awareness, self-assessment, and self-confidence. Several real-life case studies elevate the learning experience through actual project scenarios showing the application of self-awareness.
- 3.2: Self-Management - A Core Skill
- This section describes self-management in detail, including the sub-competencies emotional triggers, and self-regulation. Several real-life case studies elevate the learning experience through actual project scenarios showing the application of self-management.
- 3.3: Alternative Description of Image for Chapter 3
- This page describes the Emotional Intelligence Framework illustrated in Chapter 3.1. The focus of this chapter are the blocks covered by the red rectangle.
Thumbnail: CC BY 4.0 by OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (Version 5.2) [Image Generator]. https://chatgpt.com.