Emotion regulation during decision making on projects

The project management literature is very reticent about the emotions project management professionals experience when making decisions on projects. As part of research into the link between project governance, decision making and project performance, twelve project management professionals were interviewed about decisions made on projects. Four of the interviewees volunteered that they had experienced emotions while making their decisions, but on closer inspection it was found all twelve interviewees had experienced emotions when making their decisions. Several had regulated their own emotions, (intrinsic regulation), while making their decisions, and several had also regulated the emotions of the project team, (extrinsic regulation). In this paper we review the literature on emotions regulation, identifying the ways in which people regulate their emotions and strategies for doing so. We then describe the emotions experienced by the interviewees while taking their decisions, and how and why they regulated their emotions. We also describe how four of the interviewees regulated the emotions of the project team. We find it is common for project management professionals to have emotional responses to their decisions, to engage in intrinsic regulation, often to appear more confident, and to engage in extrinsic emotion regulation of the project team, often to build commitment and coherence. The results show that the emotion regulation literature provides guidance as to how to achieve better outcomes on projects through emotion regulation. •Project management professionals experiencing emotions while making decisions is an elephant in the room.•This paper explores emotions project management professionals experience while making decisions.•They also regulate their emotions and the emotions of other project stakeholders.•This paper explores how project management professional regulate their emotions while making decisions.•It also explores how they regulate the emotions of internal stakeholders.