Power Skills

In this session, Jennifer Bridges and David Nour discuss details of PM Next to answer questions about Project Management after Covid19.

You'll leave knowing 1) what we're seeing project leaders struggle with most, 2) what we're finding that works 3) the competencies that will be in demand.

More importantly, you'll leave knowing the one thing you can do to get from now to next.

When organizations face a crisis, identity emerges as an urgent conversation. Who are we? Who are we NOW? Who will we be after all of this? If you’re a leader, you’re the narrator. Your urgent task is to help your system make sense of who we are, where we are, and what needs to happen next. ... this is storytelling. 

Now, Project Management Professionals need a set of dramatically different skills, knowledge, and behaviors to build on their foundational PMP expertise. In the Post-Covid new norms, storytelling for meaning, influence, and engagement will be one of the most distinguishable traits of those who will lead differently. 

 This session is focused on the strategic narratives you should be telling now to make sense of these unprecedented times… and align your project team for innovation and action.

As a project manager, it is hard to generate accountability, to hold people accountable and to get other people to get the most important work today. 

This session, Leading with Emotional Courage, talks about how to have hard conversations, create accountability and inspire action with the following key insights: 

• What we're seeing people are not doing what they need to because they are afraid of feeling things.
• What we've found working - developing emotional courage. 
• What's most important now is being OK feeling everything.  

Peter will also share a specific 5 step process for creating accountability and the key to initiating hard conversations.

In this session we’re talking about leading in a crisis with David Nour's fellow Marshall Goldsmith 100 colleague, John Baldoni. John is a certified master corporate executive coach who has worked with leaders at every level including the c-suite. His insights into how leaders make a positive difference are good lessons for us all. 

 “Adversity does not build character,” said American novelist James Lane Allen. “It reveals it.”

And it will be the revelation of character that is necessary. Employees are looking to leaders who do not shirk from responsibility, but rather embrace the challenge. Such leaders do not hold themselves apart; they bring along others with them. They delegate responsibility and authority, all the while remaining in the loop to monitor what is happening.

In this session we’re talking about How to Create a Most Loved Workplace for your project management team and company.  We will be talking with Louis Carter, CEO and founder of Best Practice Institute and Most Loved Workplaces, who will give his research and findings on becoming a Most Loved Workplace. 

Project managers today need functional teams that produce results while keeping people engaged, happy, and performing at their best. Unfortunately, human behavior gets in the way. People miss deadlines, present obstacles to progress, take up too much time, and create challenges and chaos that are uncomfortable and unnecessary for the team. And, perhaps worst of all, it creates a team of worst performance -rather than people who are fully engaged and love their job and work every day. 

In this session, we’re talking about how projects, organizations and careers succeed or fail based on leadership. What Dee has found is that what most people care about is ‘my’ project, ‘my’ organization and ‘my’ career. As such, Dee is going to provide guidance on ways to explore ‘your’ leadership and uncover things that can help fuel, not derail, your success.

The situation project managers/leaders are experiencing is this; due to outdated organizational structures and the ‘roles’  many companies have designed, they’ve actually created an environment where they’re forcing their leaders to act like more like managers. Yet, they’re expecting them to lead. Unmet expectations result for all. Separately, there are those in a leadership role who just won’t step up to the plate. Without the proper competencies, skills, expertise and experience, the confidence and courage to lead in times of crisis becomes inversly proportion. Now, more than ever, executives and stakeholders are looking for leaders to lead and guide their teams among the uncertainty. Today, those in leadership roles are now challenged to ’Step Up’ or ’Step Away’. In this session, I want to provide you with tools that have helped me during some of the most uncertain times in which I was called up to lead when I had no idea where I was going. 

Today we’re talking about Whole Brain Thinking.

The situation today looks like this – we’re all under enormous pressure to do more in less time, with fewer resources.  We no longer have the luxury of longer runways to figure things out or repeat the same mistakes.  Blindspots are everywhere and conflict amongst the team continues to fester.

