Emotions - Shall I 'wear my heart on my sleeve' or 'stay strictly professional'?

On a recent training module covering difficult conversations, the Group were debating this issue - in fact it's one we find is discussed a lot.

A female participant, a strong character (and someone I had every reason to imagine to be an effective project manager) said "If I show my emotions I'm just going to get labelled as an emotional woman".

So, why this anxiety? How do we respond.........

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Growing Project Managers into Leaders, and Let's not call them 'Soft Skills'

Let' stop calling them 'soft skills'. We need to get more serious than this about growing from project managers into leaders. The expression 'soft skills' drives me nuts, especially when I hear things like: 'the problems we have are more on the softer side'. What's soft about it anyway? It's the hard bit after all. The term has become pejorative and I propose we banish it. I think it is a reflection of our lack of good thinking on the people aspects of projects that we fall back on this (soft!) phraseology.

Another important reason we should banish the term 'soft skills' is.........

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