​As COVID-19 has put most of the Western world in lockdown, managers, leaders and their teams are finding themselves with a plethora of new challenges. People have to quickly adapt to working from home, protect the physical and emotional well-being of themselves and others, revamp businesses to better serve the public and simply staying afloat.

When a crisis hits it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, to let our emotions run away with us and to get distracted by the many threats and limitations we face. And whereas our physical safety will always come first we have to be determined to not let fear dominate us. Out of crises and extreme threats can emerge incredible opportunities for individuals, organisations and for society as a whole. As we navigate our way through uncertainty, we must seek not just to overcome the crisis, but to learn and grow from it - and that’s exactly what good leaders help us do. 
 
Leaders always put people first
John Maxwell, author of 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership says that during a crisis, real leaders rise and become visible. They show up with openness, honesty and clarity and they always put people first. They ask What is best for the people? How can I lift them up? How can I serve and help them get through the crisis and get better from it?
 
With a solid focus on people, good leaders rise above the circumstances and see into the future. Their ability to manage their emotions helps them to stay focused and become ambassadors of hope. The key is to keep fear at bay and to not get emotionally caught up in the crisis. But how can the leader give hope to others and show up with clarity when things are so uncertain? In spite of not having all the answers and not knowing when the crisis will be over, leaders can convey that this too shall pass. They also put a great deal of effort into clearly communicating why they’re making the decisions they are. Being clear, honest and authentic is often more important than the decision itself. 
 
Together we will find a way through
Maxwell says that during a crisis people want authenticity more than they want perfection. The leader needs to always tell the truth and stay close to people. And it takes a great deal of courage to tell the truth and admit to not having all the answers. The crisis is an opportunity to set clear priorities, to leverage the team and to convey that together we will find a way through. That’s what hope is. Hope is saying that together we can make things better. It’s not the same as optimism, which is simply the belief that things will get better. It takes no courage to be an optimist but it takes great courage to have hope. 
 
During a crisis, great leaders stand out by inspiring people to develop the right perspective. They help people focus on what they can do and let go of what they cannot control. We cannot control the external events of a crisis but we cancontrol our choices and our responses. As Maxwell reminds us: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! It’s about getting the best out of the situation and using our creativity to solve new problems, to serve and to build wherever we can. This may be the time to review existing practices, to forge new relationships, to adapt and to innovate. Take this opportunity to put people first and to send a message of hope. Together we can overcome this crisis and we can make things better.

​
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​Project leadership: Challenge the status quo

Yin-leaders support; yang-leaders challenge
Yin symbolizes the feminine elements such as listening, supporting, coaching and maintaining stability. These are characteristics that are hugely important when establishing a high-performing team, especially in the early days when people don’t yet trust their own abilities or roles within the team. Project leaders use the supportive yin element to build the team’s confidence and develop skills that are lacking. They encourage collaboration and provide a safe environment for team members to work together and come up with their own solutions. 
 
Supportive yin-leaders have a deep respect for people and want to understand what drives and motivates each person. They often spend one-on-one time with team members, assisting them to grow and develop. They are good at praising people for a job well done and will often ask what type of help the individual needs. Yin leadership is enabling and is concerned with making it possible for others to flourish, lead and contribute. 
 
Yang, on the other hand, symbolizes the masculine element, which is challenging, demanding and factual. This side of leadership sets a high standard and expects the team to deliver to it. Yang leaders have a strong sense of direction. They are action-oriented and results-driven. They ask challenging questions, hold people to account and may come across as forceful. They are assertive, push the team to deliver to the best of its ability and expect nothing but excellence. 
 
It is the yang element that pushes the team to continuously improve and innovate, and the yin element that steps back and enables the team to do so. We could say that yin is a predominant heart-based approach, whereas yang is a predominant rational or head-based approach.
 
Project leaders use ample amounts of both yin and yang
Consider the below diagram. It shows that project leadership encompasses a high degree of yin as well as yang. Team members need both elements from their manager in order to perform and thrive. 

At the most fundamental level, the quality of your personal and professional life is determined by the quality of your core beliefs. The beliefs you have acquired throughout your life shape your attitudes, which in turn affect the actions and the results that you get, or don’t get. As Henry Ford said, ‘Whether you think you can or can’t, either way you are right’. 

As a project leader you have to take control of your internal world and thoughts so that they can influence your outer reality in a way that serves you and your team. The key is to foster a positive and empowering mindset, being aware of how you respond to situations and taking action without hesitation or self-doubt. A positive and empowering mindset is one where you clearly see situations the way they are; the positives along with the negatives. Instead of reacting emotionally to the negative aspects and letting them control you, you carefully assess the situation and consciously decide how to respond. 

Let’s examine what some of these empowering beliefs look like.

