Difficult Conversations
All the latest time-management and process-optimization tools in the world can’t make you stop procrastinating or hold a difficult conversation. Confronting the “elephant in the room” once a day, or even once a week, will make you a better project leader. Here are five practical tips for doing it today.
Recently I have been simplifying. I’ve been cleaning out a couple years’ worth of checklists, notepads and emails, and it made me think about where else I can apply it … beyond my cubicle, my truck and my basement. In this context, I remembered a bit of wisdom that has merit in project management: if you can identify one or two things you’re trying to avoid, such as a particular difficult conversation, you know you need to have, and do that today, you will become more valuable than you are today. Simple, right?
When thinking about project management in general and the management of risk in particular, this principle is especially useful. Often we know where the risk lies in our projects. We can more or less identify the “elephant in the room,” even if we don’t know how to deal with it. As project leaders, we have seen many of the same challenges come up again and again across multiple projects, clients and companies — managing change, risk and conflicting personalities, just to name a few. Sometimes they cripple our projects, even though “we could see it coming.”
But what if we could find a way to deal effectively with the “elephant in the room” once a day, or even once a week? Wouldn’t this contribute greatly to project success and make you, as the project manager, indispensable to your client and team?
It’s easy to hide in issue logs, risk assessments, action item lists and all the latest tools and processes. It’s not easy to confront head-on the one thing that you realize as crucial but are uncomfortable putting squarely on the table for resolution. Let’s look at why certain conversations are difficult, why we often procrastinate over having them, and the steps we can take to deal with the issue today.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s impossible to avoid saying things that are uncomfortable for clients, team members and stakeholders to hear. Maybe your client’s decision (or decision-making process) is the issue. Maybe you believe your boss is making a mistake, but are afraid to say so. Maybe a team member is performing poorly. In some ways, our culture teaches us to sugarcoat the truth, to avoid possible offense at all costs, to save face and to live to fight another day.
Sometimes we procrastinate because we don’t have the answer completely worked out in our minds. This can be a dangerous spot to linger for too long; it’s actually a bit arrogant to think that we have to be able to solve every issue on our own before talking about it. If we are to be our best as a team, we have to be willing to be a bit vulnerable and reach out for help.
Often the most uncomfortable part of difficult conversations is the anticipation. For starters, if we have the conversation sooner, we would have a decreased duration of painful anticipation, regardless of outcome. This alone would be a logical reason to get on with it and confront the issue.
More important, the key principles of risk management apply. Identifying and dealing with issues or risks sooner is much less costly than waiting. Waiting gives the issue longer to meander down the wrong path; it allows good effort to be wasted, precious time to elapse without a solution, and a project to move from definition (where a solution would be a change on paper) to development (where a solution would involve throwing away expensive code and creating new, also expensive code). Therefore, solving the big issues sooner rather than later has a real, financial benefit to projects.
Here are five tips to help you stop procrastinating and do the right thing today:
1. Write down the names of one or two critical topics you are avoiding, that you know need resolution. Don’t try to identify or solve every open issue right now; just identify the top one or two.
2. Think about why you are avoiding these topics. Write down the key reasons so you see them. Seeing the reasons in writing might help you overcome them.
3. Imagine the likely result of doing nothing. Can you state or even guess an impact?
4. If the impact of doing nothing is likely to be worse than your reasons for procrastination, schedule a conversation. It could be a formal meeting with a deck, a short phone call, or an in-person conversation over coffee. Often a one-to-one conversation is the best place to start.
5. Acknowledge at the outset of your meeting that this conversation is difficult for you, and why. This should take some of the tension out of the conversation, and may actually help you to collaborate in finding an answer. It will keep a human element at the forefront, and help the other party realize that you care enough to do something that’s uncomfortable for you. Also, be willing to acknowledge that you may not know the full answer, but that it is important to recognize the issue and work toward an answer together.
The bottom-line? You likely already know the one issue or risk that your project is facing and that is most important to deal with. If you just do one thing today, take the next step to deal with this issue. Despite some discomfort, it will make you a better project leader.
Paul Pantzer is a senior consultant in program management at Molecular. He has managed complex programs for multimillion dollar clients such as Reebok, Hewlett-Packard and Royal Caribbean. Prior to joining Molecular, he worked for Banta Internet Solutions and Arnold Worldwide.