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Tag: Communication

PMTimes_Dec14_2022

Authentic and Vulnerable Leadership: Ways to Put it into Practice Today

Written by Elli Tsaloukas on . Posted in Articles.

“Authentic”, “vulnerable”, “empathic”, “emotionally intelligent”… these are positive attributes often sought in leaders and cited as essential elements of effective leadership in the contemporary work environment. But how deeply are these concepts really understood, and how can they genuinely be expressed day-to-day?

But first… What does authentic and vulnerable leadership really mean?

To answer that question, we must first define What is a leader? A leader can be defined as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and who has the courage to develop that potential. Leadership is not necessarily based on a position you hold or authority you are given. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do and should be seen as a shared relationship between yourself and those you lead.

To become vulnerable and authentic as a leader, you must understand what armor you wear, and disarm yourself. ‘Armor’ can look like many different things such as being withdrawn/withholding information, seeking to please and appease or trying to gain power over others using tactics such as shame. None of these approaches will have positive outcomes on the wellbeing of your team or activities, so it’s essential that you understand any such biases, assumptions and behaviors that may be limiting your effectiveness as a leader.

You may also need to shift your understanding of vulnerability. Which is not, as it may commonly be thought of as, a weakness. It is showing up with an open heart and mind so that you can act in the best interests of your team and the work at hand.

Putting it into practice: Ways to communicate with vulnerability and integrity

Leadership is never put to the test more than when challenges arise among projects or teams and difficult conversations must be had. Rather than negative challenges, however, you can see these as ideal opportunities to practice your authenticity and vulnerability as a leader and explore the positive effects these qualities can have on desired outcomes.

Here are four practical steps you can use to prepare and approach a difficult conversation with vulnerability and authenticity:

  1. Prepare yourself
  • Understand the history and current circumstances
    • Who is involved/impacted?
    • Have you been part of the problem?
    • What would an ideal outcome be?
  • Think broadly about a resolution: how might this look for this particular person/situation?
  • What are options are available to achieve this?
  • What positive benefits can you foresee?
  • What support will be required now and in the future to achieve lasting change?

 

  1. Prepare your message
  • What do you really want to communicate?
  • What’s your opening statement?
  • How might they respond?
  • If they won’t acknowledge your feedback, what will you do next? Might you tell them what you intend to do and why it’s important for the greater goals of the team/work?
  • General conversation tips:
    • Clearly deliver the facts
    • Keep calm
    • Don’t get emotional
    • Avoid aggression or blame
    • Stay objective
    • Be helpful (you have good intentions)
    • Pause and really listen to their responses.

 

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  1. Prepare the environment
  • What information do you need to give the other party to help them prepare properly?
  • What is the best time for the conversation?
  • Where will you have the conversation? Neutral ground? Over coffee?
  • Do you/they need a third party present?
  • Most importantly, how are you going to build psychological safety?

 

  1. Prepare the person
  • Will you let them know in advance what the conversation is about?
  • If so, what do you need to tell them?
  • How much notice should you give them?
  • What else do you need to do or do they need to know?

 

With all of this preparation done, you are ready to have your dialogue. A simple framework for authentic dialogue can look like:

  • Name the issue.
  • Select a specific example that illustrates the behavior or situation you want to change.
  • Describe your emotions about this issue.
  • Clarify what is at stake.
  • Identify your contribution to this problem (as relevant).
  • Indicate your wish to resolve the issue.
  • Invite your partner to respond.

What does authentic and vulnerable leadership look like to you? How do you put it into practice as a leader?

PMTimes_Dec6_2022

The Power of Active Listening

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

“ It is only in listening that one learns.” J. Krishnamurti

Communicating is central to optimal performance. Listening is a powerful capability for success. It is the most critical part of communicating. As a project manager, or in any role, in any relationship, listening both shows respect for others and informs you, so you are better able to learn and respond effectively. Listening enables a meeting of the minds.

 

Hearing, Listening, and Active Listening

Listening is different from hearing. Hearing is passive. A sound is received by the ears and registers in the brain.

Listening is active. It exercises focus, self awareness, and social intelligence. It is giving attention to (“I am listening to what you are saying”), making an effort to hear (“I am listening for a signal”), or it can mean to act on what someone says (“The kids/my boss/the staff just don’t listen”). Not listening is ignoring or not making the effort to hear and understand.