I believe in myself
As a project leadership coach I come across many project managers who feel that they are not good enough. They fear that they will be “found out” and that they will be fired because of incompetence. But in most cases these project managers are judging themselves unfairly – probably because of past events or because of the negativity bias that we all have. The feeling of inadequacy isn’t rooted in incompetence. It’s linked to an underlying lack of self-esteem. 

In order to act, behave and be perceived as a leader, you first have to believe in yourself. You will not come across as trustworthy, impactful and inspiring if you do not have a strong regard for yourself. You have to feel that you are worthy of achieving the things that you dream of, and you have to have absolute faith that as long as you take the necessary action, then you can be every bit as successful as everybody else. It is this undeniable belief in yourself and being willing to back yourself all the way that fuels your motivation and moves you to action. This belief in yourself is not about being arrogant, putting yourself above the team or compromising collaboration. It simply means that you feel love and compassion for yourself and that you feel worthy of being a leader. Feel this worth in every cell of your body and don’t leave the house in the morning until you feel a warm glow inside of you.

I choose my responses
One of the most empowering beliefs you can adopt is to know that you are in control of your responses and that you always have a choice. You may not have control over the things that happen to you, but you can control the meaning you assign to external events and how you respond to them. This is a very powerful and mature belief system because it means that you take full responsibility for your actions without having to deflect blame onto others. Essentially, this is about responding to situations rather than reacting to them. There is a subtle but important difference between the two. 

Reacting is an unconscious process where you experience and react to an emotional trigger without thinking twice about it. This could happen, for instance, if you always get angry when a team member delivers their work late – or if you get stressed whenever your client asks you to incorporate a new change request. 

Responding, on the other hand, is a conscious process that involves noticing how you feel and then deciding how you want to behave. Instead of showing your anger to a team member, count to 10 and choose the most appropriate response so that you don’t default to your automatic reaction. You could for instance explain to the team member how you feel and what the impact is when work is delivered late. You can then work with them to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Likewise, if you work in a very busy, competitive and reactive environment, you can either see this as a reason to get stressed and feel that you have to emulate that behaviour, or instead you can define your own way of working based on what you know will be best for you and your team. 

As an emotionally intelligent leader you have to take responsibility for your emotions and the impact they have on your surroundings. When you manage your impulses and consciously choose your responses, not only do you set a good example, you also create a safe environment for your team to freely communicate and express their views.

I have faith that the right things will come to me as a result of my actions
Part of having a positive and empowering mindset is to trust that as long as you do what can reasonably be expected of you, then the right things will happen. There is no need to worry unnecessarily that things might not work out or to imagine what failure looks like. In fact, focusing too much on the things that you don’t want is likely to derail you because you attract the things that you focus on. This relates back to the filter between your unconscious and your conscious mind. It is your beliefs that determine your reality. If you believe you will fail, chances are that you will. Your only concern should be to take constructive action towards your project leadership goals, stay focused and have faith that the right things will happen as a result. If you encounter a risk, by all means mitigate it, but then let go of it. Spending time worrying about the things you cannot control is lost energy. Empower yourself by being proactive and by focusing on the right strategy and trust that success will follow.

I see the opportunity in every situation
A great way to set yourself and your project up for success is to make sure that you don’t get discouraged or distracted by the issues or obstacles that you come across. We all encounter issues, but the difference between successful people and those who are not is the way in which they deal with the unforeseen. As Albert Bandura said, ‘People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided’.[i] When something unexpected happens, make sure you don’t use it as an excuse to do nothing or to backtrack. Instead, ask yourself how you can move forward in spite of the issues and which new opportunities have opened up as a result. Your job is to focus on the opportunity and the way forward rather than the obstacle itself.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s assume that your company unexpectedly had to downsize and that you were losing your job. How would you react? What would your focus be, what meaning would you assign to this event and what actions would you take? Would you panic and say to yourself that this is terrible/I’m a failure/how could they do it/it’s their fault? Or would you say to yourself that this is their loss/I could be better off somewhere else/this is an opportunity to learn and do something new? Would you let this unforeseen situation paralyze you, or would you focus on the opportunity it presents and decide how to best move forward? The point is that although you can’t control external events, you can control the mindset with which you react to them. All it takes is mindful practice.
 
There is no such thing as failure; only opportunities to grow and learn
An empowering mindset is also one in which we don’t let fear of failure hold us back. If you are afraid of stepping up and showing yourself as a leader out of fear that you are not good enough – or that others might laugh at you – then you won’t get very far. You need to alter your view of failure into something constructive and allow yourself to feel the fear and do it anyway. Your ‘failures’ provide the opportunity to learn and grow and will genuinely move you forward as long as you take on board the lessons. And besides, what is the worst that can happen? Wouldn’t it be better to have a setback and to learn from it rather than never to have tried? When you change your thinking pattern into one that doesn’t see failure, you take away an enormous chunk of negative energy and worry. You free yourself up to pursue that which is truly important – your progress and the successful delivery of your project.

