ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Randall L. Englund, MBA, BSEE, NPDP, CBM, is an author, speaker, trainer, professional facilitator, and founder, principal, and executive consultant for the Englund Project Management Consultancy (www.englundpmc.com). He also f’acilitates project management seminars for the Project Management Institute and conducts courses at University of California extensions and for other professional associations.

Randy draws upon experiences as a former senior project manager with Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) for 22 years. In a corporate project management initiative, he led the continuous improvement of project management across the company and documented best practices in ActionSheets; in business units, he released high-technology products, developed a system life cycle, resolved architectural issues, researched effective practices for project success, and designed management processes, courses, and distance learning. Prior to working with HP, he served as a field service engineer and installation supervisor for GE Medical Systems.

He has an MBA degree in management from San Francisco State University and a BS in electrical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a member of the Project Management Institute and the American Management Association and is a former board member for the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), where he is a certified New Product Development Professional (NPDP). Randy is a Certified Business Manager (CBM) with the Association for Professionals in Business Management.

With Dr. Robert J. Graham, he coauthored the books Creating an Environment for Successful Projects: Second Edition (2004) and Creating the Project Office: A Manager’s Guide to Leading Organizational Change (2003). With Alfonso Bucero, he coauthored Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success (2006).

In his work around the world, Randy provides management and leadership awareness at a systemic and organic level through multimedia presentations, workshops, conference papers, and writings. In addition to his own books and articles in magazines, he has contributed chapters in books such as the AMA Handbook of Project Management: Third Edition (2010), Advising Upwards (2011), and Organizational Project Management (2010). His interactive style encourages the exploration of action-oriented practices that are immediately applicable to optimizing results from project-based work.

Alfonso Bucero, MSc, PMP (Project Management Professional), is the founder and managing partner of BUCERO PM Consulting (www.abucero.com). He managed IIL Spain for almost two years, and he was a senior project manager at Hewlett-Packard Spain (Madrid office) for thirteen years.

Alfonso is a member of PMI, ALI (Asociación de Licenciados, Ingenieros y Doctores en Informática), AEIPRO (an IPMA member organization) and a DINTEL advisor. Alfonso was the founder, sponsor, and former president of PMI Barcelona, Spain, Chapter, and he is an IPMA Assessor. He was a member of the Congress Project Action Team of PMI EMEA’s Congresses in Edinburgh, Madrid, and Budapest. He graduated from PMI’s Leadership Institute Master Class 2007. He served as president of the PMI Madrid, Spain, chapter and serves as Component Mentor for Region 8 South. He received the PMI Distinguished Contribution Award in 2010 for his long and varied body of work. In 2011, Alfonso received PMI’s Fellow of the Institute award, intended to recognize and honor PMI members who have made sustained and significant contributions to PMI and the project management profession for more than a decade. It is PMI’s highest and most prestigious award presented to an individual.

Alfonso has a degree in computer science engineering from Universidad Politécnica (Madrid) and is a Ph.D. candidate in project management at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. He has 27 years of practical experience, 22 of them in project management worldwide. He has managed and consulted on projects in various countries across Europe.

Since 1994, Alfonso has been a frequent speaker at international PMI Congresses and SeminarsWorld. He delivers PM training and consulting services in countries across the globe. As a “project management believer,” he asserts that passion, persistence, and patience are vital keys for project success.

He authored the book Dirección de Proyectos, Una Nueva Vision (2003). He contributed chapter 7 of Creating the Project Office (2003), authored by Randall L. Englund, Robert J. Graham, and Paul Dinsmore. He coauthored the chapter “From Commander to Sponsor: Building Executive Support for Project Success” in the book Advising Upwards (2011).

Alfonso coauthored with Randall L. Englund the book Project Sponsorship (2006) and authored Today Is a Good Day: Attitudes for Achieving Project Success (2010). He has also contributed to professional magazines in the U.S., Russia (SOVNET), India (ICFAI), Argentina, and Spain. Alfonso is a contributing editor of the “Crossing Borders” column in PM Network, published by the Project Management Institute. BUCERO PM Consulting is a Registered Education Provider (REP) with PMI.

Chapter

1 

LEADERSHIP AND
MANAGEMENT SKILLS

In this chapter, we cover leadership and management skills—those vital visionary and “can do” competencies so necessary for people in a position to influence colleagues, team members, upper managers, clients, and others. The complete project manager possesses charisma, teachability, respect for self and others, qualities of leadership, and courage, as well as lead-by-example, delegation, listening, and relationship-building skills. He or she has to interact with people and achieve results.

