Archive for the 'motivation' Category

Five Steps for Creating a Steady Project Leadership Persona

Published May 20, 2013 leadership , motivation , project management Leave a Comment
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You’re up one day and down the next. No problem—the people who work for you can just go with the flow, right?

“Wrong,” says Karen Wright, whose company, Parachute Executive Coaching (www.parachuteexecutivecoaching.com). Wright, the author of The Complete Executive: The 10-Step System for Great Leadership Performance (Bibliomotion, 2012), offers these five tips on creating a steady leadership persona.

1. Stay cool.

Your project team needs to know the difference between a mood swing and a major project issue. Help them out by staying on an even keel at least 90 percent of the time. When you’re down they’ll know it’s serious, and when you’re up they will know there is real cause for celebration.  I always remember what a veteran project leader once told me: “It’s always going to get crazy—just don’t get flustered by it. Prioritize as you go, and that way you’ll get through the decision-making process.” It’s crucial to discern between a real emergency and something that can wait.

2. Walk your talk.

When you become a project leader, more people are watching—and the more easily you’ll be called out if your actions don’t match your words. Make sure you are a living example of the values you expect others to uphold. Back up what you say with your actions. Bring your beliefs to life;  move beyond words to practice what you preach.

3. Get your story straight.

When you are a successful project leader, chances are the project team and your peers are going to want to hear about how you made it to the top. Don’t embellish or inflate. The more relatable it is, the better. Besides, the truth will always catch up with you. The most successful project leaders I know have built their personal brand by letting right thinking, right “decisioning,” and right acting serve as their guide. If you have to manipulate the truth to gain an advantage, the advantage is not worth the perceived gain, for any advantage gained in deceit will surely come at a very high cost…the sacrifice of your honor and integrity.

4. Keep it real.

Never assume you’re doing fine, and never presume you know what others are thinking. Ask for feedback, whether directly or through a confidential survey process, and be open to what you hear. You can’t expect your teammates to accept feedback if you are not willing to do the same. Feedback provides project leaders with the information they need for sound decision-making. Indeed, it’s important for project leaders to stay in touch with their project teams – that’s where many winning ideas come from. As well, feedback acts as a kind of early warning system about potential problems with the project, people, and processes.

5. Stand for something.

You are in a position to inspire the project team and lead them toward something important and exciting. Don’t be shy. Let your passion show. Your authentic excitement will be infectious. And if you are not a naturally comfortable public speaker, get trained and practice, practice, practice: Few skills are as important in a leader as the ability to energize a crowd. The project team likes to follow; they just want to follow someone who leads and gives them something they want to follow.

James L. Haner

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A Quick Mindfulness Exercise for Project Leaders

Published May 3, 2013 leadership , motivation , project management Leave a Comment
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What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the act of being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling at every moment — without interpretation or judgment. Mindfulness is focusing your attention on what is happening right now; paying attention to what is real for you right here and now . . . without thinking that it is good or bad, important or not or right or wrong.

Spending too much time planning, problem-solving, daydreaming, or thinking negative or random thoughts can be draining. It can also make you more likely to experience stress and anxiety. Practicing mindfulness exercises, on the other hand, can help you direct your attention away from this kind of thinking and engage with the world around you.

Here are four times when you might choose to be more mindful:

1. To help gain greater control of your verbal and nonverbal behavior to reduce stress and anxiety

2. To learn more about how you are reacting in the moment; less negative thinking and distraction

3. Preparing yourself prior to entering a crucial conversation

4. To reduce anxiety and calm yourself; improve your mood.

A Quick Mindfulness Exercise

  • SIT . . . upright in a chair; be alert, relaxed, and looking forward
  • CLOSE . . . your eyes
  • BREATHE . . . Sit in a quiet place with your back straight, but relaxed. Feel your breath move in and out of your body. Let your awareness of everything else fall away. Pay attention to your nostrils as air passes in and out. Notice the way your abdomen expands and collapses with each breath. When your mind wanders, gently redirect your attention to your breath. Don’t judge yourself. Remember that you’re not trying to become anything — such as a good mediator. You’re simply becoming aware of what’s happening around you, breath by breath.
  • SEE . . . while staying still, open your eyes; notice five things at the edge of your vision; notice five things in front of you
  • LISTEN . . . what do hear far away?  . . . what do you hear near to you?
  • SMELL . . . Can you notice three different smells?
  • FEEL . . . your body in the chair  . . . Are you tense, aching? Relax each part of your body.
  • EXPERIENCE . . . yourself “in the moment” . . . “in the now”
  • Stay in this mindful state for as long as needed

For the focused breathing exercise, you’ll need to set aside time when you can be in a quiet place without distractions or interruptions. You might choose to practice this type of exercise early in the morning, before you begin your daily routine.

