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A Human-Centered Approach to Leadership & Team Development

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Practice Makes…Perfect Practice

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Last week I wrote about starting to run Facebook Lives and how uncomfortable they feel. But, knowing that this is the only way to get better at them, my attitude must be “practice makes perfect” and press on.

Well, I had a comment about my post from Brent, who said that “practice actually makes perfect practice.”

He clarified that practice can only take you so far. You need the experience in a real-world situation.

I agree!

When you lead a meeting, for example, you can prepare for every contingency you can think of, but you just can’t predict everything your team will ask or what objections they may have.

Here’s another example: eventually need to stop running scenarios and actually go Live with your project. There is a point at which you stop reducing technical risk and simply increase the cost of delay. No project is perfect. Something unexpected will happen!

My take is this: when we practice, we eliminate the biggest risks. When we prepare for questions or complete all required testing, we take those issues right off the table. Then, when we’re in that real-world situation, we can focus our attention on the smaller group of unknowns.

So it is actually your practice that makes it possible to better deal with the unknown.

At the end of the day: prepare, execute, adapt.

Prepare as much as you can to eliminate risk.

Execute as you prepared.

Adapt to resolve new issues.

What Are You Having For Dinner Tonight?

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Imagine this: it’s Tuesday night and you’re making dinner – spaghetti and a salad. No big deal.

You take the sauce out of the freezer (you’re Italian. There’s no way you’re opening a jar). You meant to take it out in the morning to thaw, but forgot till right now.

You decide you will take the chance on microwaving plastic because your family is really looking forward to pasta. So you pop it in for just a few minutes then plunk it in a pot to finish heating.

Okay, onto the next thing…

You boil the water and go to the cabinet…there’s 1/2 a box of spaghetti left. Argh! Decision – make something else, order takeout, or go to the store?

You already started defrosting the sauce and your family is counting on spaghetti so you turn off the stove, hop in the car, and head to the store. They don’t have your favorite brand. Another decision – different type of pasta, another brand, or scrap it and head home empty handed?

You decide call your spouse because they’ll have a strong opinion. They want another brand… you stay on the phone with them while you figure it out (you’re not taking a chance the 2nd brand will be out of spaghetti!).

You head home, then start the water boiling again and open the refrigerator. You take out the salad ingredients but…you’re out of cucumbers. @#$%^! You were just at the store!

This time you make the executive decision: forget the cucumbers. You’ll live without them.

In the end, you got dinner on the table and everyone is happy…sort of: it’s not the brand of pasta they were expecting and your daughter loves cucumbers. Oh, and all those little mishaps meant dinner was over an hour late and that messed up the rest of your evening plans.

What’s the moral of the story?

A LITTLE PLANNING GOES A LONG WAY.

I don’t mean you need to plan a week of dinners every Sunday (if you can, kudos – I’ve never had that skill). But maybe the night before would have been enough. You’d have taken the sauce out to thaw and checked your ingredients… you could have planned to go to the store earlier or picked something else for dinner before your family was counting on pasta.

Let’s turn this around now and talk about leading your team.

Teams – like dinner – run a lot smoother with a bit of planning and organization.

Do you make sure they have the tools they need to be efficient…and to succeed? Are you thinking beyond “this meal” and helping plan their workload so they don’t get crushed next week?

If you’re in charge of a team, you can make the difference between on-time & efficient and late & stressed. So please – take a few minutes to think things through in advance before plowing ahead.

And…ummm…sorry about the craving for Italian tonight! 😉

Practice Makes Perfect

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I started doing Facebook Lives recently and I am completely out of my element! I did my first one on the Stages of Team Development (you know, Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing)…and I said the acronym wrong! Not only that, but I said “ummm” entirely too much and there’s a distracting glare from my glasses!

Now, I know I need to run these Live Streams to get my leadership message out to a broader audience. I can’t make a difference if people don’t know about me! So I gather my courage and go Live.

I know that the way to get better is to just start. If I keep practicing then I will improve. I make mistakes, fumble around a bit, and continue to teach about project leadership.

Do you remember your very first project? Maybe you were a BA or perhaps a business resource. Did you know what the heck you were doing? (I sure didn’t!) Think about it for a minute. Perhaps these sound familiar: “What’s a requirement?” “Why do I need to write down every single step I test?” “How am I supposed to know how long it will take me?” “Why is it so important to hit my task’s date?”

What seems so obvious to us now was once unfamiliar and intimidating.

No one starts out knowing all and being good at everything. It can take some experience and more than a few mistakes to become proficient. And hopefully we were helped along by someone more experienced – maybe a Team Lead or our Project Manager – so lessons were learned more quickly.

Like it or not, every level of expertise we achieve is just a plateau to the next one. Wherever you are in your career – Junior BA or PMO Director – there are always avenues of growth that open up before you.

I encourage you to take a good look in the mirror: what have you mastered already? What skills do you need to hone in order to reach the next level of your career? And what opportunities can you take to start practicing them?

