Calling on Project Managers to Share Success Stories

Lessons Learned but Knowledge Lost!

This was the title of an editorial that was published by David Pells in PM World Today in 2011. It was about the loss of experience and knowledge that was occurring as project managers retired. While this is particularly pertinent in South Africa where skills shortage is considered an acute concern, it is clear that this is a global phenomenon.

The reality is that in spite of all the technology that is available to us today, we have not yet found a presentation format that captures the essence of this wisdom in a way that is relevant to future usage, readily searchable and easy to store. It needs to be shared with present and future generations in a format that’s interesting and easy to use. This highlights the significance of project management, knowledge management and the lessons learned process.

Lessons Learned Discussion

Recently there has been a lively discussion about Project Lessons Learned on the Association of Project Management (APM) blog. A few key take-aways are shared here in order to understand how various individuals and companies have dealt with this requirement.

Some organisations have a more proactive approach and would gather in PM forum meetings specifically to share lessons learned from all projects from the whole PM team. This heightens awareness of problems, lets you see where the same thing is a happening and find solutions to prevent them from happening again. It also allows you to highlight the good things and not just focus on the problems.
The documenting of lessons learned on most projects is not particularly good. In many cases it isn’t done at all. Where it is undertaken (often only because it is mandated by corporate procedures) it is all too often seen as a tick in the box exercise. At least it sometimes is done. What almost never happens is a review of relevant lessons reports by new projects.
Some individuals create a Lessons Log during Project Start-up and record anything that could help to create a best practice for my projects. The Lessons Log is reviewed regularly along with the RAIDs (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies) management documents at Checkpoint Meetings and Gate Reviews. This really makes a difference when populating the Lessons Log and makes the job of writing the lessons into the End-of-Project Report so much easier. (Colin Hewson, APM blog)

Lessons Learned a Contributor to Success

An interesting finding was published by Cranfield University School of Management. They conducted research to find out what helps projects to succeed or contributes to failure. They have found that the biggest differentiating factor between organisations that generally succeed with their projects and those that don’t is “the willingness to publish and distribute lessons learnt”.

Therefore it’s not enough to close out the project and to create a Lessons Learned report – the reports have to be made available to others in a way that makes them want to read and apply. The key capability here is communication and some best practices could be:

organising the critical information in a way that makes it appear relevant and easy to understand,
making the different stakeholder groups aware that the information is available,
ensuring that stakeholder know where to find it,
arrange things so that they can quickly turn the information presented into useful actions.

Unfortunately, most lessons learned, although captured, are not being communicated out, and key learnings mostly remain with the individuals involved. Also, for major complex projects, what you can actually capture in a report is only a small percentage. The only way real learning gets shared is through conversation.

Certainly access to historical information in the form of validated lessons learned will be a valuable way of helping people who want to deliver successful projects. The challenge is developing a way to make the information accessible.

Case Study: London 2012 Olympics

An excellent example of capturing lessons learned, disseminating it and applying it immediately is the Learning Legacy Project of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) who was responsible for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. The Learning Legacy Project was developed to share the knowledge and lessons learned from the London 2012 construction project for the benefit of industry projects and programmes in the future, for academia and the government.

Reports and related information from the Learning Legacy have been categorised into ten themes on this website. Each theme contains short reports, tools and templates, case studies and research summaries that document how this area of work was approached and the lessons that have been learned and the successes that could benefit others.

Learn Your Lessons

Here are a few suggestions to ensure that we learn our lessons from past projects and that the knowledge is transferred across to future projects.

Create a plan for recording lessons learned at the end of each project life cycle phase. This can be done in the form of formal team meetings, to simply requesting that people post to a discussion board, wiki, or some other form of media. Reference: “Learn your lessons” blog, Projects at Work by John D’Entremont.
If an ongoing process of capturing lessons learned cannot be followed, consider conducting a closing review once your project is complete. A post-project review can serve two important purposes. It obviously aids in the collection of project historical data that can be shared, but it can also be a means of validating the work that your project team accomplished. The acknowledgement of work being done well provides good closure to the team members and a sense of achievement.
A more Agile principle is recommended by Anthony Mersino, founder of The Agile PMO, for teams to reflect at regular intervals, on how to become more effective, then to tune and adjust their behaviour accordingly. The teams need to be communicating and collaborating on what works well, what doesn’t work so well, and then use that to make change. It is discussed, debated even, and it becomes part of the teams shared journey and collective memory. The advantage of this approach is that you can immediately incorporate what you learned.

