Empathy of Project Management Students and Why It Matters

Abstract

Abstract Empathy’s role in developing relationships suggests its potential as a key skill for project managers leading teams and managing stakeholders. What is perhaps less well recognized in project management is the role empathy can play in ensuring sustainability within a competitive work market and in ensuring resilience and wellbeing. The Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), which measures self-reported empathy against four dimensions including perspective taking (PT), empathic concern (EC), personal distress (PD) and fantasy scale (FS), was used to measure empathy levels of Australian Master of Project Management students. Students subsequently shared their views of empathy in project management. The empathy scores were compared to those of students from other disciplines reported in the literature including health professions of medical, nursing and midwifery, animal science, and criminal justice students. The results suggest that relative to other student cohorts, project management students score lowest in all dimensions of empathy except for perspective taking where they are second lowest to medical students. Implications are discussed including calls for project management curriculum to focus on empathy-based skills, as well as possible considerations for project managers to consider empathy in their practice to improve project manager wellbeing.