 

In the context of relationships, leadership, and management, we have changed the meaning of to listen from “give one’s attention to a sound”[1] to give attention to the communication experience. We refer to this as active listening. active listening is not just about sound. It is paying attention to the full experience of the sounds, words being spoken (or written), tone of voice, facial expression, body language, and  “vibe” or emotional state.   Active listening involves questioning to validate understanding. And it includes listening to one’s inner voice and feelings.

 

Meeting of the Minds

Communication is an act of sharing. It consists of giving, listening, and understanding. It is most effective when it achieves communion – the sharing of detailed and thorough thoughts and feelings to reach a meeting of the minds – mutual; understanding. Active listening promotes mutual understanding.

Some may question whether the sharing of thoughts and, especially, feelings has a place in organizations and business relationships. This kind of sharing does not mean sharing one’s deepest feelings when that is inappropriate. But with detailed and thorough knowledge, there can be the mutual understanding that leads to better decisions and healthier relationships.

Mutual understanding transforms the state of mind of the participants. It implies that the people involved meet one another with open mindedness and the intention to understand one another’s meaning. With that kind of understanding, team members are motivated to act, to follow through on agreements, or to know that the there is disagreement.

 

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A Scenario

I recently requested information from a colleague. I was clear that obtaining the information was important to me and he made it clear that while he was aware of that, he was not going to share it.

We had a meeting of the minds. It was an agreement to disagree.

 

My sense was that while he was listening to me and I to him, we were not thorough in our sharing. We had listened to one another’s words. I had listened to my feelings, and they gave me the sense that he had not shared the underlying reason for his position.

I was satisfied that my sense of a hidden agenda was not driven by my disappointment but from an interpretation of his tone and unwillingness to address his motivation. Unless he shares it, I can only guess at his thinking. While we had a meeting of the minds regarding the content, we did not meet on a deeper, more meaningful level.

You might ask, “What does meet on a more meaningful level have to do with project management and performance?” The answer is that when there is unwillingness to honestly share, relationships suffer. When relationships suffer, performance suffers.

 

Listening is a Challenge

“And for most of us, listening is one of the most difficult things to do. It is a great art, far greater than any other art.”  J. Krishnamurti Excerpt from What Are You Looking For?

Listening promotes healthy relationships and optimal performance. But it is a challenge. It requires the intention to actively listen, and the mindful self-awareness to know if you are paying attention or are distracted by our own thoughts and feelings; to assess your patience, and focus.

Are you busily planning what to say next or caught up in judging yourself or others? Are you verifying that the other party has understood what you meant and that you accurately understood what they meant?

For example, I have a habit interrupting others because I think I have understood their meaning before they have finished talking. Most of the time I do understand, and often they are going on and on repeating the same thing. But my interrupting is driven by impatience. It violates one of the most important parts of listening, respecting others’ need to express themselves.

 

Questions as a Way Of Listening

Working with my impatience (habits are hard to change), I am learning to step back and let the other party speak his piece. If I feel it is useful, I interrupt with a question. For example, “What I think you are saying is … . Do I have that right?” Questioning in this way shows that you are interested in what is being said and gives the other party an opportunity to see if you do understand and to correct or further describe their content. Questioning can also be a way of making sure the other party is paying attention and that there is successful communication.

 

What if the Other Party Isn’t Listening

Communication seeks mutual understanding. Listening is an individual act. When one party is not listening, communication is limited, mutual understanding is not achieved.

In the midst of conversation, there are ways to manage the situation to get the other party to listen. One way is to stop talking. It gets the other party’s attention and once you have it you can continue. Questioning is another useful way. In this context, you can say “I’d like to make sure I am being clear. Would you mind telling me what you think I’m saying?” Questioning engages the other and lets you know if they were listening and whether they ‘got’ what you were trying to get across. It transforms the conversation from a lecture to a dialogue.

 

Seek to Improve

In the long run there is a need for training in communication skills.

Start with yourself. Assess your skills, particularly your listening skills, and make a commitment to get them to be as sharp and effective as possible.

Then do what you can to promote effective communication in your team and other relationships. You can raise awareness by implementing a team training or engaging a coach or facilitator.

 

[1] Oxford Languages
PMTimes_Nov15_2022

Healthy Teams Achieve More

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

The carpet in an office building’s main floor elevator lobby read, T-Together E-Everyone A-Achieves M-More.

