PMcrunch

Often times, in the day to day course of business, as well as life in general, we resist certain conditions if they are not favorable in some way to us. I would call this less resistance to change and more a matter of not accepting the inevitable. I think that it is great leadership to learn to accept the inevitable. Let’s take a look at how.

Often times on projects, there are certain difficult circumstances that we deal with. It could be a difficult team member. It could be a difficult vendor. It could be a challenging technology. It could be a hard to meet environment. Whatever it is, it is something that we will bump up against continuously in the course of our project work. The first thing that we must do in these situations, is to recognize and accept the situation. Sometimes, things are not what they appear on the surface. From time to time, there are problems that appear to be difficult but upon further investigation are actually pretty easy to dispense with. Other problems appear to be difficult and in reality are quite difficult. And in other situations, there may be conditions that we don’t even recognize as difficult but at some point they will rise up and challenge us. The more thorough we can be in our analysis of these conditions and the more honest we can be with ourselves about them, the better equipped we will be to meet the challenge head on.

Followers love a leader who accepts reality. There is nothing more frustrating for a team member to see someone in a leadership role flaundering because they cannot seem to see or accept reality. So the first step for an upwardly mobile project or program manager is to scope up the situation, understand the details, and acknowledge reality. Being equipped with that is the first step toward positioning oneself to provide leadership.

The next step is to act on what we see. When we see large risks and have accepted them as reality, we are now in a position to work with our team on mitigation, we are free to focus on solutions and we are free to present alternatives to stakeholders. This is project and program management at its finest.

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John Reiling, PMP
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