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Dia daoibh ar maidin! (“Good morning all” in Irish/Gaelic)
Ambition, Achievement, Motivation, and Inspiration!
These phrases bring out my key learnings from Day Two of #PMIEMEA19 at delightful Dublin.
Turning Ambition into Achievement – A Workshop by Jamil Qureshi
Jamil Qureshi was truly a Rockstar of this event. On 13th May, my fellow team member Stephanie Jaeger and I had enjoyed his exclusive workshop for alumni of PMI’s Leadership Institute Master Class (LIMC).
Jamil started today’s workshop with the thought-provoking group activity to suggest global impacts of all humans mandatorily changing sex at age 30. Several impacts came up: a. Increased gender neutrality b. Increase in sales of unisex clothing c. Booming demand for sex-change surgeries, with specialist doctors becoming billionaires!
The speaker stressed how important it was for project managers to provide time & space for team members to get their work done. “It's about driving productivity, not simply activity,” he said.
Jamil pointed out that it was perfectly normal for people to make mistakes. Excellent lessons could be learned from detaching the action from the person.
Having several bobble-heads on the team is detrimental to project success. Instead, he recommended that project managers could play the imaginable/provable game to explore ideas. The game was a safe way to generate healthy conflict.
Mi7! Motivate and Inspire with Seven Proven Leadership Techniques for Project Success by Sripriya Narayanasamy and yours truly.
It was now time to reverse roles. To take the stage, presenting the first of my two sessions at the #PMIEMEA19 event. It was extremely gratifying to see almost a hundred people in our session. My co-presenter and I felt bad that there were almost 20 people who had no chairs for our session. Here’s a summary of what we presented:
- Project Success is elusive. Motivational and Inspiring Leadership is a necessity, not an option. Here were seven practical, proven success secrets:
- Serve as the CEO or your project. Create a compelling vision and communicate clearly. Develop project logos and catchy slogans for project success.
- Understand & Leverage Diversity: Culturally diverse teams won’t magically “gel” well. As PM, you need to proactively build cohesiveness and work hard to ensure trust, teamwork.
- Catch them Doing Things Right: Far too often for comfort, project pressures force us to find fault and assign blame. This negative atmosphere drags morale down. Make it a habit to catch people doing things right and praise them for it. This attitude can work wonders in increasing team morale.
- Cultivate Ethical Behavior: Unethical leaders lose respect and trust. Be open and honest with all your stakeholders. Follow the four pillars of PMI’s Ethics Code: Responsibility, Respect, Fairness, and Honesty.
- Elevate with Empathy: Emotional Intelligence and Empathy are two of the most important skills in a project manager’s success toolkit. Thinking from your stakeholder’s point of view can vastly improve your leadership effectiveness.
- Embrace Social Media: Social Media connections can be leveraged to understand team members’ interests, passions, and motivations. This understanding can be invaluable in customized motivation plans.
- Drive Motivation With Visibility: Almost all humans respond positively to visibility and being assigned important work. However, not all project roles can guarantee these. Leverage WBS-Building, Risk Ownership, and the Critical Path to give visibility to team members with the right attitude.
The tips were an acrostic that forms the word “SUCCEED”
I hope you’re enjoying the continuous coverage of the EMEA Congress 2019 by the Community Engagement Team. In addition to tweets by @PMInstitute and @PMIEvents, regular updates are available on the Twitter handles of our team members, @heykristinj, @Em_the_PM, @StephanieJaeg10, @moritz_sprenger and yours truly, @KarthikPMO.
Please follow, like, comment, and retweet our continuous coverage on Twitter (https://twitter.com/KarthikPMO), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/kramamurthy) and Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/forkarthik )
On the last day of the conference. I plan to attend and cover these great sessions. Look for detailed coverage of these sessions tomorrow!
- Strategic Analysis and Decision Making for Complex Projects by Esra Tepeli
- Creating Collective Value through Generativity: A Leadership Approach for Complexity by Stephano Setti
- Closing General Session and Keynote Speaker: TED Talks, Curated for PMI by TED
I will also be presenting this session at 9 am (first session of the day).
If you are at the Congress, I’d love to see you there!
- Agilely Vaulting Over Waterfalls: Applying Agile to Waterfall and Vice Versa
See you soon with updates of the final day.
Meanwhile, have a great day, or as they say in Irish, “Bíodh lá maith agat”
Keep smiling, keep shining, and keep inspiring!
Posted
by Karthik Ramamurthy
on: May 14, 2019 08:33 PM |
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