The PMO’s role in Lessons Learned is to make sure the teams are conducting retrospectives on a frequent and regular basis and incorporating the lessons learned into their planning.

Success Stories Shared Framework

As you can see from the Lessons Learned debate and the Learning Legacy project, this is a challenge that our current generation of project managers need to face and solve. In an attempt to capture the wisdom and transfer the knowledge to future projects, a framework is proposed.

This is to collect Success Stories from experienced project/programme managers in order to share experiences and to promote learning across the project and programme management community of South Africa and abroad.

Would you like to become involved with the Success Stories Shared initiative?

Please visit the Success Stories Shared page and send me an email should you wish to participate and to make a contribution in leaving a legacy to future projects and generations.

About the Author:

Linky van der Merwe is a Project Management Consultant who has worked in various industries including IT with various Microsoft Consulting customers in private and public sectors, Telecommunications (Vodacom), Retail (Woolworths) and Financial Services (Santam).

She is also the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting, an online company dedicated to equip and empower new project managers on how to become professional project managers, and to support existing project managers by recommending training, software, books and products. She educates through her blog by giving practical advice on project management processes, templates and tools based on best practices. She contributes to publications and by giving talks on relevant topics.

August 20, 2012November 8, 2012 Linky

Can Social Media Drive Project Success?

Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives in South Africa. Recent studies have revealed that South African consumers have a very high motivation (70 percent versus, for example, 40 percent in the UK) to follow brands on social networks. We use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking services to converse with friends and colleagues and to share photos, videos, and important moments in our lives.

Worldwide, Facebook enjoys 80 million unique visitors per month, YouTube 800 million and Twitter 160 million, according to DoubleClick Ad Planner. In South Africa, users spend on average seven hours a week on social networking sites, with MXit and Facebook being the most popular sites.

Against the back-drop of these statistics Project Managers need to seriously consider the integration of social media with their project management tools. Let’s look at ways to do that and to evaluate if the use of social media tools can drive project success. Some aspects of security and confidentiality will also be covered.

In a previous article: “10 Ways to Integrate Social Media with Project Management” we referred to a number of different social media tools available to project managers which can be used for project delivery. Many social media tools are more widely adopted by project managers than we think.

Social Media adoption

Many social media tools like collaboration tools, instant messaging, podcasts, webinars and social networks are already used widely for project delivery.

Podcasts and webinars are especially used for further training of professional project managers, PMP’s, who gain professional development units (PDU’s) for attending. Project management training companies, like Roeder Consulting, hosts a webinar every month presenting project management topics, as well as inviting host speakers, with the audience being able to claim a PDU per session. Attendees are also invited to become members of their LinkedIn group. This has grown them a large following and keeps them front of mind for training needs.

Social media tools which may be considered more during project delivery are blogs (project information distribution to virtual teams), Wiki’s and RSS, to subscribe to feeds relevant to your project or to information that will help develop project managers who are reporting into a Project Support Office (PMO).

Security and Confidentiality

By nature social media implies collaboration, mutual trust, and a strong sense of common purpose. With social media your company and project needs a policy the same way as you need a policy for the use of email or the internet. Ensure that employees and team members know about the policy and follow an education program to ensure compliance with regulatory and legal guidelines.

Security concerns around the open flow of communication using social media tools can be addressed by using access controls to manage the flow of data. Give usernames and passwords to only those people who need to log in. Access control administration can be delegated to a PMO or a project support officer. Have a process for requesting access to the tool. For third parties requests, access may be limited by assigning permissions to certain “views” only. Some social media tools have an audit trail facility with which you can track changes.

Include social media tools in the company backup processes and business continuity plans. Another consideration around authorized software is to allow only social media tools that are supported by your IT department in order to not make you vulnerable to viruses and other security threats.

