ePM Training Services

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.

Project Success Project Success

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!

Project Success Project Management Training, Project Success