PMcrunch

As leaders and professionals, we are called upon to be at our best all of the time!  Not only to we need to maintain and improve personal performance, but we as project managers and program managers are frequently responsible for the performance of others.  One challenge is how we manage the plethora of positive and negative feelings that inevitably come our way in the course of our professional endeavors.  I have been thinking about how we can be more aware of what happens inside of us emotionally - our personal feelings - that needs to be managed in order to achieve top project performance consistently.

We all have less than positive feelings at times and we often judge how things are going by the current balance between positive and negative feelings.  One point of distinction is to think about the word "feelings" as separate and distinct from rational thoughts.  Thinking about "feelings" is not mean developing a list of what is going according to plan and what is not, but rather coming to grips with how we "feel" emotionally about it all.

Leaders are no exception when it comes to experiencing feelings.  While it can be tempting as a leader to put aside anger, fear, or sadness “in order to get the job done,” and maintain laser focus, doing so does not make the feelings disappear.  If we deny our feelings, "repress" them, or "sweep them under the rug", they tend to come forth indirectly, and others will detect them anyway.  It is much more effective to carve out time to reflect, and allow yourself and your team members to feel what you are feeling, individually and collectively. 

We all have experienced instances of high awareness where our attention was totally focused on one thing to the total exclusion of anything else.  Such maximum focus often occurs in emergency or dangerous situations, like when we fall or narrowly avoid an accident.  That kind of focus is good to understand, as we can tap that in time of need.  But if we consider such situations carefully, they are often followed by periods during which we thought and reflected on the experience, where we took the time to "process" what actually happened.  I think that peak performance for us and our teams requires this same type of processing time in order to consistently deliver peak performance.  The better we can get at balancing both, understanding and topping into these ideas and forces, the closer we can get to optimal performance for ourselves and our teams.

The bottom line is that putting your all into something not only requires forward motion, but time for introspection.  Introspection can occur on a project basis, but it needs to occur on a personal basis also.  Putting your all into your projects requires peak focus at peak times, and sufficient space for reflection, processing, and recoiling for yourself and the team.  Great leadership requires all of you, including both the intellectual and the emotional.
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John Reiling, PMP
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