The Project Management Experts

At its core project management is all about effectively leading your team. Therefore emotional intelligence for project managers and project leaders can be just as important (if not more) than knowing how to interprete the latest earned value data.

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This interview about emotional intelligence in project management with Kim Wasson was recorded at the Project Management Institute (PMI)® Global Congress 2016 in San Diego, California. We discuss her paper and presentation One Unhappy Person Can Ruin Your Beautiful Plan -- Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers. Here is the abstract:

Just one unmotivated person on your team can bring everything crashing down. Unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and lack of motivation are highly contagious; ‘one person’ quickly turns into an unhappy and possibly dysfunctional team.

We're all focused on getting the process right and there’s no doubt that process is important. What many of us don’t take into account is that the success of most projects depends largely on the teams actually doing the work Process is important but it’s not going to build anything on its own – it’s a team of satisfied, competent people working together who will actually deliver a product.

The people side of the project management equation is critical. Managing effectively requires the ability to understand individuals and teams, establish working relationships, manage goals, and motivate team members. Effective tools and techniques discover what makes the team members and the team itself tick, to communicate effectively with many different people both one-on-one and as a group, and to generally balance the process part of the equation with the people part of the equation are critical to project success.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

Have you heard of supportive leadership? I certainly had not. I knew what servant leadership was, but the concept of supportive leadership was a definite unknown.

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But that changed when Joseph Flahiff (www.whitewaterprojects.com -- www.linkedin.com/in/josephflahiff) got in touch with me and suggested this interview. I was intrigued.

The good news is that Joseph is a prolific writer who has a number of articles on the topic. He reviews the concept from various angles and he also has a number of great examples of how he works with his customers to implement supportive leadership in their organizations and how he uses the concept as a project leader himself. You’ll be able to incorporate all of this as part of your own project leadership almost right away.

And of course we will also touch upon the main difference between supportive leadership and servant leadership. You’ll be just as surprised as I was.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

This episode is sponsored by the PMP Exam Simulator:

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Leadership in project management is an important topic these days. And if you are like most project managers then you may have fallen into project management a bit by accident. And then, after you have successfully delivered a few projects, suddenly everyone tells you that you must improve your project management leadership skills.

Effective project management, they say, depends a lot on your project leadership.

And so once you realise that you have to transform into a project leader then leadership training will be part of your ongoing professional development, which is where our guest can help.

Niraj Kumar (www.leadproje.com -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/thenirajkumar) is a leadership expert and proponent of self-growth through continuous learning. Together we explore his view on leadership, how these skill help you as a project manager, how they help you when dealing with senior executives, and as always we include a lot of tips on how you yourself can improve how you approach project management and leadership starting today.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

It’s time. It’s time for strategic project management to be directly represented at the executive round table, in board meetings, and in the ‘C’-suite. It’s time for singular ownership and accountability for organizational strategic planning and execution. It’s time for dedicated focus on organizational resource planning, allocation and utilization. It’s time for focused attention regarding return on investment, earned value on execution, appropriate risk management and post-execution benefit capture. And finally, it’s time for single-sourced, unambiguous communication regarding strategic balance, allocation of resources and prioritization of the directives that constitute the portfolio of investments that the organization makes on its own behalf.

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What you have just read is the opening paragraph of the article It’s Time for Project Leadership To Have A Seat At The Executive Table written by Paul Williams (http://www.thinkforachange.com/aboutpaul). In it, he emphatically argues that project management is just as important as any of the other more traditional business departments such as marketing, finance or operations.

In our interview, Paul and I review his general argument why project leadership needs a seat at the executive table, what the roles and responsibilities of our representative are, what skills he or she needs, and what you can do as part of your career planning to become that very person.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

Global delivery models have changed the way IT services are delivered and many organizations use them. They are the way of the world. The significant benefits include the ability to provide round the clock services, ensure business continuity, level the playing field through best-in-class consulting, and finally provide key cost advantages for all organizations alike.

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But there are also challenges, because we have now have virtual teams with its members around the world and we may never meet them. So what’s a project leader to do?

Shyamsundar Ramanathan (https://maximisepotential.blogspot.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamsundarramanathan ) says that first of all, the key to success of this kind of delivery model is communication. And then he has seven specific recommendations that will help. In our interview we will define what the global delivery model is, briefly discuss DevOps and then get going with his recommendations and how they will help improve your effectiveness as a project leader of such a global team.

Shyam would like us to mention that the views he expresses in this interview are his own and not those of his employer.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)