 

Having worked on many healthy teams I can attest to the power of teamwork. But then I thought, “do the teams in this organization live the slogan? Do they understand why dysfunctional teams achieve L less? Do they understand what dysfunctional teams and healthy teams are? ”

When you replace the M with an L you turn your team into a TEAL – a small freshwater duck. But joking aside, not every team does more.

Healthy teams do achieve more. Dysfunctional teams result in demoralized team members and inadequate results. So, if you want to make sure teams are healthy, that they achieve their goals, avoid unnecessary conflict, manage the necessary disagreements well, and learn from their experience, then look to the process.

 

Everyone Together

When it comes to teams, the key words are T-together and E-everyone. If the team members are together a team can achieve more than the sum of what the individual members can achieve on their own.

But what does together really mean? Team members may be together at the same time physically co-located or virtual. They may be together because someone assigned them to the team, or they joined on their own. But the most meaningful way they can be together is to mutually understand the goal, the work to be done to achieve it, and the way they will do it. Do team members have common purpose. Do they have their act together, are they sufficiently skilled and organized to achieve their goals?

And what if not E-everyone is together? If anyone on the team is not aligned with the goal, process, and values, there is an unstable foundation for team performance. The goal of storming and norming in team development is to achieve unanimity through dialogue, analysis, and negotiation.

Whether physically co-located, dispersed, or virtual, if everyone is T-Together regarding process and goal the team will be healthy.

 

Process Awareness.

The key to effective performance is to make sure team members are aware of process, both their personal process and the team’s process. Process awareness means understanding that since everything is the result of a process – a set of actions and relationships that lead to an outcome – changing the process will change the outcome.

Personal process is one’s “innerworkings.” This is the realm of mindfulness, self-awareness, psychology, emotional and social intelligence. The outcomes of the inner process are speech and behavior expressed in relationships and performance.

The team’s process includes the way the members communicate, solve problems, manage projects and products, manage relationships, conflict, and expectations, and how they critically assess performance. Values, culture, roles, responsibilities, authority, and the tools and methods to be used to achieve the goal are all part of the process.

With process awareness as a base the team can agree upon values and goals, and the tools, techniques, and procedures they will use. If they take the time and effort to assess, adapt, fine tune, and improve the process.

 

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Resistance to Process Awareness

It is difficult to argue rationally against process awareness. And yet, we find many teams that never address the way they work together.  Here is an example:

There is a small team in which one member refused to follow procedures  causing her teammates extra work and stress and resulting in delays for clients. That team had procedures but the members were not together even though they shared physical space. The team lacked effective communication, common values, and clarity about roles, responsibility, and authority. There was no meaningful performance assessment. The most important missing ingredients in this situation were communications and leadership.

 

Going Beyond the Obstacles

By confronting them, a team can go beyond these obstacles. In the end it may be necessary to change the process or to expel a team member who refuses to or is unable to come T-Together and be part of E-Everyone.

The confrontation may be initiated within the team, by client complaints, or by external management. It is motivated by the desire to improve performance and quality of life. Without confronting the issues that get in the way of optimal performance, improvement is unlikely.

 

Critical Factors

Confronting the problem involves five critical factors for improving team health: problem definition, cause analysis, performance assessment, on a foundation of candid communication and a shared value of continuous improvement.

 

Define the Problem

In our example, the problem’s symptoms are long waits by clients and frustrated team members. Frustration leads to unnecessary conflict and to a sense that management doesn’t care. More universally, the problem is team performance that can be improved.

Problem definition relies on the open communication of the symptoms. Communication is enabled by having regular performance assessments. Without that, identifying the problem requires the courage of individual team members to “blow the whistle” on issues, and risks that clients will be the “whistle blowers.”

 

Identify the Causes

There are many causes of poor team performance. For example, individuals who do not care about achieving the team’s goals, self-centeredness, not understanding roles and responsibilities, ignorance of the procedures, ineffective procedures, lack of skill, etc.

Everyone knows cause analysis is an essential part of improving performance. Yet resistance to candid cause analysis is still a great barrier to effective teamwork. This barrier is caused by sensitivities regarding personal process, blame, fear, perfectionism, and not accepting that errors are part of the process.

