Combatting Fears & Doubts as a Project Manager

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.

  New Practitioners  

Don’t let your fears deny you your dreams. It sounds like a message on a bad t-shirt, doesn’t it? (Okay, I confess: I saw it on a t-shirt about 30 years ago.) But it also represents good advice to new project managers.

I have spoken with many new PMs over the years who have felt intimidated by different aspects of the role that they are taking on. Some might find it scary to talk to senior-level people in the organization acting in stakeholder roles; some are worried about leading people for the first time; and some are simply nervous that they might not have what it takes to succeed.

I’m not going to sit here and tell new project managers that they shouldn’t have a degree of trepidation. I still remember the terror on my first project, when each day seemed to bring with it another opportunity to end my project management career before it even started. And I don’t think that a little bit of anxiety is a bad thing—it keeps a new project manager sharp, preventing them from making too many assumptions or taking too much for granted.

But that has to be controlled. We all know that too much stress and anxiety is a negative—not only can it prevent you from functioning as a PM (or anything else), it can have profound long-term health impacts. New project managers don’t have the experience to fall back on to assure them that …

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