Did Everyone Have the Same Experience?

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.

  Communications Management   Leadership   Talent Management  

Fairly early on in my career, at the end of a project that I viewed as pretty successful, one of my team members came up to me and told me that they never wanted to work on a project again because they had hated every minute of it. The conversation shocked me because I had absolutely no idea that was how they felt, but it’s something I’ll never forget.

Certainly, the fact that I was still relatively inexperienced as a PM was part of the issue—I just wasn’t as good at reading people and identifying potential problems. But this person was also very private and didn’t give much away in terms of what they were thinking or feeling. The problem wasn’t with the specific project, they just felt more comfortable in an operational role with greater predictability and a little less stress. But I felt bad that their experience had been a negative one, and that I had no idea that was the case.

Ever since, I have always tried to ensure that everyone on the team is having the same experience as me—or at least that their experience is similar. That means trying to ensure that everyone on the team feels as though they are part of that team, that they feel included in the sense of teamwork and accountability, etc.

That doesn’t always mean that they are enjoying the experience; we’ve all worked on projects that were challenging and …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.