When I decided to set up my own company and become an independent project leadership coach, I faced a huge amount of fear. I had been an employee for 17 years and never before run my own business. Would I be good enough? Would people want to work with me and would I be able to make money? It took me many months to overcome this fear and to not let it control me. I did as much as I could to prepare for my new venture, but at the end of the day I had to have faith that as long as I did what had proved to work for other successful entrepreneurs, I would be successful too. I reframed the situation and started to build up a new set of beliefs. I began to study some great entrepreneurs around me and stopped focusing on failure. In fact I began to see my business as an experiment that I would learn from, in one way or another, even if one day I were to go back into employment.

I am fully committed to doing what it takes
We have probably all come across people who are dreamers. They keep talking about their big plans but rarely get around to implementing them. An empowering mindset is one where we are focused and committed and where we consistently take action that moves us closer to the things we want. There is no space for doubt or procrastination. Becoming a project leader who adds value in everything that you do may not be achieved in a matter of days. It will take much longer and will require you to be fully committed to doing whatever it takes and to learn and refine your approach. Sure, there will be times when you lose sight of the overall goal, but your drive, commitment and positive frame of mind will quickly get you back on track. At the end of the day it is your grit that will keep you going.

Interestingly, Psychology Professor Angela Lee Duckworth has proved that grit is the most significant predictor of success – irrespective of the industry or job role you are in. She explains that grit is about stamina and having passion and perseverance for long-term goals. It is about sticking with your future, day in day out, not just for the week or for the month but for years and working really hard to make that future a reality.[ii]

All successful people have needed to rely on their determination to get to where they wanted. Thomas Edison attempted to invent the light bulb 999 times before he finally succeeded. And Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, traveled to four different states and had his recipe rejected hundreds of times before he found someone who accepted it. The key is to be willing to have setbacks and be wrong and to start over again with lessons learned.

You can read more about fostering a growth mindset here.

[i] Bandura, A (1994) Self-Efficacy, Encyclopedia of Human Behavior, 
New York, Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman [Ed.], Encyclopedia of Mental Health, San Diego, Academic Press, 1998) [Online] http://www.uky
.edu/~eushe2/Bandura/BanEncy.html
[ii] Duckworth, A (2013) The key to success? Grit, TED, [Online] http://www.ted
.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit

You are probably as familiar with the statistics of failing projects as I am. According to the PMI only 52 per cent of projects are delivered on time and 69 per cent meet their goals and business intent. The numbers vary by industry and region. In the UK the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, reports that less than half of their projects had a green or amber/green rating upon delivery.
 
Projects fail because of unclear scope and success criteria, lack of strategic alignment, lack of buy-in and engagement from senior stakeholders, lack of change management skills, underestimation, inadequate risk management and poor resourcing. According to the PMI, organisations are losing an average of $97 million for every $1 billion spent on projects due to lack of focus on people, processes and outcomes. And that is in spite of more tools and techniques being available to us that help us keep track of the many moving parts of a project. It also appears that project failure rates continue to be high during periods of economic uncertainty and increased competition.
 
But why do projects continue to fail? An important aspect is the increased complexity of projects and the environments in which they are undertaken. Many factors contribute to this growing complexity – for example, social and technological change, growing global interdependency, increasing numbers of stakeholders and the need to communicate and coordinate cross-culturally. As the ICCPM (International Centre for Complex Project Management) writes in its report Hitting a Moving Target, ‘It is clear that the situation has to be addressed radically and comprehensively. If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got – and there are too many examples that prove what we’ve always got isn’t good enough’.
 
Stephen Carver, Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management also has a view on why projects continue to fail. He explains that researchers now distinguish between three types of complexity to help us better manage projects: structural, emergent and socio political. Traditional project management techniques such as breakdown structures, critical path analysis and risk management were designed to deal with projects that are high in structural complexity. I.e. projects that are large, technically complex and that have many moving parts. But modern-day projects are also high in emergent and socio political complexity, which most project managers haven’t been trained to deal with.
 
Emergent complexity relates to how much the project and its surroundings are changing as you are trying to manage it, for example highly innovative projects or a project that is dependent on external world events, such as the price of oil. Socio political complexity is related to soft skills, relationships, personalities and behaviours that arise under stress. It’s this touchy feely stuff, as Stephen Carver calls it, that’s really the hard part, as it isn’t obvious how to manage a large number of stakeholders who behave in infinitely complex ways.
 
The academics at Cranfield asked about 250 project management practitioners which of the three types of complexity caused them most trouble on live projects. 70% of respondents said that it was the socio political factors, 20% answered emergent complexity and only 10% said their issues stemmed from structural complexity. The researches then asked people which of the three categories of complexity had received the most attention during their formal training. It turned out that 80% of their training was focused on structural complexity, 10% on emergent and 10% on socio political complexity.
 
In other words, process is necessary to manage structural complexity, but to master other types of complexity we need to be able to deal with behaviours and large amounts of change in relation to our projects. The best way to deal with emergent complexity is to see change as an opportunity rather than a threat. Change can be good if we open our minds to it and become more agile in our approaches. And to effectively handle socio political complexity project managers need to deepen personal relationships and understand how to listen, build trust, empathise and use different styles of communication.