With proper consideration, project managers and their teams could adopt appropriate social media tools and by following the proper channels to put approved social media tools in place, this will enhance successful project delivery.

BIO: Linky vd Merwe is a certified project management professional (PMP) and Founder of Virtual Project Consulting. She has been a senior project manager at Microsoft Consulting Services South Africa for the past 4.5 years. She likes to blog about project management and integrated online communication marketing. Her mission is to provide project management best practices advice and to recommend resources to aspiring and existing project managers.

July 24, 2012September 27, 2013 Linky

Stakeholder Management: Stakeholder Analysis in Five Steps

Guest Post by Joe Schembri

Stakeholders are critical to the success of any project and should be included in every major assessment and decision. Stakeholders are defined as the ones who are positively or negatively affected by the course of the project and any resulting solutions or conclusions. This article covers a most important aspect of stakeholder management, namely stakeholder analysis.

Because of their influence, stakeholders can create a positive or negative impact on the project or organization, so it is important to identify your project’s stakeholders from the beginning, learn what they anticipate and give them the attention and consideration they expect.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholders are typically categorized into two groups – primary or secondary stakeholders. Those who are directly impacted by the project are the primary stakeholders and secondary stakeholders are those who are indirectly impacted. Primary or secondary stakeholders can also be key stakeholders, a group which includes anyone with the power or position to exert significant influence over the project or the organization itself.

Since stakeholders can have such an impact on the success of a project, proper stakeholder management is essential. Conducting a stakeholder analysis is part of effective stakeholder management. Here are five steps to follow.

#1 Identify

A proper stakeholder analysis allows project managers to identify individuals or groups that are likely to affect, or be affected by, the project and how to best communicate with them.

#2 Sort

During the analysis, project managers will also sort and group stakeholders according to their level of impact. This information is then used to determine how stakeholder needs and interests should be handled during the course of the project.

#3 Interview

At this point in the stakeholder analysis, it’s usually a good idea to interview a sample of people from each stakeholder group to find out what they know about the project, their thoughts on the project, and what is most and least appealing about the project to them. This allows the project managers to have a first-person stakeholder perspective on what stakeholders expect to get out of the project and what they believe the project will do for them or their department.

#4 Analyze

Then, analyze the results of the interviews by recording repeated themes, concerns, and issues for each group and sort them by priority.

#5 Record

Once project managers have successfully identified the stakeholders, developed an understanding of their concerns, and sorted them in order of priority, they can effectively use this information to help gain support for the project. All of the collected information should be recorded on a stakeholder map, which can then be used to develop detailed plans for communication with each stakeholder.

At this point, project managers should be able to identify how they will leverage each stakeholder group to help accomplish the project goals. Of course, gaining the support of stakeholders is just one small part of managing a successful project, but with the influence that they can have on a project, stakeholder analysis is one of the most important things to consider when planning an efficient and successful project.

What are some of your stakeholder analysis tips? Please add to the comments!

About Joe Schembri: Joe is with University Alliance. He writes about various project management topics including stakeholder analysis and PMI’s Project Management Professional certification exam.

April 30, 2012March 31, 2019 Linky

Project Managers are you Twitter Smart?

While many project managers are social media active today, there are still organizations which don’t understand the value of using social media, and specifically Twitter, in the work-place. This is a follow-up article on the previous social media article: 10 Ways to Integrate Social Media with Project Management

The value that Twitter can bring, is a whole new perspective on project management and this article will look at ways for project managers to become Twitter smart.

While Twitter is recognized as a social media tool that can assist with successful project delivery, it is often not taken seriously as a business tool. This is simply because of the vast amount of information that is available on Twitter at any one time–over 250 million tweets per day. To ensure that Twitter is a valuable tool, you need to be able to extract only information which is most relevant for you; otherwise, it defeats the object of improving project delivery. One way to do this is by using the #PMOT hashtag.

#PMOT

For those unfamiliar with Twitter, hashtags are a way to flag something, and “PMOT” stands for Project Managers (or Management) on Twitter. When you combine hashtags with Twitter you have an easy way to locate much of the PM-related content on Twitter in a single place.

