Managing Stress in Projects Using Coaching Leadership Tools

The work of engineering project managers can be perceived as demanding, challenging, difficult, and stressful. Engineering project managers have to interact with new colleagues, the project framework is unclear, the context of the project is often unknown, and they have to deal with time pressure. The purpose of this article is to study coaching and the use of several leadership tools as effective stress-coping strategies. A case study from Norway is presented based on interviews with two project managers. Results show that positive selftalk, visualization, clear goals, feedback, the ABCDE method, empowerment, and resilience are tools that project managers find valuable and effective to reduce and cope with stress.