According to PMI’s research, over 80 per cent of high-performing organisations report that the most important acquired skills for project managers to successfully manage complex projects are leadership skills. Traditional dimensions of project management such as cost, schedule and performance are necessary but insufficient. The world is changing at a rapid pace, and the need for leaders is greater than ever before. We need leaders who can deal with ambiguity, take ownership of the vision, foster collaboration, gain buy-in and motivate the team to achieve the expected outcomes. Thinking and behaving with a traditional project management mindset of control and compliance is not serving us. It is limiting our opportunities and it is contributing to project failure.
 
Given the right environment, the right mindset and the right support, I believe that all project managers have the potential to be great leaders. Being a leader is not something that is limited to CEOs of a large company. Anyone can be a leader within his or her field. Leadership is not a result of the job title you hold but of the attitudes and behaviours you possess. So get ready and embrace a new way of doing projects and get ready to lead. Stand up tall and sharpen your saw.

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Now in its second edition, The Power of Project Leadership, explains how to generate positive results for projects and clients while growing as a leader and empowering the team to contribute to the fullest extent. It contains new interviews with successful project leaders and outlines capabilities, attitudes and behaviours needed to add real value and deliver outstanding projects. The Power of Project Leadership discusses current topics such as the psychology behind high performing teams, coaching, facilitation and conflict resolution, collaborative planning and risk management. Available on Amazon.

I recently listened to an interview on PM Podcast with Agata Czopek – a speaker at PMI’s global conference on the topic of inclusive leadership. I listened with great interest as many of her observations are reflected in my own book, The Power of project Leadership. And although Agata uses terms that are a bit different to my own, the underlying messages are the same: To build an effective and innovative team you have to bring people together with different kinds of thinking, fully include them in discussions and decision-making and make them feel psychologically safe.  

​Diversity leads to higher performance
In the podcast interview Agata explains that the future lies in diversity and inclusion. As project managers we want our team members to be innovative, to solve problems and to identify risks before they turn into issues. This is much more likely to happen if there is diversity of thinking inside the team. People with different backgrounds, culture and gender, see the world from different angles and solve problems in different ways. In teams where there is diversity of thinking, levels of innovation can be up to 20% higher and 30% more risks can be spotted.
 
These statistics are backed up by McKinsey research which shows that companies in the top-quartile for gender diversity on executive teams are 21% more likely to outperform on profitability and 27% more likely to have superior value creation. But it’s not just gender that’s making a difference. Companies in the top-quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity on executive teams were 33% more likely to have industry-leading profitability. McKinsey’s research also shows that there is a penalty for opting out. Companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic/ cultural diversity were 29% less likely to achieve above-average profitability than were all other companies in the data set. Not only were they not leading, they were lagging.
 
Although the business case is strong for inclusion and for hiring people who are wired differently, this is not always common practice. The issue is that we tend to surround ourselves with people who think like we do. And that’s a really bad idea if you want your team to excel in the long team. The financial crisis was partly caused by organizations run by similar types of people with a large appetite for risk and monetary results. A much more balanced team would be one were all personality types are represented. You do need someone who is results-oriented in your team, but you also need people who are fun, inspiring and creative, people who value harmony and sustainability and someone who looks after the detail and ensures that work is completed to a high standard.
 
Diversity of thinking is not enough. You also need inclusion.
Diversity of thinking doesn’t automatically create a team that’s good at innovating, solving problems or spotting risks. Diversity without inclusion won’t work. You also have to include people and treat them with fairness and respect. As I have written about previously people have six fundamental human needs that need to be fulfilled. These fundamental needs are related to feeling safe and certain, feeling valued and significant, feeling that we belong in the team, feeling that we have opportunities to grow and develop and that the work we do have meaning and purpose.
 
As a project manager and leader you have to cater for these human needs if you want people to contribute and come forward with their knowledge and ideas. Some of it is pretty simple such as spending time together, going for lunch, collaboratively solving problems, inviting everyone to team meetings and making information readily available. If people feel excluded there’s little chance they are going to contribute. Other aspects require more thought and emotional intelligence, such as making people feel safe and certain. If team members don’t feel safe to contribute with their ideas and openly ask a question or share a concern, they will hold back and withdraw from the debate.
 
To increase your team’s performance, make a conscious effort to include all team members, be interested and curious about their background and what they have to say. No one enjoys working for a diminishing leader who likes to hear himself talk and who believes that he is the smartest person in the room. Instead walk your talk and show that diversity and inclusion can have a real impact on project performance. As an inclusive leader you have to empower the team, foster collaboration and seek to overcome your biases and blind spots. An important aspect is making sure that your way of thinking doesn’t have an adverse effect on decision-making. How can you do that? By asking your team for feedback. Opening yourself up to other people’s views on your leadership style is one of the most powerful things you can do on your road to becoming and inclusive leader. 