How to become Twitter Smart

Here are some recommended practices to help you benefit from #PMOT:

Identify people that you want to follow. Add them to a list. Be cautious not to try and follow hundreds or thousands of people, because you cannot possibly keep track of that volume of Tweets.
Identify blogs, articles, sites that you can bookmark. #PMOT can act almost like an automated Google search for you–bringing search results to you without you having to go and work to find them.
Identify curators – people who make the effort to find the best content and make it available with their own comments. There are plenty of project management sites that have a great daily publication.
Stay current with what’s happening in your industry and profession. There are many industry organizations who actively contribute to Twitter (PMI, for example). Twitter can give you an easy way to stay current with what is happening with them.
Find other activities to become a part of. #PMOT will lead you toward #pmchat, for example–an hour-long, weekly Twitter conversation from 12—1 p.m. North American Eastern time that gives you a chance to interact with other PMs and discuss topics/issues of the day. (If you miss the live chat there is a record of the conversation on Twitter under the #pmchat hashtag.)
You still need to use judgment in consuming this content–there’s no point in bookmarking 100 different project management sites as you can’t possibly keep track of them all while still doing the job that you are employed to do.

Twitter for Organizational use

By now you can appreciate using Twitter as a personal tool for individual PMs, but there is also a lot of benefit for the organization. Consider how Project Management Offices (PMO’s) can use Twitter to improve project effectiveness and streamline processes. A tremendous amount of content is already developed to assist in the continuous improvement of the PMO, and much of it is available within the public domain.

Twitter not only helps to socialize the availability of that content–it can assist the organization in connecting with people who have used it before and share their experiences. It may also be used to initially connect with those people.

For organizations that have a page on their intranet containing links to websites that offer best practices, hints and tips, you can prevent that content to become outdated by using the #PMOT. This will help you find a lot of content that can be applied to your organization and to keep that links page fresh.

Be Twitter Smart by contributing

Twitter is not only a social media tool to consume content, but it also provides opportunities to contribute to Twitter discussions. When you represent an organization, as long as you keep to your company’s social media policies, you can use Twitter to do formal announcements, share information on the corporate website like job opportunities for example, share tips and tools etc.

As Project Managers we can also contribute as part of the PM community. This can be achieved by sharing your knowledge and experiences on Twitter by posting a useful link or a lesson learned. This way you can connect with people who have common interests and goals.

Conclusion

As a PMP and blogger, I’ve been using Twitter for a few years for all the reasons above. It has helped me to connect with project managers from all over the world, to easily find good information and RSS feeds to keep up to date with the Project Management Industry and of course, for exposure so that more people will find me and my blog about project management best practices and tools as well as recommended resources. Please subscribe here.

If you would like a head start on Twitter, you are welcome to follow me: Virtualpm

Here are my lists that I have created over time and lists that I follow:

Projectmanagement – own list (440 members)
Leadership– own list (123 members)
Pmot – Andrea Hammer’s list (380 members)
PM practitioners – Project Manager (137 members)
PM_Pals – Lindsay Scott (304 members)

Don’t forget to use Search #PMOT on Twitter to build your own lists or to find good lists to follow.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting. She is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager for the past 12 years and currently working at Microsoft Consulting Services.

April 13, 2012February 1, 2020 Linky

10 Ways to Integrate Social Media with Project Management

For the past 3 years I was active on various social media platforms, especially since I’ve been blogging about Project Management. Initially my intention with social media was to become more visible and to attract free traffic to my website. What I realise now, is that social media has already become integrated with Project Management and is more widely adopted by project managers than we think. The purpose of this article is to have a look at 10 social media tools that are available to project managers to use during project delivery.

According to Elizabeth Harrin, author of “Social Media for Project Managers” Project Management Institute, there are a number of different social media tools available to project managers. We will look at ten tools with a short description of what they mean.