LEADING VERSUS MANAGING

We start by highlighting, in Table 1-1, the activities performed when leading or managing a team. Many debates ensue around differences between leadership and management. Our position throughout this book and in our seminars is that both are necessary. Project managers tend to view their jobs as managing. We believe complete project managers also need to be leading.

TABLE 1-1: Leading versus Managing a Project Team

In some cultures, people do only what has been defined as their responsibility. Consider the following joke:

Long, long ago, a soldier was shot in the leg in battle and suffered from constant pain. An officer in the troop sent for a surgeon versed in external medicine to treat the soldier’s wound.

The surgeon came to have a look, then said, “This is easy!” He cut off the arrow shaft at the leg with a big pair of scissors and immediately asked for fees for the surgical operation.

“Anyone can do that,” the soldier cried. “The arrowhead is still in my leg! Why haven’t you taken it out?”

“My surgical operation is finished,” said the doctor. “The arrowhead in your leg should be removed by a physician who practices internal medicine.”

Project team members may likewise view their roles very narrowly. Professional project managers usually know what their responsibilities are, but in our experience, there have been many occasions in which the project manager needs to take action beyond the norm in order to get activities done. We recommend that project managers stay flexible and adaptable. In some cultures, the project manager needs to lead by example and wear different hats, especially when people are blocked by perceived limitations in their job descriptions.

WHAT IS PROJECT SUCCESS?

The typical goal for leaders and managers is to achieve project success. An exercise I (Englund) do in the classroom is to ask everyone to take a high-level view of project success and identify the thread that runs through all key factors that determine success and failure. The answer I am looking for is that these factors are all about people. People do matter. Projects typically do not fail or succeed because of technical factors or because we cannot get electrons traveling faster than the speed of light; they fail or succeed depending on how well people work together. When we lose sight of the importance of people issues, such as clarity of purpose, effective and efficient communications, and management support, then we are doomed to struggle. Engaged people find ways to work through all problems. Our challenge as leaders is to create environments for people to do their best work.

There are a bountiful harvest of definitions of project success (and just as many explanations for project failure). Meeting the triple constraints is just a starting point. Sometimes you can be right on scope, schedule, and resources and still fail to be successful, perhaps because the market changed, or a competitor outdid you, or a client changed its mind. You could also miss on all constraints but still have a successful project in the long term. It is important to get all requirements specified as accurately as possible; it is also important to be flexible since needs and conditions change over time or as more becomes known about the project as it progresses.

Please allow us to suggest an overarching criterion for project success: check with key stakeholders and ask them for their definitions of success. Pin them down to one key definition each. You may get some surprising replies like, “Don’t embarrass me.” “Keep out of the newspaper.” “Just get something finished.” You may even get conflicting responses. Integrate the replies and work to fulfill the stakeholders’ needs. Having this dialogue early in project life cycles provides clear marching orders—and forewarning about what is important to key stakeholders.

Having established that success or failure is all about people, our goal now is to learn how to be better leaders and managers of people, not just projects.

START BY LEADING YOURSELF

Have you ever worked with people who did not lead themselves well? Worse, have you ever worked for people in leadership positions who could not lead themselves? We have, and in those situations, we felt very bad, unsupported, and very disappointed.

These people are like the crow in a fable that goes like this: A crow was sitting in a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” “Sure,” answered the crow, “why not?” So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, following his example. All of a sudden a fox appeared, pounced on the rabbit, and ate him.

The tongue-in-cheek moral of the story is that if you are going to sit around doing nothing all day, you had better be sitting very high up. But if you are down where the action is, you cannot afford to be sitting around doing nothing. The key to leading yourself well is to learn self-management. We have observed that many people put too much emphasis on decision-making and too little on decision managing. As a result, they lack focus, discipline, intentionality, and purpose.

Successful people make right decisions early and manage those decisions daily. Some people think that self-leadership is about making good decisions every day, when the reality is that we need to make a few critical decisions in major areas of life and then manage those decisions day to day.

Here is a classic example. Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution to exercise? You probably already believe that exercise is important. Making a decision to do it is not hard, but managing that decision and following through is much more difficult. Let us say, for example, that you sign up for a health club membership the first week of January. When you sign on, you are excited. But the first time you show up at the gym, there is a mob of people. There are so many cars that police are directing traffic. You drive around for fifteen minutes and finally find a parking place four blocks away. But that is okay; you are there for exercise anyway, so you walk to the gym.

