PMcrunch

What are your beliefs?  What do you observe about the beliefs of those around you?  Are you aware of how your beliefs influence your actions – and therefore everything you do as a project manager and leader?  Trust me:  your beliefs influence everything you do, and therefore they will influence what your team members and stakeholders think of you and can steer actions in predictable directions.  You want to make sure those directions are to your liking.

Here are some beliefs to explore:

1. What is your belief about ‘work’?  What do you emphasize more, results or time?  Which best describes you:  “We work to live”, or “We live to work”?
2. What do you believe about processes?  What do you tend to emphasize more:  what is done, or how it is done.  There are other related areas, such as structure and compliance that you also could explore here.
3. What do you believe about quality?  Are you a perfectionist?  Can you be satisfied with delivering what others want – regardless of how it matches what you think is ‘quality’ in each case?
4. What do you believe about outsourcing?  Do you believe YOU do things best?  Do you have issues with ‘finding the cheapest’, ‘finding someone I know’, ‘finding someone “in the family”’, or other nuances of outsourcing?  How much do you think about making the relationship satisfactory for the outsourced resources?
5. What do you believe about customer or client relationships?  Do you believe the customer is always right?  What do you believe about educating the customer?  What are your limits as to what you would do for a client?
6. What do you believe about meetings?  Do you find them to be a waste of time very often?  Do you know how others feel about your meetings?  What do you think are viable reasons to hold a meeting, and what do you think is invalid?  Similarly what do you think about various ways that meetings are conducted?
7. What do you believe about organizations?  Do you have a preference about large versus small, matrix versus non-matrix, profit versus not-for-profit?  How does that match up with your situation, and how are your beliefs manifesting themselves?  It makes good management sense to look at where your organization is falling short of your expectations, and assess the beliefs—yours, and those of your team—driving the actions and results. 
8. What do you believe about ‘fairness’?  What do you think about what someone else thinks is fair?  Do you ever have disagreements over what is fair?  Do you think people on your team think you are a fair player?  Do you agree or disagree?
9. What do you believe about [tag-dir]compensation[tag-dir]?  How do you think people should be compensated?  Do you know anyone who you think is compensated too little or too much?  Maybe it is you!  Why do you think that?
10. What do you believe about education?  What is your education, and what did you need to believe in order to get it?  What is your attitude toward others with less of more education than you?  What do you think their attitude is toward you?

These are just a ‘quick 10’!  But, I am sure that, if for starters, you think about these things, you will do some introspection that can reveal some things about your beliefs that you might want to change.  You may find that adopting higher-performing beliefs is the most powerful step you can take as a PM and leader.  Thinking about these things is healthy – but taking action on them is the only way to self improvement and to increasing your effectiveness as a project manager and leader.  I will return to this topic again! 
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John Reiling, PMP
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