Blogs: In the project setting, it is the equivalent to a project notebook or a shared project log. Blogs are made up of posts, which are short articles that appear in reverse chronological order on the blog. Blogs have an archive facility which will display historical posts by day, week, or month.
Collaboration tools: Software solutions that are designed to help manage teams and get the job done. They are used for storing of all project information, contacts, documents, and discussion in one place. Consequently, the software becomes the main place for project team members to go for updates on tasks and to work with other people.
Instant messaging: A way of sending short text messages to colleagues through the computer. It is similar to email, but faster and with shorter messages, because you know the person is at the other end available to reply. You can see a list of colleagues and their status as to whether they are available to message or not, which saves you contacting someone who is unavailable. This is called “presence” and can extend to other types of technologies as well.
Microblogs: This is blogging on a very small scale. It allows you to send short messages to the internet for public consumption. The most popular microblogging tool today is Twitter (http://twitter.com) which limits the update to 140 characters, the length of a text message on a mobile device, and also permits your “tweets” to be protected if you would prefer that they are only seen by your friends. As with a blog, the tweets appear on your homepage in a long chronological stream, with the most recent comments at the top.
Webinars: A seminar hosted on the web. It is also used to describe other types of meetings where the participants go to a website to see the presentation material. Participants use their web browser to access a website for that meeting.
Podcasts: Audio files that are listened to either through your computer’s speakers or through a download to an MP3 player. A podcast is an on-demand audio file delivered regularly through a mechanism that allows people to subscribe to the latest episodes, like RSS.
Vodcasts: A video podcast; video on demand delivered regularly through a mechanism that allows people to subscribe to the latest episodes, like RSS. Think mini-TV series. Vodcasts are typically not that long and are designed to be watched on small screens.
RSS:

It stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s called syndication because, like a news syndicate, information is sent to multiple channels at a time. This allows you to subscribe to updates. Every time a new news article is posted, the RSS feed is updated and, as a subscriber, you will get the update. There are software tools (called RSS readers like Google Reader, or aggregators) which organize all your feeds in one place.

9. Social networks: Online groups that are designed to bring people with common interests together. You can connect with friends that you know both in the real world and those friends that you have never met in person. Individuals create a profile which includes details about themselves and normally a photo. From your profile you can connect to others. LinkedIn and Facebook are two of the most popular social networks today.

10. Wikis: ‘Wiki’ is Hawaiian for “quick.” It’s also an acronym for “What I Know Is. A wiki is a collection of web pages that are written by a group of people, normally on a particular topic—your project, in this case. The wiki acts as a knowledge repository. Wiki software makes it easy to add pages and link them to other pages, which creates a hyperlinked data set. In essence, a Wiki can form the collective knowledge from your project team, organized in web page format.

Please let me know in the comments section which of the social media tools you’re using or perhaps other social media tools?

Do you think that these tools help you with project delivery?

February 29, 2012December 22, 2021 Linky

Project Management Infographic – Top Project Management Software

When you need to make a decision about which project management or collaboration software to use, there are many factors to consider. I have found this infographic that highlights some of the most important solutions in this space and uses publicly available information to explain how they vary in terms of company size, popularity, social media presence, ease of integration, trust factors and mobile applications availability.

You can click on the company logos and then you will be directed to GetApp.com where you can view a product description as well as user reviews when available.

The purpose of the infographic is to offer you information on important decision factors so you can decide which project management solution is the best fit for your business.

For a more comprehensive list of over 150 web-based project management software options, please check GetApp.com’s online project management software directory.

February 14, 2012December 22, 2021 Linky

Project Management South Africa Launches Online Recruitment System

Are you a Project Manager based in South Africa? Are you looking for a new challenge in Project Management?

Or do you have vacancies on your project team that you would like to advertise to a targeted group of project professionals?

Project Management South Africa (PMSA) has just launched a new online resource that allows PMSA members to upload their CVs to a searchable database. A CV summary is then viewable by subscribed recruitment agencies and fellow members. If a CV summary sparks interest, the candidate will receive an email request to release the full CV for viewing by the requesting party.

Agencies and companies pay a subscription fee to advertise jobs and search CVs on the recruitment system, while individual members, RETPs and corporate members may upload vacancies free of charge.