By the way – I am serious about my novice attempt at a FB Live – the information is good, even if my delivery is bad! Feel free to check it out for yourself: FSNP

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

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Yes, I am quoting from the song “Closing Time” by the band Semisonic (way back in 1998).

I love this line. Whether you’re talking about closing your local pub or a global project, there are standard tasks to complete…and lots of emotions to contend with.

This isn’t quite the group to talk with about the bar scene, so I’ll focus this Leadership Update on projects!

The tasks to close a project are pretty standard (documentation, financials, Close Gate, etc.) so I won’t go into them here. But what do I mean by emotions?

Everyone on your project – individually and as a group – faces a range of emotions as they transition from this project to the next (or to their “regular job”).

First, there is the elation from the success of the project – or depression and other negative emotions if things didn’t turn out so great. Hopefully your team is feeling a sense of accomplishment from their work and you have a lot to celebrate. But just like any milestone, people will be coming down off of that high and start to think “is that it?”

Then there’s the hyper-focus that suddenly deflates like a balloon. Pre-launch through Hypercare, everyone probably worked a ton of hours gutting it out to bring the project Live, and it takes a while to settle back down from “overdrive”.

Along with that, your people may start missing that camaraderie they came to expect with the rest of the team during those intense weeks…or months! No project happens without the team working together – arguing, supporting, overcoming, fixing – and even if they’re doing it all over WebEx, they’ve become close.

And let’s not forget: everyone’s “regular job” has been waiting in the wings, ready to pounce on their time. When those floodgates open, your people can feel like they’ve been ripped away from everything they’ve come to know.

That’s a lot of emotions for your team to sort through! But it wouldn’t be an update from me if I didn’t answer “so what can I do about it?”

Believe it or not, one of your best friends is your Lessons Learned. The actual report may end up in a file folder somewhere. But the important piece is to help bring closure to the team – and to set them up for success in their next project.

As most of you do as well, I start off with a written reflection and then talk about it as a team (or sub-teams). I use the Lessons Learned to help my team think about what went right and wrong in each stage of the project.

Yes, at first there is the inevitable venting, especially during the group review. And this is where it’s key to let them have their say…but not spiral the whole meeting into the abyss.

But once you help move them beyond this point, they start thinking about all the bits they would have done if they’d “just known sooner” or if they’d had experience on a project.

They may talk about testing they would have done differently – and won’t ever do it any other way!

Possibly, they’ll mention a method of communication that really seemed to work for the team – and they’ll keep using it in other areas of their work.

At the end of the day, helping your team transition away from the project is just as important as closing out any open POs. They can’t truly move into their next project if they’re emotionally stuck in the old one.

As I said at the start, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Help them look forward to it.

Communicating with the C-Suite

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One of the biggest challenges in moving from an Individual Contributor to a Project Manager is learning how to successfully communicate with both the team and the executive levels of the organization. 

When you are in charge of a project, suddenly you find yourself in that dreaded “middle manager” position. A Project Manager typically doesn’t have the formal authority that comes with having direct reports.  At the same time, you feel beholden to the demands of your Executive or Steering Committee.

Woman in black jacket sitting on chair working on a computer. Picture by Christina Morillo from Pexels

Communicating Up

In this post, we’ll talk about communicating “up”, because this is typically one of the biggest gaps in a new PM’s experience.

It can be intimidating to report to the executives of your organization for the first time.  It’s easy to get caught up and start to overthink things. What do they want to see? What’s the right level of detail? Will they be angry if I tell them bad news? What if I mess up?

Communication is as much art as science and it takes some practice, as well as paying attention to how your stakeholders react and to the questions they ask.

Years ago, I heard an explanation of corporate levels that really stuck with me. Essentially, the higher up you are in an organization, the farther ahead you need to look.  Individual Contributors focus on today or perhaps to the end of the week. Their managers are responsible to plan out to the end of the month, Directors the quarter, Vice Presidents the year and the President or CEO several years into the future.

The higher up in the organization the more one needs to look at trends rather than details. Executives focus on the impact of decisions and actions, not the particulars of the work being done. It’s fewer details and more vision. It’s knowing what’s coming up, being mindful of the past, and figuring out how all the pieces fit together.

So what do they need from you?

You can help both of you be more successful by understanding how your project fits into the company as a whole and by paying attention to the type of information that will either reduce risk or increase benefit in their area of responsibility.

Specifically, let’s talk about status reports, as these are one of the most common ways we are asked to communicate with our executives. At first glance, a status report seems so high level that it doesn’t really explain what’s going on in the project. Maybe it’s just a monthly traffic light system and if you’re “green” in budget, scope, and resources, they won’t pay much attention to these areas. They will only focus on items that are at risk or anything coming up which requires their time or participation.

Your Steering Committee isn’t supposed to focus on the underlying details – they trust you and your team to get it done. And that is also why you should never “water down” these reports.  Executives don’t need to know the everything about the project – that’s why they hired you! But they do need to understand when a deliverable is at risk so they can take action to help you and your team.

A Different Point of View

They also may need to shift other elements in the organization based on your information. Just like you don’t give them the details on the project, they don’t tell you everything going on outside your project. Remember, the higher the title, the longer the view.