Aim to practice mindfulness every day for about six months. Over time, you might find that mindfulness becomes effortless. Think of it as a commitment to reconnecting with and nurturing yourself.

For more information on mindfulness, see Learning Tree, Intl. Course #3405: Developing Your Leadership Voice for Presence and Impact.

James L. Haner

Are You a Confident Project Leader?

Published April 17, 2013 leadership , motivation , project management Leave a Comment
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Which role will you be asked to play today? Chairman? Monitor/Evaluator? Resource Investigator? Or maybe all three?

Project leadership is more than just stakeholder matrices and Gantt charts. To be a successful project leader, you need to be a successful people leader. This requires strong communication skills both up the line and across your project team.

“If you are still in your comfort zone . . . you’re not driving fast enough.” Mario Andretti

Some project leaders who want to advance in their career are faced with an innate fear of change–even positive change that could move them forward. Here are four strategies to help project leaders move out of their comfort zones and better distinguish the positive decisions and actions that will dramatically propel their project success:
• Discover why you don’t do what you need to do
• Empower yourself and others to stay motivated
• Transform fear of change into a positive driver for success
• Face uncomfortable situations with grace and poise.

The Problem: Apprehensions, Second-Guessing and Delay
How do you respond to challenging project leadership situations, such as:
• When you have to correct a team member’s poor performance?
• When you learn of unethical behavior by someone on your project team?
• When you need to disagree with or push back on your program manager?
Most project leaders who lack confidence would either put off addressing these situations, or they would overreact and later regret the way they handled it.

One of the primary causes of low project leader confidence in situations like these is negative thinking. It erodes project leader confidence.

Negative thinking includes:
• Apprehensions (“I’m not sure if this is right.”)
• Self-judgments (“I’m too tunnel vision; I’m not considering enough options.”)
• Other-judgments (“She’s arrogant. She’s going to get it wrong.”)
It’s hard to come across as confident externally when you’re in conflict internally.

What Project Leaders Want: To Be Confident
To be confident and effective, project leaders want freedom from inner conflict.
You want to be in alignment. By alignment, I mean that your thoughts and beliefs are self-assured and on the same page. That’s when you’ll not only make and communicate stronger decisions, but you’ll trust your ability to handle whatever happens as a result of them. That’s unflappable confidence.

How Do You Get There?
A confident project leader uses the power of inquiry to examine and let go of stressful thoughts.
You can’t wish confidence into your mental state. Confidence comes from letting go of the fearful and self-doubting thoughts that all project leaders have. Even though no one else can hear them, your negative thoughts can have a dangerous impact on your behavior.

For example, let’s say that as you’re walking down the hall to a project meeting, you notice that your mind is having the thought, “This client is a bear; he’s going to hammer me on the budget, and I’ll cave in.”
A moment later, you walk into the conference room, smile at your client, shake his hand and begin talking about the project.
Based on your pre-meeting thoughts, how confident would you come across in that conversation? How would you respond to his forcefulness? And, how would you feel about yourself if you caved in to his demands?

Inquiry lets you investigate and neutralize your internal thoughts and feelings about the client and yourself as well as enhance your external behavior during the conversation. Instead of believing your stressful thoughts, be curious about them like a detective would be. Investigate whether your thoughts are true and the impact they have on your attitude and behavior.
When you’re confident, you spend more time doing and very little time worrying about what you do. It’s not that you shouldn’t think. You should seek data from multiple sources, reflect on options, and make thoughtful decisions. Those are good action steps.
But, once you’ve made a decision, don’t spend any time worrying about it.

Do what I suggest here and you’ll build project teams filled with committed, engaged team members who’ll help your project and your organization succeed.

James L. Haner

Project Leaders: Honor the Psychological Contract

Published April 2, 2013 leadership , motivation , project management Leave a Comment
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Everyone working on the project team has a psychological contract: “I will work for you in return for my needs being met.” The needs may include appropriate pay, fair performance evaluations, and respect.

