Leave the Negativity Out

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.

  Career Development  

When I secured a job at my second company, it came about from sending a lot of letters to small UK banks asking them for an opportunity to meet. I explained that my current employer, one of the large banks in the UK at the time, had just received a substantial investment from an overseas bank in a move that was widely seen as a preliminary move to a takeover—and that I didn’t like the changes that were happening as a result. I made it clear that I wanted to work somewhere else with different values.

My letters worked; I got a new job. But if I could talk to that early-20s version of myself, I would ask them what the heck they were thinking. Now I would never criticize a current employer when applying for another position, whether in an application or at interview. It’s just not necessary, and it doesn’t convey anything good about me as an individual.

Yet I still see it all the time, and not just from people who don’t have the experience to know better.

Negatives are inevitable, negativity isn’t
You don’t need to be a seasoned PM to have had some bad experiences. Whether it was a train wreck of a project, completely unreasonable stakeholders, unfair criticism of you and your team (or by your team), or all of the above, PMs have to deal with their fair share of negative scenarios.

These aren’t just the bad projects, …

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