Approach each communication with your executives from their point of view, whether it’s in a status report, monthly meeting, or even answering an email. Ask yourself: what information can help them be confident the project is on track, understand the areas of risk, or know where the project needs their help?

Also, keep in mind that no one starts out as a VP. Everyone on your leadership team, at some point in their career, has been an individual contributor. Maybe they started in accounting or worked on the shop floor. Perhaps they were a Business Analyst. Even if their current position doesn’t warrant project details, they know how important those details are to get the job done.

A Two-Way Street

Finally, communication is a two-way street. You need data and feedback from management, too. If you have questions or need guidance, be willing to ask.  Your Steering Committee wants the project to succeed and they’re trusting you to give them enough notice so they can help.

What Happens To Your Team When You Do It All?

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(Part 3 in a 3-Part Series on PM Overwhelm)

This is the third post in a series about Overwhelm.

As ideas tend to develop, it started when I was feeling quite a bit overwhelmed and didn’t feel like writing my weekly Leadership Blog. But I didn’t want to let my readers down. I had to “show up”.

So that’s what I wrote about.

In that post, I talked about how the first step to overcoming overwhelm is to remember why we’re a Project Manager in the first place.

We really do enjoy what we do for a living – and wouldn’t actually give it all up to paint fences (and if you would, what are you waiting for? Follow your bliss!).

Last week I continued with one of the chief causes of overwhelm in project management: delegation…or lack thereof.

Sometimes it’s so hard to “let go and let someone else on the team.” Whether we feel we can do it better ourselves or we don’t want to put more on someone else’s plate, it leaves too much on our plate!

The focus of that post was about how we can learn where we should be delegating and how to ease into proper delegation.

Now it’s time to turn our attention to our team and how our overwhelm – and lack of delegation – affects them.

Because if we hold onto tasks that our team should be responsible for, then we cause more harm than just to ourselves!

Here are a few ways our teams can suffer when we don’t delegate properly:

  • They don’t learn as much about the project or their part of the solution being implemented
  • They can feel undervalued, unimportant, or not trusted
  • They don’t grow as a team
  • They don’t have a Project Manager with enough mental capacity for guidance or help

I’m a mom, so I have an analogy with parenting. As our children grow, we teach them skills appropriate to their age and ability. My kids started doing their own laundry when they could work the washer & drier. Then they learned how to cook a meal on the stove. Then came driving lessons.

These life skills (my kids call it “Adulting 101”) will help them be successful and more confident when they live on their own.

Will I still be available to answer questions? Yes. Is there always more to learn? Of course. But they won’t grow if I don’t teach them, let them try, ruin a few dinners, and figure out how to do better the next time.

Bringing it back to project management, part of our job as a leader is to develop our team.

The goal is not to train them on their vocation (engineering, programming, marketing, etc.). These are the skills that brought them onto the project in the first place. The goal is to help them be successful and more confident as individual players and as a working group.

Many team members are hyper-focused on their job in their discipline. They’re comfortable & successful in their lane. But the project works better when there’s more cross-pollination.

When we help our people pick their head up and look around, they grow.

For example, if there’s a roadblock in the manufacturing piece of the project, maybe we help determine the right people to be in the meeting…and let our manufacturing lead handle the call. Just be there to guide and make sure decisions are made and action items assigned.

If it takes more than one meeting, consider letting go of the reins even more. Take a step back. Do we really need to be there? Will our lead be able to bring the issue to resolution?

Easing the team into running their own small group issue meetings counters the problems we mentioned above. With proper delegation:

  • The team is learning about the project and their part in it’s success
  • They feel valued and important – trusted by their PM to work through an issue broader than their one area
  • Because there’s a cross-functional team involved, the whole team grows as a unit

But what about the struggle the team has with us? What about the issue that says “They don’t have a Project Manager with enough mental capacity for guidance and help”?

That’s where our team’s growth helps us with our overwhelm!

Back to parenting, every time I teach my kids a new skill, it helps ease a bit out of my own schedule. I no longer do their laundry. Knowing how to cook plus a driver’s license means they can successfully go to the store to buy groceries for the family…and help with dinner!

Yes, they’re not ready to run their own household – I still need to guide, handle the bigger responsibilities, keep them “on task”.

Same thing for project management: we’re still in charge and ultimately responsible. But we will spend more time guiding and less time “taking over”. Properly delegating to our team members means we have more time and mental energy for our team’s questions.

In the end, it takes all 3 components to drain our overflowing cup:

  • Remembering why we signed up for this job in the first place
  • Acknowledging what is truly our role as a PM…and what really belongs to someone else
  • Intentionally looking for ways to help the team grow – and then doing it

Honestly, when we start from a place of overwhelm, even steps to help ourselves can feel like too much. So break it down into the tiniest pieces possible. Doing just a little bit every day adds up to big changes before long.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, remember: you’re a Project Manager. You organize, you problem solve, you move tough projects forward…you got this!

Stay safe, stay healthy – and lead on!