The sensitivities reinforce the attitude that “we don’t have time for looking at how we work, we can barely get all of our work done as it is.” This attitude is further reinforced by leadership that does not value process management and is unwilling to address interpersonal factors..

 

Apply Process Management

If you want healthy teams, look to the process. To change outcomes, change the process.

In our case example, the process was broken. Leadership failed to identify, assess, and address the problem, they had no process management process. The team members, in the absence of effective leadership, did not take initiative to raise the issue or resolve it themselves. Process awareness was missing. No-one was managing the process.

Are your teams achieving M-More? Is process awareness part of your culture? Do you take the time and effort to make sure E-Everyone is T-Together.

 

See the following articles for more on performance management:
PMTimes_Nov8_2022

Best of PMTimes: Top Project Risk Management Strategies And Practices

Written by Charles Richard on . Posted in Articles.

Published on September 24, 2019

 

Every project is attached with a risk of failure.

Hence, it should be your top responsibility to identify and plan ahead in order to avoid these points of failure. A risk can be a threat with a negative impact on the project principles or it can either be an opportunity which leads to a positive effect. But, there are various strategies to deal with both the positive and negative risks when we talk about project management. Project Management includes new IT systems, new products, and new markets or changes in the business environment to take regulatory or competitive actions.

Project risk management is revolving around identifying the threat level of existing business processes. The ultimate challenge for the project manages is to get the expert teams in functional areas who consist of proper knowledge of business processes and systems aligned for achieving new goals. Along with this, it is mandatory to get the required transparency into the activities which are agreed upon for project execution and how to prioritize the issues that surface every phase of the project.

In this article, we will be looking at some key strategies and practices that can be incorporated to reduce the risks and achieve the desired project goal.

 

Differentiate Between Risk Events And Project Risk

It is essential for every project manager to differentiate between both these terms as it helps to analyze the project risk before planning out strategies. A risk event is defined as a set of circumstances that has a negative impact on the project meeting or one of the project goals whereas Project risk is the exposure of the stakeholders towards the consequences of alterations in the output.

Risk Events are a sort of singular incident that can wreck the whole project. You can think about a secret weapon that is dropping out or a mistake in a 3D printer which can postpone making a model. In opposition to this, project risk is progressively formless and considered as an aggregate of all the individual risk events and vulnerabilities. It might be possible that risk event does not result in project failure but the project risk can certainly end up creating disaster. It is difficult to manage the project risk as there are circumstances that happen outside your control which you have not planned for.

 

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Develop Separate Plans For Explicit And Implicit Risk Management

When you deal with the risk events and the entire project risks, it requires the project managers to develop different plans at various levels. One is an Explicit risk management plan which deals with an individual risk event and revolves around identifying, analyzing and responding or controlling the individual risks. Another one is Implicit risk management risk that deals with overall project risk and revolves around analyzing the project structure, content, context, and scope.

Explicit risk management plans by enabling you to make a rundown of the considerable number of segments in the undertaking and the odds of bombing them. This needs to get a more profound knowledge into the past records, industry benchmarks and standard practices of distinguishing an inappropriate thing. On the other hand, the implicit risk management plans are created in the pre-project phase itself where you have to analyze everything besides the individual risks that can lead to the project failure.

 

Different Ways To Identify Risks

As the agency grows so does its experience of risks. After a specific number of tasks, you don’t find that the dangers rehash themselves. It can spare you a huge amount of time on the off chance that you build up a procedure to inventory these dangers when you run comparable undertakings later on. Here, are some variant ways to figure out the risks. It is not mandatory to use all the given tactics but you can use it according to your needs.

Checklist analysis: This approach involves creating a checklist of your present processes and resources. By doing so, you can ensure whether the targets are getting hit or require any further push for the same.

Expert Analysis: In this approach, you need to ask an experienced project member, stakeholders and domain experts regarding the potential risks. Also, you can interview them about the risks which they have encountered in the past projects and get an idea based on their opinions.

Risk Repository: The risk repository ought to turn into the main stop for the risk distinguishing proof procedure. It is a list of all the essential risks that are encountered in finished projects along with their solutions. The ultimate idea is that there can be an overlap in the objectives of the project and also in the risks.

Status report extrapolation: Here, you need to consider all the available reports be its status report, progress report or quality report to determine the extrapolate risk from them.

