Clarke's (2009) article examines the effects of a two day training programme on emotional intelligence (EI) within the community of project managers in the short and long term. According to Goleman (1998) EI is the capacity to recognise our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in us and in our relationships. Building commitment and trust rapidly is of the essence to work effectively together within a project (Burgess and Turner, 2000) thus knowledge on EI can be of distinct advantage to project managers. This article questions whether EI can be developed to improve project management competencies by targeting a number of emotional abilities and empathy for training. Three hypothesises (i.e. improvements in emotional abilities, empathetic abilities and project management [PM] competencies in relation to teamwork and conflict management will be found not immediately but six months after the post training period) were tested in the study. Participants of the programme included a total of three groups: one from each of the two organisations' which required participation and one group from the Project Management Institute chapter. A pre/post-test which collected results one month prior, one month after and six months after were used with a quasi-experimental design (Campbell and Stanley, 1963). Mayer-Salovey-Caruso- Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT V2.0), Mehrabian and Epstein's (1972) 33-item test and a self-report 7-item scale was used to examine the three hypothesises. The results suggested that understanding emotions was the only emotional ability that had a positive development following the training. According to Clarke (2009) the failure to detect changes in perceiving and using emotions were based on irregularities in the training and test content and the use of MSCEIT in a field setting.