Executive Coaching - What's in it For a Project Manager?Posted by Hovmand Merritt on January 26th, 2021 I've been in numerous IT leadership roles since I started my career over 2 decades ago and there's nothing quite as challenging, or as rewarding, to be a Project Manager. As well as all of the very important technical skills a Project Manager needs for example the power to build a schedule and budget and track for them, see the delivery lifecycle, and report status, a Project Manager needs to be a negotiator, a team builder, a collaborator, an influencer, and an innovator. These roles require leadership skills with the highest caliber. click resources is this mixture of technical management and leadership ability that makes the role so challenging. So why is this? The problem is that it's rarely the situation the Project Manager includes a clear scope, a team he manages directly, no issues, and no-one external for the project with whom he needs to influence or negotiate. Project Managers are usually necessary to work with a matrix environment, where they've little or no treating resources, timelines, or deliverables. They are likely to spend plenty of time negotiating for additional resources, looking to influence stakeholders to nail along the scope and deliverables, and wanting to find innovative solutions to deliver according to a strong, often time-boxed, schedule. In the midst of this all, they must be role models to keep the c's members engaged and leaders that can effectively navigate a variety of people in the selection of organizations in which they need to interact. This is no small feat for a Project Manager of a small project, let alone a larger multi-million dollar IT project that is certainly typical of today. How, then, can Project Managers find help and support on their own career journeys, ones that always gets to be journeys of self discovery and self growth? There are many courses to teach specific approaches for operating a project, then there is the Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional (PMP) credential. There are also many Project Management leadership courses with topics including team building events, collaboration, and negotiation. Though these is invaluable to developing technical and leadership skills, Executive Coaching is also invaluable to Project Managers because they fall into increasingly complex and stressful environments, and because they try to institutionalize new learnings. So just how do Executive Coaching help? The Executive Coach (who could be either hired directly by the individual or through the Project Manager's employer) will begin by comprehending the client's goals. This will make up the basis from the Coaching Agenda - the true secret goals that will be worked on a duration of time, including guiding the Project Manager to define what 'success' will look like. For the purpose of this information I am going to assume the Coaching Agenda is dependant on the aim of improving a Project Manager's leadership skills, within the following four areas: * Increased degree of self awareness * Improved power to negotiate and collaborate with stakeholders * Increased courage and confidence to challenge and innovate * Improved capability to manage conflict The Executive Coach is going to take the Project Manager via a journey of self discovery and development, in order to enhance their overall leadership skills, and enhance their effectiveness. Self Awareness One with the first things an Executive Coach are able to do is help their customers identify and improve their a higher level self awareness. Daniel Goleman popularized the thought of Emotional Intelligence (EI) inside 1980s and 1990s, one critical portion of that is self awareness. There are many assessment tools which you can use to help you Project Managers understand their amount of emotional intelligence and self awareness. Such an assessment provides opportunities so that you can gain a greater degree of self understanding, an enhanced capacity to self regulate, a knowledge of motivation, plus an increased amount of empathy and social skills. This might help Project Managers obtain an accurate picture of the phase of leadership development they are in, as well as identify areas that should be addressed. Executive Coaches might help facilitate and interpret Emotional Intelligence assessments so how the information could be assimilated and action plans place into place to keep the overall goal. Negotiation and Collaboration Having established a kick off point of self understanding, another critical skill for the Project Manager to target may be the capability to obtain results from folks, in a selection of teams, with potentially unique styles. I had a boss that called this 'style width', meaning the capability to understand the style and motivation of the person you happen to be dealing with, and to modify your personal style according to that, to acquire a more positive outcome for everybody. Using the foundation through the EI assessment, an Executive Coach may take the Project Manager further understand his personal power to stretch their style in negotiating with other people. Another way to enhance the Project Manager's power to negotiate is through tools for example the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Commercial dispute mediation does this deepen our idea of our own styles, but also about enhances our capability to recognize different styles on other occasions. I once attended a Project Management class on negotiation which has a team of Project Managers that I led, during which an MBTI assessment for everybody was performed. It was enlightening for us to determine the different types inside the group and effective in helping us use the results from the assessment to discover various ways and language in working with other people inside the organization. The net result was that most