Beyond methodological fidelity: emotional intelligence as the relational infrastructure of agile project management

Purpose Agile methodologies have proliferated across project-based industries, yet scholarly discourse remains oriented toward procedural and technical dimensions. This study challenges the prevailing technocentric bias by investigating how emotional intelligence (EI) shapes agile project management practice and contributes to project success. Addressing a significant gap in current understanding, it examines how EI competencies are enacted by agile project managers and analyses their influence on collaboration, decision-making, conflict resolution, and adaptive capacity. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative interpretivist approach was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten experienced agile project managers across information technology, construction, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, with analytical rigour enhanced through independent dual coding of all transcripts and iterative refinement of the coding framework. Findings Five EI dimensions emerged as foundational to agile leadership: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. A particularly salient finding concerns bounded empathy, the recognition that empathetic leadership requires calibration by accountability to prevent counterproductive outcomes. EI is perceived to function as an enabling mechanism that supports team cohesion, helps mitigate conflict, and enhances the effectiveness of agile ceremonies. Originality/value While EI features prominently in leadership research, its operationalisation within agile contexts remains undertheorised. This study makes three original contributions: first, it provides practice-grounded behavioural insights beyond abstract frameworks; second, it introduces the concept of bounded empathy; third, it develops a conceptual framework proposing that emotional competencies may be understood as the relational infrastructure upon which methodological effectiveness depends.