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I tend to refer to Project Leadership as the epitome of good project management – or as an extension of traditional project management. Project Leadership is the art and science of leading successful change, and ensuring that we add as much value as possible to our organization, teams and customers. Project leadership is as much about vision, innovation, engagement and people as it is about tasks, plans and resources. It is characterized by a person’s ability to build relationships with customers and end users, understanding their real needs and leading the team to successfully deliver those needs.
 
We can gain further insight into project leadership – and how to get there - by examining The Project Leadership Matrix™.  

People who operate on the left-hand side of the matrix predominantly have a rational and logical mindset and are focused on skills, events and processes. They make use of their logic and authority when assigning work and will often tell their team members what to do. We could say that this approach to managing people is a push approach.
 
On the contrary, people who operate on the right-hand side of the matrix have a natural tendency to focus on people. They don’t rely on their authority, but appeal to people by finding out what motivates each person at an individual level. People-focused leaders involve team members in the decisions that affect them and show them how they fit into the overall vision. They don’t just tell people what to do, but inspire them by painting an appealing picture of the project’s objectives that they would like them to contribute to. We can call this a pull approach. They pull people with them like a magnet instead of pushing, or forcing them.
 
If you are in doubt where on this scale you operate, think about how easy or difficult you find it to approach a person who doesn’t report to you. In matrix organizations, where team members don’t have an organizational reporting line to the project manager, we cannot rely on our authority to allocate work. This is a situation that task-oriented project managers find challenging – not least when the team member they need to interface with is in a senior position and has a lot of experience. In such situations we need to make use of our people and influencing skills and of our understanding of human behaviour rather than relying on authority.
 
Let’s examine the dimensions of the vertical axis, reactive versus proactive. People who operate in a reactive manner – towards the bottom of the matrix – are drawn to immediate issues that crop up. Even if they arrive at work with a clear intention of what they need to achieve, they may not achieve it because something urgent or unexpected comes up and derails them. They spend their time following the flow of events rather than defining it and are constantly on a back foot.
 
At the other end of the scale we find people with a proactive mindset. People who operate towards the top of the matrix are concerned with the project’s strategic vision and they take steps every single day to create a successful future for the project. They set their own agenda to the benefit of the project, the client and the team. They don’t make knee-jerk decisions and only firefight when a true crisis emerges that cannot wait and that no one else can deal with. In that situation they will strive to address the root causes and put in place measures to ensure that the issue doesn’t reoccur.
 
Although most of us operate in all four quadrants depending on the situation, we have a tendency to spend the majority of our time in one of them. Project managers who are not getting the results they want operate predominantly in quadrant number II. They spend too much time firefighting and dealing with events and tasks that urgently need to be resolved. They are good at getting things done but will never be successful at implementing a strategic change initiative as long as they operate from this space. The biggest sign that something is wrong is the lack of clear direction and the number of project issues that crop up – interpersonal or otherwise. Oftentimes projects are kicked off before they are fully defined, roles and responsibilities are unclear, rules of engagement haven’t been agreed, stakeholders are not engaged, requirements are too vague and objectives aren’t aligned to corporate strategy. Ultimately the project fails to deliver the expected benefits – or if it does deliver them, it’s a long and arduous road to getting there.
 
Project managers who get outstanding results tend to operate in the top part of the matrix – in between quadrant III and quadrant IV. They are proactive and focused on the project’s long-term strategy and they are partly oriented towards tasks and partly towards people. This is the domain of Project Leadership. Project leaders continue to be mindful of the task side of the project and will not be effective if they operate exclusively in quadrant IV. People who operate exclusively in quadrant IV have great ideas and are good at inspiring people, but will often have no concrete plans or operational strategies to back up their vision. Project leaders may also spend time in quadrants I and II, but it is not a strategy they rely on to get results.
 
Many project managers find if difficult to break out of the reactive and task-oriented pattern. They don’t see how they can free up time and energy to proactively deal with people and the strategic side of the project. They are caught in the reactive management trap and find it hard to shift their over-reliance on control and rational thinking to a more people-oriented approach of trust and openness. After all, most of us are trained in mastering the detail and in thinking logically rather than building relationships and leading people. In addition, the more-for-less culture isn’t helping. In many cases it may be increasing the workload and pushing people into a reactive and task-oriented mode.
 
But no matter why we find ourselves in these situations, there will always be ways around them by thinking creatively and knowing that we have a choice. We may not be able to change external factors, such as limited budgets, reduced workforces and a reactive company culture, but we can control how we respond to them, what we choose to focus on and how we influence people around us. I was almost at the point of giving up my job as a project manager in financial services because I found it to be too exhausting. Little did I know that my working patterns were self-imposed and not the fault of the industry, the company, the project, the client or my manager. It is easy to feel victimized and look for someone to blame outside of ourselves. But the reality is that we hold the answer and the key to working more effectively, getting better results, feeling more energized and working with people to deliver better projects. Had I left my job at that time I would have found the exact same problems elsewhere. Instead I started examining what I could do to change the situation. I started looking at how I could work smarter rather than harder.