individuals improved our capability to negotiate and collaborate online websites and groups. The data gathered in these tools can form the basis of an personal development plan to enhance negotiation and collaboration skills. Executive Coaches operate as Thought Partners to talk through ideas and approaches, help identify obstacles and blind spots and still provide support and feedback whilst the client tests and refines techniques over an extended period. In some circumstances an Executive Coach may have the opportunity view the client doing his thing as the client puts the modern techniques into practice inside workplace. The Coach might provide constructive feedback in the non-threatening, non-judgmental, safe environment. This process allows the consumer to advance through the starting place of self understanding, through increased self development and improvement in the or her leadership skills. Courage and Confidence Two important characteristics for being a successful leader are courage and confidence. Workplace conflict resolution might be illustrated in numerous forms... risking a forward thinking approach as a way to meet a tight deadline, pushing back assertively and appropriately when a Business Sponsor attempts to increase project scope, negotiating with another possibly difficult part from the organization in order to obtain resources and tools that this project needs. An Executive Coach will assume the role of Trusted Advisor and Thought Partner because the Project Manager is constantly develop these characteristics, and advice the Project Manager as he or she tries various new techniques. One technique that can be particularly helpful is Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI could be used at either the organizational or individual level and could be the process of carrying strengths and positive experiences through the past in to the present and future to be able to result in positive transformational change. This reminds me of the 'Lessons Learned' procedure that Project Managers implement while using very crucial exception how the sole focus of AI is on the did wonders, how we can do really that within the future, and the way we can implement a much more positive culture advancing. An Executive Coach helps Project Managers apply this technique to themselves, by using a group of visualization exercises to recognize peak experiences through the past. As part of this, the Project Manager will identify the strengths which are found in those peak experiences, and the way they might be used inside present and future. This focus on strengths results inside a significant increase in a client's confidence. It can also be coupled with another assessment tool, 'Strengthsfinder', in line with the book by Tom Rath. The premise is that it is much simpler to perform much more of our strengths compared to to 'fix' our weaknesses, and so someone's 5 top strengths are identified out of an possible 34. Combined with AI, it is a very efficient technique in constructing a Project Manager's courage and confidence. An Executive Coach will advice the Project Manager through the process, helping define action plans for designing and sustaining change in the future. An Executive Coach will continue to work with the Project Manager to tie these techniques to the established coaching agenda and support them as they use them to fulfill their development and project goals. Managing Conflict Managing conflict is an additional challenge for Project Managers. Matrix projects may lead to conflict just with the very nature from the organization structure. Add to how the natural tendency from a team to experience conflict sooner or later, and skill in conflict management becomes critical to a Project Manager's success. Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) is a particularly helpful assessment tool because one aspect of it discusses how people operate under conflict. This can be invaluable in identifying not simply our own style under conflict, and also the styles of others. An Executive Coach can then help a client view the effective use of different language or behavior in order to travel through conflict to obtain a far more positive outcome. In another project management class that my Project Managers and I attended, this tool was used to assist us identify our three stage 'conflict sequence', i.e., the procedures in which we answer conflict. It is much simpler to eliminate conflict each time a) we could resolve it inside the initial stage ahead of the conflict becomes too deep and b) whenever we view the conflict sequence in the people we're dealing with. Some people predicted our conflict sequences; others were surprised. All of us learned a new method to communicate under conflict, and all of us achieved better resolutions consequently. So in conclusion, what is within it for a Project Manager who works together an Executive Coach? The relationship between Executive Coach and Project Manager is lasting, and thus the Coach might help a Project Manager make use of the training that they've been through, as well as the data gathered by using assessment tools, to result in sustainable changes in order to meet cause real progress. The Coach can empower a Project Manager to grow from someone who has the technical skills to handle a schedule and budget, to some strong leader who delivers successful projects not merely using technical skills, and also their newly honed collaboration, negotiation, influencing skills, which has a confidence that permits others to recognize her or him like a true leader. The Executive Coach help keep the client aligned while using overall coaching agenda, and also support the client in institutionalizing the changes as time passes. As the learning becomes sustained, the challenges of project management lessen as well as the rewards increase.Like it? Share it! More by this author |