Then when you get inside the building, you even have to wait to get into the locker room to change. But you think that is okay. You want to get into shape. This is going to be great. You think that until you finally get dressed and discover all of the exercise machines are being used. Once again you have to wait. Finally, you get on a machine. It is not the one you really wanted, but you take it and you exercise for twenty minutes. When you see the line for the shower, you decide to skip it, take your clothes, and just change at home.

On your way out, you see the manager of the club, and you decide to complain about the crowds. She says, “Do not worry about it. Come back in three weeks, and you can have the closest parking place and your choice of machines. Because by then, 98 percent of the people who signed up will have dropped out!”

It is one thing to decide to exercise. It is another to actually follow through with it. As everyone else drops out, you have to decide whether you will quit like everyone else or you will stick with it. And that takes self-management.

Nothing will make a better impression on your leader than your ability to manage yourself. If your leader must continually expend energy managing you, then you will be perceived as someone who drains time and energy. If you manage yourself well, however, your leader will see you as someone who maximizes opportunities and leverages personal strengths. That will make you someone your leader turns to when the heat is on. I (Englund) had a colleague who seemed to constantly irritate our manager. I made it a point to always help the manager and be easy to work with. In turn, that manager took good care of me.

The question is: what does a leader need to self-manage? To gain credibility with your leader and others, focus on taking care of business as follows:

1. Manage your emotions. People driving in a state of heightened emotions are 144 percent more likely to have auto accidents. The same study evidently found that one out of five victims of fatal accidents had been in a quarrel with another person in the six hours preceding the accident.

   It is important for everybody to manage their emotions. Nobody likes to spend time around a person who behaves like an emotional time bomb that may go off at any moment. But it is especially critical for leaders to control their emotions because whatever they do affects many other people. Good leaders know when to display emotions and when to delay doing so. Sometimes they show them so that their people can feel what they are feeling. It stirs them up. Is that manipulative? We do not think so, as long as the leaders are doing it for the good of the team and not for their own gain. Because leaders see more and ahead of others, they often experience the emotions first. By letting your team know what you are feeling, you are helping them to see what you are seeing.

2. Manage your time. Time management issues are especially tough for people in the middle. Leaders at the top can delegate. Workers at the bottom often punch a time clock. They get paid an hourly wage, and they do what they can while they are on the clock. Leaders in the middle, meanwhile, feel the stress and tension of being pulled in both directions. They are encouraged, and are often expected, to put in long hours to get work done.

3. Manage your priorities. In some companies, project managers have no choice but to juggle various responsibilities, but the old proverb is true: if you chase two rabbits, both will escape.

   So what is a leader in the middle to do? Since you are not the top leader, you do not have control over your list of responsibilities or your schedule. A way to move up from the middle is to gradually shift from generalist to specialist, from someone who does many things well to someone who focuses on a few things she does exceptionally well. Often, the secret to making the shift is discipline. In Good to Great, Jim Collins (2001) writes, “Most of us lead busy, but undisciplined lives. We have ever-expanding ‘to do’ lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing and doing more. And it rarely works. Those who build the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of ‘stop doing’ lists as the ‘to do’ lists. They displayed a remarkable amount of discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.”

4. Manage your energy. Some people have to ration their energy so that they do not run out. Up until a few years ago, that was not me (Bucero). When people asked me how I got so much done, my answer was always, “High energy, low IQ.” From the time I was a kid, I was always on the go. I was six years old before I realized my name was not “Settle Down.”

   Now that I am older, I do have to pay attention to my energy level. Here is one of my strategies for managing my energy. When I look at my calendar every morning, I ask myself, “What is the main event?” That is the one thing to which I cannot afford to give anything less than my best. That one thing can be for my family, my employees, a friend, my publisher, the sponsor of a speaking engagement, or my writing time. I always make sure I have the energy to do it with focus and excellence.

5. Manage your thinking. The greatest enemy of good thinking is busyness. And middle leaders are usually the busiest people in an organization. If you find that the pace of life is too demanding for you to stop and think during your workday, then get into the habit of jotting down the three or four things that need good mental processing or planning that you cannot stop to think about. Then carve out some time later when you can give those items some good think-time.

ARE YOU DELEGATING PROPERLY?

Although a project manager cannot delegate everything in a project, delegating can make a complete project manager’s life easier. But many are hesitant to pass on responsibilities. For example, many organizations have a low project management maturity level, and management’s focus is on project results, not on project control.

