Speech held by Professor Marco Sampietro, SDA Bocconi School of Management at the NASA Project Management Challenge 2008.
In everyday life mood and emotions are often debated. A single person is well aware of their influence on his/her behavior but when we are in a working setting mood and emotions are often considered as secondary. However, studies indicate that mood and emotions have strong influence on work and team performance. Based on these results mood and emotions are additional variables that should be recognized and managed in order to obtain the desired project outcomes. Positive mood and positive emotions are often considered as related to higher performance and in general this is true, but there is more to say: counterintuitive effects are present too. In addition, if a project manager wants to improve project performance by leveraging mood and emotions, first he/she has to be able to recognize the variables that influence mood and emotions and then he/she has to work on them.