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We mentioned in Project Management Training that IQ – “intellectual competence” - is also necessary for project managers. For completeness, we need to examine this further.

Here’s the definition of the IQ leadership competence as proposed by Dulewicz and Higgs (2003):

• Critical Analysis and judgment
• Vision and imagination
• Strategic perspective

We should mention here that IQ (leadership competence) is different to IQ (intelligence quotient) that some of us were subjected to at school.  An intelligence quotient is a score from one of several different tests attempting to measure a person’s intelligence. We won’t tackle the debate about whether it is desirable, or even possible to accurately define someone’s intelligence. The IQ’s of a large number of people can be modeled with a Normal Distribution, around the figure of 100.

The American Psychological Association’s report Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns states that other individual characteristics such as interpersonal skills, aspects of personality etc. are probably of equal or greater importance than IQ.

Others have argued that IQ is the best tool to help figure out who to hire at any career stage as it is independent of experience, personality bias or any formal training the subject has acquired.

Here at EPM Training Services we believe that Intelligence Quotient is another tool that can help us in certain limited circumstances, and should be used with care. IQ tests might not be appropriate in today’s multicultural societies, as they measure what white middle-class academics regard as intelligence. Performance in them may simply measure length of time spent in education.

Moving back to Intellectual Competence:

Critical Analysis and judgment might involve determining the meaning and significance of what is observed or expressed, and determining whether there is adequate justification to accept a particular conclusion as true.

Vision and imagination can involve the ability to see mental images in your mind of something that exists, and also the ability to imagine objects, situations or circumstances that do not exist now. Imagination involves all the five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell or touch.

Strategic perspective involves developing a long-term, broad-based perspective on successful project initiatives, and converting the vision into an action plan. The project manager also needs to revises the strategy in the light of changing circumstances.

We’ll also mention a few general details about intelligence, gathered from various psychology text-books:

• Intelligence reaches a peak around the age of 30 (Wechsler, 1955).
• Older generations inevitably have lower general intelligence due to poorer diet. People today are smarter (Schaie, 1983).
• (Talland, 1968) found that participants aged 77 to 89 remembered less than half the number of items that a 20-25 year old age group could recall on a short-term memory test.
• (Kimmel, 1990) suggested that older people show highly competent memory skills in areas such as long-term recall or expert memory skills.

We recommend enhancing your intellectual competence by keeping active, healthy, and empowering yourself by gaining knowledge from books, the internet, and attending relevant training courses.

EPM Training Services organizes and runs project management training courses for our clients. We are therefore very interested in the results of those training programs. Are they beneficial to the participants and their employers? How do we measure the results of training in an organization?

Assessing the effectiveness of training is often performed using the four-level model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick, whose ideas were first published in 1959. The four levels of Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model essentially measure:

• Reaction of student (their thoughts, feelings and perceptions about the training). Did they like it? Was the material relevant to their work? This type of evaluation is often called a “happy-sheet” which students complete at the end of any training session.

• Learning (the increase in knowledge or capability as a result of the training). Evaluation at this level attempts to assess how far students have advanced in skills, knowledge, or attitude. Measurement methods include formal to informal testing, team assessment, and self-assessment.This might involve participants taking an assessment before the training (pretest) and after training (post test) to determine the amount of learning that has been transferred.

• Behavior (the extent of behavior and capability improvement and application). Are the newly acquired skills, knowledge, or attitude being used in the everyday environment of the learner?

• Results (effects on the business or environment resulting from the trainee’s performance). This level measures the success of the training program in business terms including increased productivity, better quality, decreased costs, reduced frequency of accidents, and increased sales.

Notice anything missing here? What about Return On Investment (ROI)?

The financial benefits of training can’t be measured in terms of student reactions, nor the amount of  learning that has been achieved, or even the extent to which behavior may have changed. The real benefits come from improved performance – traditionally the hardest training outcome to measure.

Jack J. Phillips proposed that we use ROI as the fifth-level of evaluation. Did the monetary value of the results exceed the cost for the program? This is probably going to be the most difficult thing for the poor overworked Human Resources Department to measure, as it’s only the very senior management who are able to get access to this information. Therefore, senior level support is essential. The cost of measurement is also going to be high. Recognizing this, Phillips proposes a 5% evaluation target for this level of assessment (compared to a 100% target for Level-1). A company would only want to undertake this increased level of assessment for the highest cost, or highest visibility, project management training programs.

Here’s the book:  How To Measure Training Results

ROI is defined like this:

(Net Program Benefits) / (Program Costs) X 100 = ROI

Total benefits include money saved by the organization, and money made.

Total costs include the obvious and the not-so-obvious: Development costs, learner’s time away from work, overhead of HR department, materials, meals, refreshments, facilities, cost of coordination, cost of job coverage during training, and any other cost incurred.

Measuring the outcome of your project management training is an essential part of any training program, and will show you the value of training  and justify the investment.

Many of today’s project leaders have a great wealth of technical knowledge.  They perform sophisticated tasks, develop great solutions, and create innovative products.  They are technically intelligent, but many lack the leadership, interpersonal and social skills necessary to lead.