Most project managers do not have enough authority and so they also perform a technical role along with their project management role. Many of them have been promoted from technical positions to project management positions. As individual contributors, they were not accustomed to delegating work to others; they did their technical tasks and just followed the project plan. Now, as project managers, they do not feel comfortable delegating because they are not confident in the people on their team, and nobody has explained to them why and how to do it. Here are some reasons people share with us why they do not delegate:

• It is faster to do the job myself.

• I am concerned about lack of control.

• I like keeping busy and making my own decisions.

• People are already too busy.

• A mistake by a team member could be costly for my project.

• Team members lack the overall knowledge that many decisions require.

To be able to delegate, you need to be conscious that you have a team, that you have people who can help you to achieve project success. You cannot achieve project success alone; you need people. Many of the people we have talked with are managing more than one project and juggling a mix of technical and project management tasks. All the answers above make sense, but the real reason for failure to delegate often comes down to deep insecurity. This self-defeating attitude influences how you accept and recognize the performance of those who work under you.

Do not think of delegating as doing the other person a favor. Delegating some of your authority only makes your work easier. You will have more time to manage your project, monitor team members, and handle conflicts. Your organization will benefit, too, as output goes up and project work is completed more efficiently.

LEADING BY EXAMPLE

Leading properly most often means leading by example. A colleague and executive project manager at IBM Research, Jim De Piante, PMP, shared this personal example with us:

On my first day as coach, I came out to the team’s first practice. I got there on time, armed with a whistle, a patch that said “coach” on it, a clipboard, and a practice plan.

I hadn’t played any organized sports as a kid and really wasn’t clear on what a coach was supposed to do. I imagined, however, that the most important thing for me to do would be to establish myself as the coach, the person in charge, so that the boys would have an unambiguous understanding of from whom they were to take direction. I saw this as the only way to knit them together into a team, which I speculated would be the essential ingredient in getting them to win matches.

I didn’t hesitate to make it clear that the reason we were playing the game was to win matches, and that to do that would take teamwork, discipline, and commitment. As practice began, I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do, what I wanted them to do, and why. I communicated these things to them in direct, simple, and unambiguous ways.

What happened as a result surprised me a bit. It shouldn’t have, but it did. The boys, and their parents, followed my lead. They did what I asked them to do. The not-so-surprising consequence of this was that we began to have a certain success, which is to say, the boys played well together and won matches. As they succeeded, they came to trust more and more in my judgment and leadership and followed my direction all the more, with the delightful consequence that they continued to play even better together and win even more difficult matches.

In one of those unforgettable life lessons, I realized that the first cause of all of this success was my willingness to act as their leader. It was what they expected of me, and because I had met their expectations, they were all too happy to meet mine. Their success as a team was the result.

I was dealing with six-year-old boys. Taking on the role of leader, and acting the part decisively, wasn’t so hard. On the other hand, at work, on my projects, I had imagined that it might seem too bold of me to “take charge,” and that the wonderfully talented technical professionals on my team wouldn’t want me to act decisively as their leader—that they would resent it.

I was wrong.

My experience on the football field caused me to rethink my views. I came to understand leadership as a service to the people I was leading—that leadership was the critical ingredient in a team’s success, and it was mine to provide. I reasoned that, in the same way that it was crucial to the football team’s success that I accept and fulfill my role as team leader, it would be crucial to my project team’s success that I do likewise. They expected me to be the leader and to accept all the responsibility that that implies. This was, in fact, my duty to them, and to do otherwise was to cheat them of their due. For them to come together as a team and do their best work required the influence and organizing principle of a leader. To take charge was simply to fulfill their expectation of me. And what they expected of me was to create the circumstances under which we could succeed. There was no one else on the team positioned to do that, which means they depended on me for it.

I was right.

Lesson learned.

MANAGING YOUR EXECUTIVES

Complete project managers with the ability to communicate well—especially when addressing executives and project sponsors—always have an advantage. Good communication skills are especially handy when dealing with executives who believe they do not need to know much about projects or the project management process because “that’s the project manager’s responsibility.” It is generally true that project managers take great care of the projects they manage, and executives and senior managers take care of business results and monitor overall business success. But when each of these groups wants to be understood, they need to speak the language the other group understands. Managers, in general, do not care about technical terms—they take care about results, objectives, ROI. It is difficult to put yourself in the shoes of your boss, and it is also difficult for your boss to understand your problems as a project manager.

Several years ago I (Bucero) worked in Spain for one of the largest multinational companies in the world. I managed an external customer project with a €10 million budget, 150 workers, and four subcontractors. During the project’s two-and-a-half-year duration, my senior manager visited the customer only once, and while I met with him monthly, our project status reviews never lasted more than ten minutes. This manager expressed very little interest regarding the problems I found while managing the project.