Wrap Up

Despite the fact that risk management has developed into a perceived control, it has still not arrived at its pinnacle and can get additionally created. We have tried to mention the main areas where you can focus more to ensure control over the project failures and risks. Till then – keep learning!

PMTimes_Nov2_2022

Do I Hear an Amen?

Written by Dorice Horenstein on . Posted in Articles.

Subconscious biases and habits of mind dominate or influence 85% to 95% of our emotions, judgments, reactions, decisions, behaviors, actions, and results.

What’s your reaction to what you just read?

When I heard that during WBECS’s coaching education platform led by Peter Demarest, a thought leader in the integration of axiology and neuroscience, I was surprised. I knew that the subconscious had a lot of influence on us. I was not ready to hear that our sub-conscience has this much influence!

Knowing this now, I was challenged with the following: how can I use my mind to keep my head from undermining the wisdom of my heart so that I can be my best self and live my best life and help others do the same?

In other words, how can we change, expand, and influence our thinking so we play in the A Game of our abilities?

The answer is unequivocally this: by tuning into our hearts, which encompasses all the values that we deem important.

Our values are the driving factors of our success.

We all have values we believe in. Yet how often do we not live up to the values that we hold in high esteem? How often do we react based on our perceptions, beliefs, and judgments and our values fly out the door?

 

One client recently shared with me that courage and bravery were one of her top values. Yet, she was paralyzed in making decisions and moving forward. Another client shared that their relationship with family was top value, yet they were describing a 16-hour professional workday and the need to cancel a family vacation. And it is not only these two clients. We all at times “trip over our own values.”

Perhaps an important question is how we access more of our brain capacity and awareness of self. In Demarest’s book, The Central Question of Life, Love and Leadership, he focuses on the one question that I often use in my own life, especially when working with individuals and teams:

 

What choice can I make and what action can I take at this moment to create the greatest net value?

 

We all make daily choices. How do we know, however, that the choice we make today will lead us to our desired outcome?

In my practice, I have coined the acronym AMEN to CORE, a 4-step principle that when practiced consistently over time creates a value base success for individuals and organizations.

 

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A stand for Awareness of life and awareness of your purpose, whether individual or organizational. What are you here to achieve? What is the reason that leads you to think that? What are you becoming aware of if you allow this quiet contemplation to brew in your mind? What do you hear as the whispering of your soul?

 

Men stand for Mental Fitness. The idea of being mentally trained follows not only being aware of what sabotages you but the ways you can lean into your sage perspective, which advocates that every outcome can be turned into a gift and opportunity if we let it! The choices that we make have an immeasurable impact on our future. Mental Fitness provides us with a quicker recovery from the choices that led us to an undesirable path and opens our minds with curiosity to discover other available choices.

 

CO stands for Communication. Measure how you speak and how you listen. How coherent are you in your approach? How do you communicate your contribution to maximize your impact?

 

RE stands for Resilience. How committed are you to the path that you create or agree to pursue? What are the ways you are not only accountable but also responsible for achieving your goals and purpose? How consistent and persistent are you?

 

Let’s go back and ask Peter’s central question. What choice can I make and what action can I take at this moment to create the greatest net value? The stronger your mental muscle the more effective your results will be.

 

And here is the big one-million-dollar question- how do you get there?

 

When working on your awareness, consider the following:

  • What do I believe in? What are the values I regard as my north star? (I suggest taking a value-based assessment).
  • What attributes do I need to develop so that I can live my values proudly?
  • What tendencies do I have that may undermine my effectiveness? What triggers them?
  • Knowing that you are triggered by _____. What can you do to bring a more value-based perspective to ______? What would stop you?
  • What value are you committing to living out today?

 

When conversing with others, use the following three short techniques to begin a conversation without judgment:

  • Turn “should” to “could.” How would you feel if someone told you “John, you should do ______ and you should do ______?” Replacing “should” with “could” has the potential to minimize the judgmental tone of your request.

 

  • Replace “why” with “what.” “Why did you do that?” “Why are you___?” may make others feel defensive. Instead, consider asking “what about this situation made you feel ____? What were you hoping to achieve when you did ____?

 

When we change and broaden our thinking, our perspectives, beliefs, and habits change. When we make choices based on our values, we end up living our purpose. When we consider what happened and ask ourselves, “What now?” we bring our A Game wherever we go!