• Look at The Project Leadership Matrix and determine where you operate most of the time. Do you have a natural preference for tasks or people?
• Do you rely on your authority over people, or do you inspire and influence people at an individual level?
• Are you good at attending to important activities that lead to success of your project, or do you often get side-tracked and interrupted?

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If you’ve followed my blog for a while you will know that I’m a big proponent of working with focus and making the most of the time we have available. Project managers and leaders are busy people who have decisions to make, teams to lead, risks to mitigate, reports to write and clients who need to be communicated with. To get it all done to a high standard, and without spending late nights in the office, it’s crucial to master the ability of working on the most important tasks with great focus.

Reduce your involvement with firefighting and time-wasting
In The Power of Project Leadership I talk about three fundamental ways in which we can spend our time: Proactive, Time wasting, or Firefighting. In the proactive category we find important and strategic activities such as understanding the clients business, gathering requirements, planning for the future, improving and innovating, building the team and liaising with stakeholders. The time wasting category comprises activities that add very little or no value at all – for instance unimportant e-mails, drawn-out meetings, unnecessary red tape, interruptions, trivia and web surfing. In the firefighting category we have activities that only add value in the short term, such as urgent issues, putting out fires, interpersonal conflict and crisis. 

Most of us are well aware that in order to get results we must spend our time in the proactive category and reduce our involvement with firefighting and time-wasting activities. But that’s easier said than done! In a fast paced environment, a typical day is filled with e-mails, meetings, and interruptions with only a few quiet moments to get real work done. A study by McKinsey found that the average knowledge worker spends a staggering 60 percent of their workweek engaged in electronic communication and Internet searching, with close to 30 percent of their time dedicated to reading and answering e-mail. In a culture where we are expected to always be online and available our challenge is to put in place habits that enable us to get more work done from the proactive category.

Deep work vs. shallow work
What we need is discipline and focus and the ability to engage in deep work, as described in Cal Newport’s book by the same name. In the book, Newport argues that deep work – which he defines as “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task” – is one of the most crucial abilities for anyone looking to move ahead.  He even calls it “the superpower of the 21st century.” 

The opposite of deep work is shallow work. Shallow work consists of tasks that aren’t especially important and that don’t require a deep level of concentration. Newport categorises e-mail checking, social media and web surfing as shallow work as well as anything that a college graduate could easily pick it up and that doesn’t leverage the individual’s expertise. 

Our culture of connectivity and interruptions is limiting us
One of the biggest problems with shallow work is that by servicing low-impact activities, we take away time from higher-impact activities. Another problem is that when we work at a shallow level we’re often semi-distracted, switching from one task to another. Every time we do so, for instance when we quickly check our e-mail, our attention remains stuck thinking about the original task for a little while. Context switching and short interruptions delay the total time we take to complete our work. 

Our workplace culture of connectivity is a real inhibitor of deep work. Open plan offices combined with an expectation to quickly read and respond to e-mails create opportunities for collaboration, but they do so at the cost of massive distraction. You might argue that it’s necessary to always be connected, but a study from Boston Consulting Group show that performance doesn’t drop when people switch off e-mail for one entire day a week. On the contrary, by disconnecting, staff experiences more enjoyment in their work, better communication among themselves, more learning and a better product delivered to the client. 

Build up your working day around blocks of deep work
According to Newport, the key to working more effectively isn't to eliminate shallow work completely, but to minimise it while making sure you get the most out of the time that’s freed up. The first step is to put structure and discipline in place so that you take back control of the many diversions that attempt to steal your time. You can do that by quitting social media and build up your days around blocks of deep work, with the shallow activities batched together so that they don’t interrupt your periods of deep focus.
 
To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. To get the most from these blocks of concentration identify a small number of ambitious outcomes that would return a tangible and substantial benefit for you and your project. You should also try to practice deep work at the same time every day as that will require much less willpower than working deeply in an ad hoc way whenever you feel like it.

Switch completely off from work at the end of your workday
Newport also advocates completely switching off from work at the end of the workday until the next morning because resting your brain improves the quality of your deep work. Shut down work thinking completely with no after dinner e-mail checks, no mental replay of conversations and no attention to how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge. Trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings will likely reduce your effectiveness the next day. When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done. 

Overcome your desire for distraction
To help you work more deeply it’s important that you train yourself to overcome your desire for distraction. If every moment of potential boredom is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone or checking your inbox then your brain is not optimised for deep work even if you regularly schedule time for it. The only way to build your deep-work muscle is by deliberately practicing uninterrupted concentration. You can do that by embracing boredom, resisting the temptation to always satisfy your distraction-seeking mind and by scheduling in advance when you will use the phone and the Internet and then avoid it altogether outside of these times. 

