You will influence better if you understand people

As a project manager sometimes I could not understand all project stakeholder’s behaviors and reactions. However I am an observer and I found that understanding people better is a good mechanism to influence them. If you can understand people you will be able to influence them and impact their lives, work or professional career in a positive way, but also you will be able to influence them in benefit of the project you manage. I would like to share some of my observations with you about that. 1. Everybody wants to be somebody: I never found a person in the... Read More»

Do you know if people like you as a project manager?

Are you a positive or a negative project manager? Do you believe that you have some room for improving your attitude managing projects? Do you need to grow professionally and personally? I am sure you want to grow as a project professional, so you need to invest in your professional development, and I really learned that one of the key points for your professional development success is to associate with positive people. I met some negative project management colleagues during my life and the outcome of my relationship with them was “frustration and demotivation”. On the other hand I had... Read More»

Influence and integrity

You can see character issues coming up in every aspect of life. The need for integrity today is perhaps as great as it has ever been. And it is absolutely essential for anyone who desires to become a person of influence. Any project manager who wants to have influence need to practice his/her integrity (act on what you say). In the end you can bend your actions to conform to your principles, or you can bend your principles to conform to your actions. It is a choice you have to make. If you want to become a project manager of... Read More»

Connecting with people

Connection is absolutely critical if you, as a project manager, want to influence your team members in a positive way. When you navigate for others, you come alongside them and travel their road for a while, helping them handle some of the obstacles and difficulties in their projects. But when you connect with them, you are asking them to come alongside you and travel your road for your and their mutual benefit. When we think of connecting with people, we compare it to trains and what happens to them in a train yard. The cars sitting on the tracks in... Read More»

Influencing decisions

Decisions in projects are made which affect you and your career, but you do not get to vote on those decisions. That does not mean you cannot influence those vital decisions, such as budgets, assignments, team allocations, priorities and some others. If you are to have any influence as a project manager, you have to know how to influence decisions in your favor. You, as a project manager, will be responsible for your project results. Now, when we are finishing the year 2012, we need to make a lot of decisions regarding the new projects to select by next year.... Read More»

The art of giving by taking

Project manager generosity is a scarce resource. As projects grow harder and complex, generosity becomes even scarcer. As generosity becomes scarcer, it becomes more valuable. As a project manager you need to influence, it takes a long term perspective: generosity is all about self-interest in long term. It helps a lot to build willing partners, supporters and allies in your projects. You, as a project manager, should use influential generosity that I would like to describe by using four characteristics: customized, earned, measured and requested. I believe that these characteristics count because they maximize the chances of the generosity being... Read More»

The Power of Influence

Most of you know that the project manager needs to influence without authority in order to achieve the project success. However influence is invisible because it is about how people think. We cannot see the people’s thoughts. Thoughts drive behavior which drives actions and results. We can look at the results that influential project managers achieve but still have no idea about what makes them influential. Just as we cannot understand a person by looking at his shadow, we cannot understand influence by looking at its effect. We have to look for the causes of influence, not at its symptoms.... Read More»

Project Manager's serenity

Do you ever “fume” and “fret”? Many of us, as project managers make life unnecessary difficult for themselves by dissipating power and energy through fuming and fretting. Sometimes we, as project professionals, are very pressed by the projects we manage, by the customers or other project stakeholders, and we are fuming and fretting. The word “fume” means to boil up, to blow off, to emit vapor, to be agitated. The word “fret” means to worry too much. It has an irritating, annoying, penetrating quality. To fret is children term, but it describes the emotional reaction of many adults. We need... Read More»

Develop your character

How a project manager, as a leader, deals with the circumstances of projects tells you many things about his character. Project crisis does not necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it. Adversity is a crossroads that make a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise. Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences. The development of character is at the heart of our development not just as leaders, but as human beings. What every project manager should know about character? Character is more than talk: Anyone can say that... Read More»

Winning or losing?

Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes stated, “The man who is prepared has his battle half-fought”. I believe this has been absolutely true for me during my professional life as a project manager and it can be true also for you. Project life experiences have taught me the importance of preparation. Can you remember any project you had to deliver a project status presentation without enough time to be prepared? Can you remember your feelings from those moments? It is a very stressful situation, is it? Preparation needs to be persistent and use your patience and discipline. The first person who... Read More»