Project leadership requires building and sustaining a relationship of mutual trust, harmony and understanding with each individual in the project team. One way to make this happen is through assessing and matching the cue patterns from the words, eye movements and gestures of the other party, and always using positive language.

Consider how you use language in everyday communications, and the effect it can have on the person with whom you are communicating.

Imagine if your young son walks in and you say:

” See your granddad over there in his chair?  Go and ask him how his arthritis is today.”

The boy goes over to his grandfather.  “Granddad, how’s your arthritis today?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s bad, son.  It’s always worse during damp weather.  I can hardly move my fingers today.”  The old man sighed.  A look of pain crossed his face.

The boy comes back to you.  “Granddad said it was bad.  I think it hurts him”.

You continue:  “Now go over and ask Granddad what was the funniest thing that you did when you were very young”.

The boy went over to his grandfather.  “Granddad, what’s the funniest thing I ever did when I was very young?”, he asked.

The old man’s face lit up with a smile.  “Oh, there were lots of things.  There was the time when you and your friend played snowmen and sprinkled talcum powder all over the bathroom pretending it was snow; I laughed – lucky I didn’t have to clean it up”.

He looked into the distance with another smile.  “Then there was the time I took you out for a walk.  You were loudly singing a nursery rhyme you had just learned.  A man went past and gave you a nasty look.  He asked me to tell you to be quiet.  You turned round and said to him, “If you don’t like me singing, you can go bury your head”.  And carried on even louder…”  The old man laughed.

The boy comes back to you: “Did you hear what Granddad said?”.

“Yes”, you reply.  “You changed how he felt with a few words”.

The way we think affects the language we use and in turn, affects our behaviour.

There is a model, developed in the 1970s, called Neuro-Linguistics Programming (NLP), which can help to enhance communication, personal change and personal development. This model allows you to make full use of your brain and language to achieve effective communication and leadership excellence, with positive language at the heart of effective communication.

There seem to be many definitions of “Emotional Intelligence” (EQ), so let’s look at the skills specific to project managers, and how they might be improved in project management training.

Here’s the definition of the seven EQ leadership competencies as proposed by Dulewicz and Higgs (2003):

• Self-awareness
• Emotional resilience
• Motivation
• Sensitivity
• Influence
• Intuitiveness
• Conscientiousness

All very desirable traits, but very difficult to improve through a standard training course or presentation involving lectures. Let’s have a detailed look at each of the points above.

Self-awareness

The ability to read one’s own emotions and recognize their impact. This implies an accurate self–assessment, and self confidence.

Emotional resilience

Your ability to adapt to stressful situations or crises. Resilient people can adapt to adversity without lasting difficulty.

Sensitivity

Awareness of the needs and emotions of others.

Influence

Your ability or power to persuade or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, of others.

Intuitiveness

Having or possessing intuition; which is the direct perception of truth or fact independent of any reasoning process; or a keen insight.

Conscientiousness

This means you are  controlled by your conscience; which is the inner sense of what is right or wrong in conduct or motives, leading you to take the right action or to follow the dictates of conscience. The ethical and moral principles that control or inhibit your actions or thoughts.

Training or Experience?

It is our opinion that many of the above traits will be acquired by direct experience. For example, if you have gone through a particularly emotional event such as divorce or bereavement then you will have direct experience of resilience. You will be able to emerge from the event stronger and more resilient if you learn from the experience rather than succumbing to stress. Counseling and coaching can also be helpful here.

In terms of project management training; any soft-skills course can help to develop an increased awareness of your own abilities, particularly if the training involves an assessment instrument and some 360 degree feedback from other people (this is feedback that comes from all around a person, referring to the 360 degrees in a circle, with an individual imagined to be in the centre of the circle. Feedback is provided by subordinates, peers, and supervisors).

Again, it’s important to learn from this kind of experience and not get upset about other peoples comments. Seek out a training course with a suitable assessment instrument and use the training experience to become more self-aware.

Things have changed since our previous posting on Success in Project Management from 28 April. The Project Management Institute (PMI) have just published the results of the regular “Pulse of the Profession” survey (‘PMI Today’ magazine May 2009), designed to track trends in the practice of project management. Unlike the Standish report, PMI tracks results over a wide range of project types. Here at ePM we always look at the latest surveys to check how the competence of project managers is improving (or not) as a result of project management training.

The PMI survey shows an increase in project success rates over the results of an identical survey run in 2006. Here’s what they say:

• Percentage of projects finishing on time: 55% (up from 53% in 2006)
• Percentage of projects finishing within budget: 58% (up from 55%)
• Percentage of projects meeting original business goals: 72%

They also discovered that a higher level of project management maturity and the use of standardized project management practices leads to better project performance, according to the survey respondents.

Notice how the PMI survey generally uses positive language, such as “% of projects finishing on time”, whereas Standish apparently prefer to measure negative things like “% of projects that were late”.  I prefer to focus on the positive. Do we have to keep beating ourselves up about being late, over budget, canceled, failed?