​In summary:
To produce at your peak level you must be able to focus intensely without distraction on your most important proactive activities. This doesn’t mean that you should stop communicating with people around you or stop checking your e-mails. It means that you should treat shallow work with suspicion and build up your days around blocks of deep work, with the shallow activities batched together.
 
Imagine getting to a stage were your level of concentration is so intense that you only need 3 to 4 hours of focused time to get your most important work done. The remainder of your time can then easily be spent in meetings and in conversation with the team without jeopardising your productivity.
 
Whilst writing this blog I personally put my phone on flight mode and closed down my e-mail. Whenever my mind wandered, I guided myself back to the blog in front of me. It wasn’t easy and highlighted that I definitely need to build my deep-work muscle and learn to control my need for distraction. Perhaps I should take Cal Newport’s advice on board and embrace boredom :-)


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When people come to me for one-2-one coaching they often want to achieve better results in their work and life, such as building better professional relationships, getting better at managing their time, achieving a promotion, delivering a new big project or improving their work-life balance. What’s interesting is that as we begin to work on these goals a few underlying blockers appear that need to be addressed.
 
One of the blockers that I often see is a lack of self-confidence. I’m not talking about the kind of superficial confidence that people portray to the outside world. I’m talking about a profound belief in one’s own abilities, which many people unfortunately don’t have. 

​When a person lacks self-belief it can show up in many different ways. Some people are cautious and withdrawn, whereas others can be defensive, aggressive or even arrogant. It’s only when we get to know them better that we realise what the underlying reason for their behaviour is. If we don’t recognise that an employee or a team member lacks confidence we may respond in ways that aggravate the situation. You have probably experienced a team member who used arrogance to mask their insecurities. The manager got annoyed, challenged the employee and thereby triggered another defensive reaction. This negative pattern will continue until one of them begins to enquire at a deeper level and use their emotional intelligence to get the relationship back on track.
 
The worst thing you can do is to criticise and be overly challenging
If you work with someone who lacks self-confidence, the worst thing you can do is to criticise, minimise and be overly challenging. The employee will perceive your behaviour as a personal attack, which will trigger a fight/flight or freeze response in them. They will go into survival mode and will lose their ability to think clearly. Some managers may take advantage of the situation and elevate themselves at the expense of the employee. That's very unfortunate. People who lack confidence are easy targets and pushy managers don't realise how much damage they are doing.
 
To get the best out of the situation, and the employee, respond in the following ways:

• Give them support. Let people know that you have their back. It will give them the space and confidence to contribute without fear of being judged. You can do that by taking the time to understand their situation and by showing empathy. When you offer guidance and allow them to make mistakes you remove a large part of the pressure they put on themselves.

• Give sincere praise. Insecure people need to be reminded of their strengths and the things they do well. They doubt their own abilities and don’t feel that they are good at anything. You can help them perform better by pointing out aspects of an assignment that they have completed really well and by explaining why you believe they are the right person to complete the task at hand.

• Build them up step by step. People who don’t have a lot of confidence tend to remember the times in their work and life when they failed at something. Their negative expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies where they go on to fail because they expected it. Through small assignments, which they have the skills to complete well, you can begin to reverse the flow. You gradually build them up and give them the experience of what it feels like to succeed.

• Set clear expectations. When you delegate a task be as clear as possible about what you expect the outcome to look like. Don’t be overly controlling by demanding that it’s done in a certain way. Instead give them time to think about it and check back in with them. Talk through the steps they expect to take and ask what support they need from you. This will help mitigate the risk of something going wrong, which would further undermine their confidence.

• Offer training. If the team member is new in a role they may feel particularly insecure because they don’t feel they have the right skills. Giving them the right kind of training will help them progress as there is a strong link between competence and confidence. After the training, ask them to convey what they learnt and help them make use of the new knowledge. Integrating the learning on the job straight away is essential as they will otherwise see it as another point of failure.

 
Whereas the above tips will help a team member feel more confident about their abilities and increase their performance, it’s unlikely that it will get to the root of their self-esteem issues. The employee will have to take matters in their own hands and decide to work on the underlying problem. This can take a little while, as they will have to revisit their thought patterns and understand where the negative self-talk comes from.
 
If you are the person who lacks self-esteem, try these tips:

• List your talents and successes. Take some time out to review your successes and all the things you are good at. At first you may feel that you are not good at much, but think again. What do you have a natural talent for? What were you good at as a child? What do other people compliment you for? What are you proud of in your life? Write as much down as you can think of. Find at least ten items! Perhaps you are a really good listener. Perhaps you are patient. Perhaps you are creative or analytical. Once you have written them down, take each quality and really feel it. Yes, instead of thinking about it, feel it. Take this talent into your heart and recognise that it has been give to you as a gift.

