Successful project management is, among other Emotional Intelligence skills, a balance of task and relationship; finding common ground with other humans as humans and as colleagues when collaborating on a singular goal.
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Case Study: Dousing the Flaming Monkey.
Key Takeaways: Check your ego: It’s not personal.
Applications: Be authentically attuned to the people on your project team. In so doing, you will establish sufficient relationship to move forward on your project tasks.
He worked in IT. I’ll call him Chandler. Many of the people on the project team I led frequently told me to seek his counsel whenever we hit what they perceived as a stumbling block.
Off I went. And back I came. With nary a useful tidbit. Questions answered without elaboration. Not one phrase that might help break the code. He had a neat trick, though. Just as I was about to turn heels, Chandler would hurl a flaming monkey into the center of the room onto to which I dove to save the poor critter. He had offered a “consideration” for me to ponder. Nothing less than a digital warning leading down an end-of-days rabbit hole.
I thought, “is this guy deliberately trying to confuse me and muddy up what I’m attempting to simplify?”
I couldn’t understand why people kept sending me to him. Casually, I dropped breadcrumbs: “Hey, I spoke with Chandler the other day like you advised and I left feeling…”
“Confused?” the person would say.
“Yeah!”
“That’s just Chandler. He’s smart, a good guy. And he knows where all the bodies are buried.”
My interactions with Chandler had become less about the project and more about my frustration with his communications style. This meant I was violating my own Project Management Warrior Rules #1 and #2: Take Your Ego Out of it and Advocate for the Project.
How many others, I wondered, had been told to visit the mountain over the years? Probably, he’s pooped. Intuition satellite gave me this: Chandler was an introvert. So am I, though I had to cultivate extroverted behaviors to successfully project manage in the corporate world.
At the end of the day, that’s the heart of project management: having sufficient common sense, humanity and emotional intelligence to effectively interact with a diverse group of people to achieve a common goal.
Back I went, convinced Chandler would reveal intel that would change my world.
He did.
How did the subject arise? Who remembers? All I know is that during one of our (mystery-to-me) sessions I learned that Chandler cycled to work, to the city where our office building was located, from a suburb a good 40-minute DRIVE away.
I began my corporate career in healthcare with a master’s degree in education and Exercise Physiology. I had run 3 marathons, was a lifelong cyclist who had participated in 100-mile AIDS fundraising rides and had completed New York City’s Five Boro Bike Tour 7 times.
First question: “How far do you ride?” In his response I’d heard more words uttered than our previous interactions combined. He was, well, excited. He smiled. I saw other expressions I didn’t know his face could make. And who knew there were employee showers and lockers in the basement? No fee. No key. Chandler! What a boon for me who enjoyed walking at lunch and not returning to my cubie a sweaty mess.
Whenever I interacted with Chandler from then on, did I ask about his cycling? Of course I did. Was that manipulation, “social engineering?” Nope. That’s called being human. I was genuinely interested. Not enough to cycle to work when it was 40 degrees but enough to cheer Chandler on throughout his personal journey of doing so daily no matter the weather.
Respect!
This guy I had imagined as a robot sent from another planet to make my life hard, was just a…guy. A man who had longstanding marriage, children he was proud of, a passion he was committed to. Once I got my mind right, and stripped away all of my personal junk, that’s where I was able to meet him.
Though Chandler still tended toward gloom and doom, we had gotten to know each other through the common passion of goal-oriented fitness. He understood my worldview: the glass is half full. When I went to him to reality test IT gobbledygook I had been fed, I did not want to hear why it could not be done. I wanted to hear what, from his perspective, of longstanding historian, it would take to get it done. We had established enough of a relationship to effectively move forward on task.
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