Posts Tagged people management
Motivate me
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on March 2nd, 2007
We’ve all heard the speeches at some point. You know, the ones your manager flings around to help you get motivated for whatever crap you have to deal with. Motivation in the workplace is a big thing. I get it, I really do. With it people perform better, deliver more value, blah blah blah.
But how do you motivate people? Not being a particularly people-oriented person myself it takes quite a bit of effort. I find it difficult to relate the “classroom” teaching of motivational speakers to actual workplace situations. There’s help out there however. Taking the things backwards may prove to be a helpful way of looking at things.
Just today my boss came up to me to share his latest find: despair.com. The site made its name through a series of De-Motivation posters and a management book, “The Art of Demotivation“. Flipping through the site’s pages - and especially the videos in the Spin section - proves to be a helpful reminder of how some things you see every day are just plain wrong. I highly recommend the one on “Addressing Employee Complaints“.
The future tense of “I give”
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on August 17th, 2006
In a concious effort to improve my influencing skills recently began reading a book on it by R. Cialdini. I’ve found it to not only to be an informative but also a very entertaining read. The examples for the psychological tools used are vivid, to the point and quite frankly amusing.
One particular part which I liked was regarding Reciprocation - a concept stating that we try to repay in kind, what another person has provided us. To illustrate the pervasiveness of this rule an illustration was given regarding a fifth grader. When asked to give the future tense of “I give”. His response was “I take”.
PM Reading
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on October 25th, 2005
While browsing for some support doc over at books24×7 I came across the following title:
I didn’t have time to read through the whole thing but found the part that I read on defning a functional manager’s role quite helpful. Unlike many PM books that I’ve read so far this one actually bothers to take the focus away from the PM role and explains the constraints under which the functional manager works and thus how this may influence his relation to the project.
Developing Leadership
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on October 10th, 2005
Sometime ago I went on a management development programme. One of the topics we covered was “managing ambiguity”. What I took away from the subject was that it was the leader’s responsibility to manage the ambiguity, not his people’s. Hence his communication should be clear and unequivocal so as to ensure the team is aligned and no ambiguity is left for them to struggle with.
A sharp reminder of what to was brought to my attention a couple of days ago. This is what was said to a team of individual contributors by a director
[...] our “Operate Independently collectively” strategy is still [...]
You just have to love the managment speak.
Update:I’ve found the origninal text he was referring to! Just to show how things get distilled as it gets passed down the chain:
Operate independently, Compete collectively, Manage collaboratively.
Starting out
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on September 8th, 2005
So I’m slowly working myself into my new job. There’s plenty to learn as the area I’m working on is not familiar at all.
I sat in on a project telco today. Something that a PM said to an Ops person just made my day:
We’re focusing on keeping you alive, not the quality of your living
It’s a total confidence builder!
Double bind
Posted by Thomas in The Project Manager on November 6th, 2003
What is it about people who seek out situations where the only possible outcome is rejection. It is as if they - consciously or not - want confirmation of their sense of inappropriateness.
Could they not just get a life and stop embarrasing, annoying or otherwise irritating the rest of us! I mean really! These people press upon the rest of us what is known by psychologists as a “double bind“. Essentially they’re experts at throwing you into paradoxical communication. If you do the right thing and reject their proposals you confirm their sense of inapproriateness. If you accept their proposals they (and you) will think you’ve done it not to hurt their feelings. Whichever way you go, you’re sure to get the wrong end of the stick.
For a nice illustrative guide to the double-bind visit this site.