The psychological contract is based on social norms of reciprocity:

  • I will do to you what you do to me
  • Willingness

A psychological contract represents the mutual beliefs, perceptions, and informal obligations between you and the project team members. It sets the dynamics for the relationship and defines the reasonableness of the project work to be done

A poor psychological contract makes it harder to motivate the project team members.

Breach of the psychological contract

If you breach the psychological contract by not paying a fair rate, or failing to make fair performance evaluations, or treating the team member with lack of respect, it rapidly causes disillusionment, dissatisfaction, demoralization, and that all leads to “good-bye.”

The psychological contract is a model for describing how people perceive their relationship to the organization, either overall, or with its most immediate authority figure, the project leader.

When a team member joins the project team, she has expectations of what the relationship between her and the project leader will be, based on her past history, and how the project leader treats her. As she works on the project team, these expectations are reinforced or changed or stay the same based on her experience.

Real world example: a friend of mine, with young children, joined a small consultancy organization (who knew she had small children). She arrived at work later than she had planned on her first day, because her eldest child had wanted her to stay at the nursery, and she found it difficult to leave her — until the child calmed down.

When she arrived, nothing was said, but later in the week, she was called into the project leader’s office, and accused of showing lack of commitment for arriving late, and for leaving on time each day (to collect her child from the nursery). She is now thoroughly “ticked off” and looking for a new job, because she feels that the organization has an inappropriate psychological contract (work late if you want to get ahead, don’t step out of line, etc.) They lost an expert database specialist and intelligent person, who would have given them a lot more if they had operated in a way which took her needs into account.

All project teams have their particular pattern of behavior towards their project team members: which shows itself in symbols such as offices for the project leaders and special perquisites for executives, or conversely, in more egalitarian styles of working which say in effect, all of us are treated the same. Project team members get very good at reading the complex messages that are transmitted by the project leader, and these have a profound effect in influencing the psychological contract.

In summary, you must act in ways that enhance the psychological contract toward individuals and the team:

  • Be seen to act fairly
  • Encourage the team as a whole
  • Work with the diverse individuals you manage to help them do their best

What actions can you apply with your team to build their psychological contracts?

James L. Haner

How Successful Project Leaders Channel Their Anger

Published April 1, 2013 leadership , motivation , project management Leave a Comment
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Average project leaders focus on results, and that’s it. Good project leaders focus also on the behaviors that will get the results. Successful project leaders focus on the emotions/feelings that will drive these behaviors.
One emotion that shapes our behavior is anger. Martin Luther King Jr., whose 84th birthday was last month, knew of the power that came from anger.
Effective project leaders experience anger. It wakes us up and makes us pay attention to what is wrong on our projects, or in ourselves. Without anger, we would not have the awareness or the drive to fix what is wrong with our team mates, the budget, or the schedule.
Let’s be real here. I don’t want you to hide your anger; I want you to channel your wrath into a higher purpose.
Wise project leaders do not ignore their anger, nor do they allow themselves to get consumed by it. Instead, they channel the emotion into positive energy to make changes and drive them to stay on purpose. They use it to change the project game. And they allow team members to display their anger so they, too, can channel the emotion into energy to make changes and drive them to stay on purpose. In the words of M. L. King in Freedomways magazine in 1968, “The supreme task [of a leader] is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force.”
Here are some questions for you to determine your relationship with anger.
• Are there any project situations that you’re ignoring that instead should fire you up? For instance, your project is not delivering products, services, or results on target, on time, or on budget? Maybe you could get in touch with your feelings of anger, frustration, or disappointment and channel them into positive energy?
• How often are you angry and show it? Does anger control you, or do you control it?
• Can you tell when team members are angry, or when they could be angry for the right reasons? How can you help team members channel into positive energy?
In my project leadership class, Leading Teams: Improving Productivity Through Teamwork, we discuss tips, tricks, and techniques project leaders can use to master anger. We teach you how to use deep breathing or take a pause when you feel yourself becoming bitter; or, you can reframe the situation and challenge yourself to see it from a different point of view.
Mahatma Gandhi taught Martin Luther King, Jr .how to deal with anger: “I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world.” (Young India journal, September 1920.)
Get angry. Make things happen . . . TODAY!

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