I read further in the survey and discovered another interesting piece of good news – disguised in the impenetrable middle-management jargon that pervades much business writing:  78% of project managers surveyed ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘somewhat agreed’ that they have a responsibility to align project activities with the social, economic and environmental expectations of all stakeholders. I think this means ‘don’t be evil’ or something similar. Would a certain sports shoe manufacturer say “we need a framework to implement an action-based proactive strategic thrust to align project activities with stakeholder requirements” or “just do it”?

The bad news is that 51% of projects experienced scope-creep, or uncontrolled changes in project scope, so this is clearly an area we need to improve.

And the biggest challenge for project managers from the survey? Scope Management

So there you have it. Project managers believe that things are getting better, and the advancement of standardized PM practices is helping. We believe that project management training will help to develop the skills that all project managers need. If  Scope Management is such a challenge, then how can you possibly hope to improve without some training in that knowledge area?

And we’ll keep checking the surveys until we find one that ‘proves’ our point!

In the previous posting about Project Management Training we mentioned that MQ – “managerial competence”, or knowledge and skills of management functions - is a necessary skill for project managers. So just what, exactly, is involved in “MQ”?

Consider this definition of the MQ leadership competence as proposed by Dulewicz and Higgs (2003):

• Engaging communication
• Managing resources
• Empowering
• Developing
• Achieving

Engaging communication starts with a Communication Plan for your project, and includes the ability to make engaging presentations to project stakeholders in various formats. You will often be called upon to make presentations to various project stakeholders, including formal and informal meetings and small to large scale gatherings

Managing resources includes the ability to use appropriate tools to manage the people and physical resources involved in the project

Empowering means creating the conditions for your team to grow, and allowing others to make their own decisions

Developing includes providing training and opportunities for your team, and for yourself

Achieving involves reaching project and personal goals in order to create a feeling of self-actualization

There are a great many project management training courses that address each area above. You should aim to develop your competency in all the areas to be most effective, and to empower yourself with the skills necessary to manage your project team.

We seem to hear a lot about ‘success’ and ‘failure’ of projects and Project Management. I find this to be a very interesting subject, as it relates to the effectiveness of project management training.

I recently received a summary of the Standish Group’s report, “CHAOS Summary 2009″. Here’s what they say:

This year’s results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding, 44% were challenged (late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions) and 24% failed (canceled prior to completion or delivery and never used)

Standish defines ‘success’ like this:

Projects success means delivering on time, on budget, with required features and functions

But is this really a full definition of ‘success’? An interesting study by Dr. J. Rodney Turner and Ralf Muller in their book “Choosing Appropriate Project Managers” has a much more detailed definition of success:

• Meeting the project’s overall performance (functionality, budget, and timing)
• Meeting user requirements
• Meeting the project’s purpose
• Client satisfaction with the project results
• Re-occurring business with the client
• End-user satisfaction with the project’s product or service
• Supplier’s satisfaction
• Project team’s satisfaction
• Other stakeholder’s satisfaction
• Meeting the respondent’s self-defined success factor

If we use this broader definition of ‘success’, then there are many implications for us as project managers. For example, are you measuring end-user satisfaction? Or supplier satisfaction? Did you even bother to ask other stakeholders about their definition of success?

Experienced Project managers use Project Stakeholder Management to better understand the success criteria of all project stakeholders, and this enables them to take action to make their projects successful, beyond the simple time/cost/scope definitions that we normally use.

In order to excel in our jobs as Project Managers, we need to use project management training to gain competency and improve our skills in three different areas:

1. People
2. Processes
3. Tools

Let’s examine each area in more detail:

1. People

This generally refers to our ability to relate with, manage, and lead the people involved in our projects. The skills required can be considered to fall into three different areas of competency:

• IQ (your basic level of intelligence and ability to solve problems)
• MQ (your ability to manage and communicate with other people)
• EQ (your level of emotional awareness, self-knowledge, and ability to relate to others).

2. Processes

There are many processes available to Project Managers. For example, there are processes for creating a Project Charter, for producing the Project Work Breakdown Structure, Network Diagram, defining a budget etc etc. Here at ePM Training Services we follow the processes defined in the Project Management Institute (PMI) “Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK), as this contains a very thorough description of all the processes involved in running a project. These processes cover all project phases: Initiation, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing.

3. Tools

Again, there are very many tools for us to use that will help to get the project work done more efficiently, for example telephones, email and video conferencing communications tools.  There are software packages for designing work breakdown structures and scheduling projects, and even the humble word processor and spreadsheet can all help us in our jobs.

Training

I wonder how many project managers have actually been formally trained in the best-practices of all three areas? Our suggestion is that you seek out the project management training that will help you to improve in all three areas above. This is the biggest thing you can do to empower yourself, especially when jobs are difficult to find. If you are already an expert in management and software tools, then you should consider a soft-skills course in how to negotiate, how to influence, or become more self-aware.

After all, if you don’t know your own motivations, strengths and weaknesses, then how can you manage others effectively?