I have been in various IT leadership roles since I began my career over 20 years ago and there is nothing quite as challenging or rewarding as being a Project Manager. In addition to all the very important technical skills a project manager needs, such as the ability to create and track a schedule and budget, understand the delivery lifecycle, and report status, a project manager must be a negotiator, a team builder, a collaborator, an influencer and an innovator. These roles require leadership skills of the highest caliber. It is this combination of technical management and leadership skills that makes the position so challenging.
So why is this? The problem is that it is rarely the case that the Project Manager has a clear scope, a team that manages directly, without problems and without anyone outside the project with whom he must influence or negotiate. Project managers are typically required to operate in a matrix environment, where they have little to no control over resources, schedules, or deliverables. They are likely to spend a considerable amount of time negotiating for more resources, trying to influence stakeholders to nail down scope and deliverables, and trying to find innovative ways to deliver to a tight, often time-constrained schedule. time. Through it all, they need to be role models to keep team members engaged and leaders who can effectively manage different types of people from the variety of organizations they must interact with. This is no small feat for a Project Manager of a small project, let alone a larger multi-million dollar IT project than is typical today.
So how can project managers find help and support on their professional journeys, which often turn into journeys of self-discovery and personal growth? There are many courses to teach specific techniques for managing a project, and there is the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential from the Project Management Institute. There are also many project management leadership courses with topics like team building, collaboration, and negotiation. While these courses are invaluable for developing leadership and technical skills, executive coaching is also invaluable for project managers as they find themselves in increasingly complex and stressful environments and strive to institutionalize new learning.
So how can Executive Coaching help? The Executive Trainer (who may be hired directly by the Project Manager’s individual or employer) will begin by understanding the client’s objectives. This will form the basis of the Coaching Agenda – the key objectives to be worked on over a period of time, including guidance from the Project Manager to define what ‘success’ will look like. For the purposes of this article, I am going to assume that the Coaching Agenda is based on the objective of improving the leadership skills of a Project Manager, in the following four areas:
* Higher level of self-awareness
* Improved ability to negotiate and collaborate with stakeholders
* Increased courage and confidence to challenge and innovate
* Improved ability to manage conflicts
The Executive Coach will take the Project Manager through a journey of self-discovery and development, to improve their overall leadership skills and enhance their effectiveness.
self awareness
One of the first things an Executive Coach can do is help clients identify and increase their level of self-awareness. Daniel Goleman popularized the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the critical components of which is self-awareness. There are many assessment tools that can be used to help project managers understand their level of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Such an assessment provides opportunities for one to achieve a higher level of self-understanding, a greater capacity for self-regulation, an understanding of motivation, and a higher level of empathy and social skills. This can help project managers get an accurate picture of what phase of leadership development they are in, as well as identify areas that need to be addressed. Executive coaches will help facilitate and interpret emotional intelligence assessments so that the information can be assimilated and action plans can be implemented to support the overall goal.
Negotiation and Collaboration
Having established a starting point of self-understanding, another critical skill for a Project Manager to strive for is the ability to get positive results from different people, on a variety of teams, with potentially vastly different styles. I had a boss who called this ‘style width’, which means the ability to understand the style and motivation of the person you’re dealing with and modify your own style accordingly, for a more positive outcome for you. all. Using the basis of the EI assessment, an Executive Coach can take the Project Manager further in understanding her own ability to enhance her negotiating style with others.
Another way to improve the Project Manager’s negotiation skills is through tools such as the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This not only deepens our understanding of our own styles, but also improves our ability to recognize different styles in others. I once attended a Project Management class on negotiation with a team of Project Managers that I led, during which an MBTI assessment was done for each person. It was enlightening for us to see the various types in the group and was effective in helping us use the assessment results to find different methods and language for working with others in the organization. The net result was that we all improved our ability to negotiate and collaborate with other individuals and groups.
The data collected in such tools can form the basis of a personal development plan to improve negotiation and collaboration skills. Executive coaches function as thought partners to discuss ideas and approaches, help identify roadblocks and blind spots, and provide support and feedback as the client tests and refines techniques over an extended period. In some circumstances, an executive coach may have the opportunity to observe the client in action as the client puts the new techniques into practice in the workplace. The Trainer will then provide constructive feedback in a safe, non-threatening and non-judgmental environment. This process will allow the client to move from the starting point of self-understanding, through further personal development and enhancement of their leadership skills.
courage and confidence
Two important characteristics of being a successful leader are courage and confidence. This can be illustrated in numerous ways… risking an innovative approach to meet a tight deadline, backing down assertively and appropriately when a business sponsor tries to increase the scope of the project, negotiating with another potentially difficult part of the organization for resources and tools that the project needs. An executive coach will assume the role of trusted advisor and thought partner as the project manager continues to develop these traits and will guide the project manager as he tries various new techniques.
One technique that can be particularly useful is Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI can be used at the organizational or individual level and is the process of bringing strengths and positive experiences from the past into the present and future to achieve positive transformative change. This reminds me of the ‘Lessons Learned’ process that project managers implement with the crucial exception that the only approach to AI is what worked well, how can we do more of that in the future, and how can we implement a more positive. culture advancing.
An executive coach helps project managers apply this process to themselves, using a series of visualization exercises to identify key experiences from the past. As part of this, the Project Manager will identify the strengths that were used in those peak experiences and how they might be used now and in the future. This focus on strengths results in a significant increase in customer trust. It can also be combined with another assessment tool, ‘Strengthsfinder’, based on Tom Rath’s book. The premise is that it is much easier to make more of our strengths than to ‘fix’ our weaknesses, so a person’s top 5 strengths are identified out of a possible 34. In combination with AI, this is a very powerful technique in building the courage and confidence of a Project Manager. An Executive Trainer will guide the Project Manager through the process, helping to define action plans to design and sustain change for the future. An Executive Trainer will work with the Project Manager to tie these techniques into the established training agenda and support them as they use them to meet their project and development objectives.
managing conflict
Conflict management is another challenge for Project Managers. Matrix projects can give rise to conflicts simply because of the very nature of the organization’s structure. Add to that the natural tendency of any team to experience conflict at some point, and conflict management skill becomes critical to a Project Manager’s success. The Strengths Implementation Inventory (SDI) is a particularly useful assessment tool in that one aspect looks at how people operate in conflict situations. This can be invaluable in identifying not only our own style under conflict, but also the styles of others. An Executive Coach can then help a client understand the effective use of different languages or behaviors to navigate through conflict for a more positive outcome. In another project management class that my Project Managers and I attended, this tool was used to help us identify our three-stage ‘conflict sequence’, that is, the stages in which we react to conflict. It is much easier to resolve a conflict when a) we can resolve it early on before the conflict gets too deep and b) when we understand the sequence of conflict of the people we are dealing with. Some of us predicted our conflict sequences; others were surprised. We all learned a new way to communicate in conflict situations, and as a result, we all achieved better resolutions.
So, in summary, what does a Project Manager gain working with an Executive Coach? The relationship between the Executive Coach and the Project Manager is long-standing, so the Coach can help a Project Manager to use the training they have gone through and the data collected through the use of assessment tools to achieve sustainable changes. to achieve your goals. The Trainer can train a Project Manager to grow from someone who has the technical skills to manage a schedule and budget, to a strong leader who delivers successful projects not only using technical skills, but also their collaboration, negotiation, and newly honed influence, with a confidence that allows others to recognize you as a true leader. The Executive Coach will keep the client aligned with the overall coaching agenda, as well as support the client in institutionalizing the changes over time. As the learning continues, the challenges of project management decrease and the rewards increase.
