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Crucial Conversations
Silence fails, according to a major research initiative on the art of communication and its impact on project execution. The study has identified five types of conversations that are critical to your project’s success — and why most project managers, team members and sponsors seem to do everything they can to avoid them.
One of the keys to successful project management is holding the right conversations on the right issues at the right times. For any given initiative, there will be a handful of crucial conversations that the best project managers will make sure take place. More often, silence and suspicion rule. David Maxfield, director of research at training provider VitalSmarts, is leading a study about the art of communication and its impact on project execution. In a presentation called “Silence Fails,” Maxfield shared some of the study’s insightful findings with ProjectsAtWork and attendees at the Delivering Project Excellence conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., in June.
Maxfield began his presentation by showing a video of people standing in long lines at a busy shopping mall. Various individuals were asked what they would do if someone were to cut in front of them, and 95 percent responded that they would speak up and ask the person to leave. Armed with a hidden camera, the research team returned to randomly cut into lines and document how people really responded. And …
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