This type of counterproductive behavior is starting to change in southern Europe. As project management awareness grows in organizations, executives are coming to understand the importance and necessity of planning before implementing activities. And who knows more about people, organizational abilities, and what it takes to implement a project than a project manager?

Executives need project managers to implement strategy. Project managers can align themselves with executives by finding and focusing on these commonalities:

• Ultimately, project managers and executives share the same organizational objectives because they work for the same company.

• Because more than 75 percent of business activities can be classified as projects, project managers and executives arguably have the same impact on business operations and results.

• The experiences and education of project managers give a company a competitive advantage; wise executives find ways to use the experiences of the individuals in their organization to gain an upper hand.

• Executives and project managers both must learn to navigate political climates successfully to ensure results.

Even with these similarities, executives know only one part of the story. They miss a great deal of insight that comes from dealing with the customer, which is something project managers do much of the time. Unfortunately, project managers often talk to their upper managers only when they run into problems, and executives do not speak enough with project managers because they perceive them simply as the “doers.” In this paradigm, opportunities for project managers and executives to act as partners are lost, and many organizations fail to grasp multiple opportunities to become more profitable and successful through project management practices.

So many organizations tend to focus on project manager development as it correlates to improving project results, but what about educating executives? There is value in teaching executives about a project’s mission, implications, and desired effects, as the end product of such education is more clearly defined roles and better relationships with project managers.

Complete project managers need to know, understand, and communicate their value to the organization. Do not wait until executives and project sponsors ask you about your project’s status. Take action and seize opportunities to talk about project work, being persistent and patient along the way.

THE ROLE OF CHARISMA IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

In our experience as project managers, we have realized the importance of charisma, the ability to attract others. Most people think of charisma as something mystical, almost indefinable. They think it is a quality that we either are or are not born with. But that is not necessarily true. Like other character traits, charisma can be developed. As a complete project manager, you need to draw people to work with you, so you need to be the kind of person who attracts others. These tips can help you develop greater charisma.

1. Love life. People enjoy working with project managers who enjoy life. Think of the people you want to spend time with. How would you describe them? Grumpy? Bitter? Depressed? Of course not. They are celebrators, not complainers. They are passionate about life. If you want to attract people, you need to be like the people you enjoy being with. When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn.

2. Put a “10” on every team member’s head. One of the best things you can do for people, which also may attract them to you, is to expect the best of them. When rating others on a scale of one to ten, putting a “10” on everyone’s head, so to speak, helps them think more highly of themselves—and of you.

3. Give people hope. Hope is the greatest of all possessions. If you can be a person who bestows that gift on others, they will be attracted to you, and they will be forever grateful.

4. Share yourself. People love leaders who share themselves and their life journeys. As you lead people, give of yourself. Put a personal touch in the stories you share with others. Share wisdom, resources, and even special occasions. We find that is one of our most favorite things to do. For example, I (Bucero) went to an annual dancing festival in Tenerife. It was something I had wanted to do for years, and when I was finally able to work it into my schedule, my wife and I took one leader of my staff and his girlfriend. We had a wonderful time, and more important, I was able to add value to their lives by spending special time with them.

When it comes to charisma, the bottom line is other-mindedness. Leaders who think about others and their concerns before thinking of themselves exhibit charisma. How would you rate yourself when it comes to charisma? Are other people naturally attracted to you? Are you well liked? If not, you may have one or more of the following traits that block charisma:

• Pride: Nobody wants to follow a leader who thinks he is better than everyone else.

• Insecurity: If you are uncomfortable with who you are, others will be too.

• Moodiness: If people never know what to expect from you, they stop expecting anything.

• Perfectionism: People respect a desire for excellence but dread totally unrealistic expectations.

• Cynicism: People do not want to be rained on by someone who sees a cloud around every silver lining.

If you can avoid exhibiting these negative qualities, you can cultivate charisma. To focus on improving your charisma, do the following:

1. Change your focus. When talking with other people, how much do you talk about yourself? Be more focused on others.

2. Play the first-impression game. The next time you meet someone for the first time, try your best to make a good impression. Learn the person’s name. Focus on his or her interests. Be positive, and treat that person like a “10.” If you can do this for a day, you can do it every day. That will increase your charisma overnight.

3. Share yourself. Make it your long-term goal to share your resources with others. Think about how you can add value to five people in your life this year. Provide resources to help them grow personally and professionally, and share your personal journey with them.

Improving your charisma is not easy, but it is possible. Stay positive—remember that today is a good day!