As project management professionals, we think we know ourselves, and others on our teams.  But how well do we really understand how we’re wired, what our preferences are in the tasks and jobs we’re asked, if not forced to accomplish, and are there better ways to work with our project teams?

In today’s session, we want to share best practices to really understanding our mental wiring – what we gravitate toward, how that pull develops our competency, which makes us want to do more of it, which further develops our preferences.  Only when you understand you own dominant thinking style, can you begin to better understand others and explore more efficient and effective, if not impactful ways of working together as a team.

In this session, we’re talking about the Empathic Leader, exploring how empathy is our superpower when it comes to building, developing and leading high performing teams.

Project managers, specifically have to lead a vast dynamic team from a position of influence rather than power. While there is some degree of positional power, the majority of the project manager’s effectiveness comes from the ability to lead from the position of influence.  In order to be successful at influencing others we must first understand what drives them, what’s important and what matters most to them.  Project Management processes are the go-to tool when it comes to managing the needs, wants and sometimes demands of multiple stakeholders; however, these processes alone will not achieve success.  Project management processes coupled with the power of empathy; the ability to understand emotions in self and others, is the key to unlocking the potential in your team. 

In this session, we're talking about Leading with Noble Purpose. 

When people first left the office to work from home, there was a sense of urgency.  Now as time has gone by, people are weary, they're wondering if their work really counts for something. They're looking for purpose and meaning, and they need to feel inspired by their job.  This is a challenge for individual contributors, and it's a huge challenge for project leaders. 

You will leave knowing how to find your own noble purpose as work, and how to use it to inspire yourself and your team.  

In this session, we’re talking about 'Wired for Disruption – Five Shifts In Agility For The Future of Work'.

The situation today looks like this – disruption is happening all around us. We are increasingly working in a workplace that is virtual, fluid and unpredictable. We cannot plan with as much confidence as before. We need to find our confidence in our ability to be agile to change.

We know the uncertainty we are all experiencing can leave us feeling a lack of confidence, worried or anxious.

In this session, we will be talking with General Vincent Buggs about the initiative that project management leaders may (or, may not) be seeing when it comes to mid-level managers' ability to make an assessment then use their imagination in times of uncertainty. One of the main reasons for this issue is confirmation bias and institutional behaviors which handicap working groups brainstorming or mission analysis process. Often, leaders add to the problem due to lack of guidance and under the communication of intent.  The goal of any successful project is that the team must understand the intent of the task and ensure it is in accordance with the leadership's vision. Team members often struggle when they work towards pleasing the boss instead of truly solving the problem which leads to more issues later. Leadership style matters. Getting the most out of your team matters. The moment your team stops bring you problems is the moment you are not leading. Innovation is an adjective that requires a verb to manifest into creation. 

The Situation is that we live in a world where our senses are bombarded non-stop with demands and images of how we fall short of greatness. Our health suffers, relationships with the people we love most turn fragile, and our zest for life is zapped out of us.

What’s most important is that stress not only impacts your sleep, your mood, your ability to concentrate, and so much more, but that it’s at the core of this country’s most deadly diseases - including cancer.  

Now that most project teams are working from home, and are involved in dozens of daily online meetings, how do you become more intentional, invest in your digital relationships, demonstrate virtual respect for and gratitude in collaborating others, and elevate your team’s collective digital experience while you get acclimated to our new digital norms?

From best practices in remote work productivity to a checklist of what to- and not-to-do online, digital etiquette is more than a luxury; it’s a necessity for the current crisis learning environment.

Ask any project professional to describe an “emerging leader,” and they’re likely to include adjectives such as young, just out of school, their first team, or a “HiPo” - High Performer/High Potential. 

Those attributes are the most obvious ones to most of us. We believe, however, that there are broader definitions of an emerging leader. Eight to be exact!