Good Leaders, Bad Times

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Leadership   Talent Management   Teams   ProjectsAtWork  

How you deal with stressful situations on your projects can often define you as a leader, for better or worse. It starts with understanding your natural response to stress and consciously managing it. Your team will takes cues on how well you are coping, and they will be able to focus on their work the better you do it.

We have all experienced situations where it has been incredibly difficult to maintain composure — times when nothing seems to be going right, we are frustrated and the pressure is building inside to the point where things might explode. We can’t completely avoid stress — it’s inherent to project management —but as project leaders we have to be very careful how we respond to it. 

When things are going well, leadership is relatively easy; it’s when things aren’t going well that we can really set ourselves apart — and that’s what teams will remember. In this article, I want to share some thoughts on how to ensure that you are prepared to be a great leader during the bad times.

Understanding ourselves

The first critical part of leading through stress is to make sure that we understand how we react to stress as individuals. I don’t mean recognizing when stress is occurring, but rather how our actions change in those situations. Do we become more analytical or do we tend to react quickly?…

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