To view existing CV’s or to load your CV, go to www.projectmanagement.org.za and click on ‘

February 7, 2012March 9, 2014 Linky

Guide to Becoming a Project Management Professional (PMP)

Are you a project manager who plans to write the PMP exam in order to become a certified Project Management Professional, also called a PMP?

Today I want to recommend a really useful resource that would pave the way for you to prepare and pass the PMP exam easily. It is called: “Short Guide to Becoming a PMP“, by Cornelius Fichtner. If you want to take the PMP exam, but don’t know where to start, then this Guide is for you.

The first Guide will give you a high-level overview of the 8 steps involved with becoming a PMP.

The next Guide is about the 10 Secrets to make it easier to obtain your Project Management Professional (PMP) credential.

Short Guide to Becoming a PMP

10 Secrets to becoming a PMP

Download your Guides today and start reaching for that planned goal of becoming a certified PMP!

For existing PMP’s there is also a step for you about Getting Re-certified, explaining what you need to do to earn your PDU’s as part of your continuing education requirements.

January 23, 2012July 7, 2016 Linky

Leading a PMO to Deliver Better Projects

Are you a project manager, a Project Management Office (PMO) leader or maybe an executive who is looking to establish a PMO in your business?

Do you want to know how to find the right balance between projects and business demands?

If you look for ways to benefit from a PMO within your organization or you want to know how to lead a successful PMO to deliver better projects, then you would love the new book from Peter Taylor:

“Leading Successful PMO’s”

Peter Taylor is the author of the number 1 bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’ and ‘The Project from Hell’. He has recently launched his new book ‘Leading Successful PMO’s’.

Leading Successful PMO’s is a book to guide all would-be and current PMO leaders. This is a book for all project based organizations and for all project managers who contribute to and benefit from a PMO (Project Management Office) within their organization.

It is also a book about successfully leading a PMO to deliver better projects, better business to all the customers of those projects and to best serve the contributing project managers from both a professional and a personal perspective.

This is not a book about managing PMO’s as the author does not believe that they are such a stable business unit at this point in time, but rather a book about leading PMO’s which is a much more complex challenge, especially with the association of PMO activity with business strategy.

This book brings together the experience and views of PMO leaders from around the world and the project managers that work within the PMO’s, as well as those who are now seeking leaders for their PMO’s.

In support of his new book, Peter Taylor (together with some great partners) has launched the PMO Leader of the Year Award, to celebrate the very best of PMO leaders around the world.

This award will be presented to the PMO Leader, nominated by their PMO team, who shows the most excellent leadership and understanding of what a PMO can deliver to a business.

A panel of independent judges will review all submissions to consider how each nominee has led their PMO over at least the last 12 months and how they plan to grow the PMO under their stewardship in the coming months.

The Judges will look as the key PMO leadership skills in the areas of:

Flexibility
Resilience
Setting example
Professionalism
Support

Timescales: All entries should be received by Gower by 31st March 2012. The shortlist for the ‘PMO Leader of the Year (2012)’ will be announced on 31st May 2012. The winner of ‘PMO Leader of the Year (2012)’ will be announced on 29th June 2012.

Prizes: The winner will receive:

A library of Gower project and programme management books with a list price of over £600.00
A written award from the judges underlining the reasons for the award
A ‘PMO Leader of the Year 2012’ electronic icon to use on any of the winners electronic profiles, web pages and so on
An interview with Mark Perry on The PMO Podcast
Publication of the winning submission through the website: http://www.gowerpublishing.com/projectmanagement

Click here to download a pdf document containing all information regarding the Criteria of PMO Leader of the Year Award.

January 19, 2012February 10, 2019 Linky

The Project Manager and Emotional Intelligence

One quality a project manager needs to have to be really successful is Emotional Intelligence.

Your Emotional Intelligence can help make or break you. Emotional Intelligence or EQ is your ability to handle yourself and others. It is all about your ability to get along with others and build relationships. This also means that you can face conflict with the people around you and keep those relationships intact.

Think about it, your EQ is a conflict resolution tool! Here are 3 ways that your EQ helps you resolve conflict.