• Tone down the inner critic. Notice the negative chatter in your mind and start to challenge it. The thoughts you have are just thoughts. And they aren’t true until you decide to believe them. So stop listening to them. If you hear a thought saying I’m not as successful as others, I’m not as fast a thinker as others or I'm not as creative as my peers, challenge it. What would happen if you ignored that thought? What would happen if you replaced it with another thought such as, I’m learning and I’m getting better every day? If your mind chatter continues, engage in a daily mindfulness meditation. This practice will teach you to observe your thoughts and to let go of them without judgement. 

• Be your own cheerleader and best friend. Experiment being the fly on the wall and observe yourself and your behaviours from the outside. Could it be that you are treating yourself worse than you would a friend? How come? What would you say if you were talking to your best friend and in which ways you would build them up? What would it take for you to treat yourself in the same way? How could you show yourself more compassion and self-love? In situations where you are overly critical of yourself, say these words: This is a moment of difficulty. Difficulties are part of everybody’s life. A lot of people probably feel the same way. I will respond with kindness. I will treat myself with compassion.

 
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I recently spoke at Dubai International Project Management Forum (DIPMF) and was struck by the innovative theme of the conference. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Already when I prepared for my presentation the organisers said, “Innovation is a big thing down here”, and indeed it is. In 2016 the UAE government was named the second-most tech savvy government in the world by the World Economic Forum and the Dubai government has formulated a bold strategy to be the world’s most innovative city by 2021. Not only that, Dubai’s goal is to consistently be ranked amongst the top 5 global centres for trade, logistics, tourism and finance. They are not there yet, but progress is being made. To help achieve their vision the Dubai Future Accelerators Program is investing $275 million over a five-year period in companies spearheading innovative projects in healthcare, transportation, renewable energy, sustainability, education, security and urban planning.

Dubai is also rewarding innovation in project management
At DIPMF I found the panel discussions about renewable energy and logistics the most fascinating (Dubai is investing heavily in solar power) but the awards ceremony for innovation in project management was also noteworthy. The Hamdan Bin Mohammed Award offers 8 awards with the aim of encouraging and promoting an innovative culture in project management. I was pleasantly surprised that a fellow Dane, Christina Sejr Pedersen, landed a $200,000 award for Project Half Double – an innovative project methodology centred around three core elements of Impact, Flow and Leadership. 

Everyone needs to be innovative to stay afloat
The conference made me think about how innovative I have personally been over the last couple of years, or not! When I first started out in my business six years ago I came up with new ideas and concepts that I captured in “The Power of Project Leadership”. And even my first book, “The Project Management Coaching Workbook”, which I wrote in 2012, contained innovative assessments and a unique coaching framework for project manages to reach excellence. But apart from my books, how innovative have I really been? Have I invented new models, new assessments and new ways for project managers to deliver better value, or have I just been very skilled at teaching, coaching and conveying existing knowledge? The intense focus on innovation at Dubai International Project Management Forum was a reminder that we all need to innovate in order stay afloat. The world is developing with such speed that unless we want to fall behind, we have to come up with innovative solutions to meet the needs of our clients and continuously improve the way we execute projects.
 
We need a culture where control and fear is absent
Project professionals have an important role to play in creating a culture of innovation and creativity by empowering team members to come up with new and better ways of doing things. But this may be easier said than done. Many project managers value control and compliance – attributes that are known to kill innovation. True idea generation will flourish in a culture where fear is absent and where there is an abundance of trust, openness and diversity. What this means is that managers and leaders need to make people feel psychologically safe to the extent where they are not holding back good ideas out of fear of being judged. They also have to create the time and space for unstructured thinking as ideas are unlikely to surface if people are constantly under pressure to deliver their other scheduled tasks.
 
Diversity of thought powers innovation
Another good way to create an innovative culture is to bring people together with different backgrounds and to stimulate their curiosity. Diversity of thought powers innovation, so mixing people up and inviting outsiders into the team can work wonders. People from different industries, who have different backgrounds, will bring a new perspective and generate a different set of options. Project professionals should also ask challenging questions in order to encourage team members to step forward and generate innovative solutions. Some of the questions they can experiment with are: What are we not seeing that is new or different? What have we not yet invested in that could make a big difference? What is working well for other teams that we can leverage? What if we had no constraints? What if we only had half the time? What if we could start all over? There needs to be a compelling challenge and a vision to work towards. Otherwise the risk of trying something new will seem too high.
 
Find the courage, energy and clear sight to innovate
As we enter into 2019 I will take time out to ask myself what I need to do to stay ahead of the curve, to innovate and to make a difference. I encourage you to do the same. Take a step back from your daily routine and observe your life and work from different angles. What is working well? What is not working well and what are the opportunities for making improvements and adding more value? It will always be easier to maintain the status quo than to question it and improve it. But as humans we are motivated by the desire to grow and develop so find the courage, energy and clear sight to do so. Who knows, perhaps you will be the next winner of the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Award.
 

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