#1 EQ prevents unproductive conflict

When you are self-aware (one of the five components of EQ) you understand your moods. Who do you think is more likely to engage in unproductive conflict: A person in a good mood or a person in a bad mood? The person who is in a bad mood right? To build on that, imagine the person who walks around completely unaware of their emotions. Who knows what is going to set them off, they certainly don’t know.

Let’s take this even further, to really avoid unproductive conflict you want to recognize your moods and then exhibit self-control (another component of EQ). Yes the person in a bad mood is more likely to engage in useless conflict; but this person needs to be able to control their behaviours while in a bad mood. This is the person who gets that they are cranky and is careful with their words and actions because they know they are easily upset.

#2 EQ helps YOU navigate productive conflict

Sometimes disagreements are a good thing. When you lead your team through issue resolution, not every team member will suggest the same solution. From that productive conflict the best and most creative solution can be designed. Only if YOU and your team can draw upon your self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy and social skills (all components of EQ) to work together.

As you work through the conflict you are drawing upon your awareness of your feelings during the conflict and your self-control to behave professionally. You are motivated to work things out and care about seeing the issue through until the best solution is found. You don’t care if the solution selected is your solution, you care that it is the right solution. You employ active listening (part of empathy) to guide the team through the discussion and you draw upon your social skills to seek participation from all appropriate parties.

#3 EQ helps you repair relationships

Even with your best intentions and best behaviour, not all conflict is productive conflict. Sometimes feelings get hurt. Now what are you going to do about it?

You are going to use all of your EQ skills to repair those relationships. This might involve listening to the wounded parties as they share with you why they are upset and what you can do to help. If could mean that you invite them to lunch or for coffee to show that you have no hard feelings. Whatever approach you take, the fact is that if you were not emotionally intelligent it would not even occur to you that you should work to repair the relationship. If you ignore a damaged relationship, you are inviting additional and unnecessary conflict.

Want to know more about improving your EQ?

Other recommended resources:

Emotional Intelligence as a Project Management and Life Skill

Key Project Management Skills Needed for the Future?

Innovation through Projects

January 16, 2012April 22, 2015 Linky

Leadership and Your Communication Style

To be a successful project manager, it is important to develop your Leadership skills. You need to regocnize the behaviours that define you as a leader. One such leadership skill is to know and develop your communication style.

It means you have a natural style of communicating. This is the way that is the most comfortable for you to communicate, it includes whether you prefer written (email or other) or verbal (on the phone vs. in-person) communication and whether or not you are careful and deliberate in your communications or more comfortable thinking out loud.

This includes how you like to send communication and how you like to receive it. You might prefer to walk down the hall to see someone when you have something to say, but you might want people to email you things when they have things to say so that you have them in writing or so that you can refer back to them later or add them to your calendar.

You also have an adapted style of communication, this means how we communicate when we are upset or under pressure or during a conflict.

It is important to understand your natural approach/style and your adapted approach.

Then you can begin to understand the styles of others and how/when your styles work with others or not.

There is a lot to consider. And the most important question; is your communication style working for you?

Overall how do you know?

Well, to explore these questions; I invite you to attend a FREE Webinar entitled:

‘Mitigate Yourself! What to Do When the Risk is You’.

Margaret Meloni of Meloni Coaching Solutions will be hosting this live Webinar on 24 January 2012 from 12:00-13:00 PST.

Margaret delivers soft-skill, personal development products and coaching for Project Managers worldwide. Her coaching products help make successful Project Manager regardless of their industry. Learn more about her: margaretmeloni.com

Please Register, even if you cannot make it, you receive a free recording and can earn a Professional Development Unit (PDU).

In this Webinar you will learn:

You have a natural and adapted style of communications (meaning; how you communicate normally and when you are upset or under pressure).
Why it’s important to understand both.
How you can begin to recognize and understand the styles of others and understand when your style works and when it does not.

Be there to learn more about your communication styles and how they affect your success in the workplace and the success of your team.

Register today as seating is limited and when you do register please be sure to tell Margaret I sent you by filling in the ‘Who Referred You’ information.