Be Easy to Reach
I’ve often heard that leadership and project management are exercises in communication. Communicate well, and you have a head start to success in leadership roles. One of the best ways to be perceived as a great communicator is to be easy to reach. Here are tips to help.
Carve out time for responsiveness. Add specific slots in your calendar to respond to emails, texts, and voicemails. As these communications will constantly come in, it only makes sense to give yourself time to respond. Doing so increases confidence that your stakeholders are valued and being heard, and you’ll be perceived as attentive.
Prioritize your media and share your habits. Some people will respond to texts very quickly and respond to voicemails at the end of the day. Others will check their email several times a day, and only check voicemails every few days.? Without knowledge of your habits, people may leave you a text expecting you to answer quickly, but that isn’t your habit. Be consistent with the hours you prioritize your responses to different media, and share those habits with your stakeholders. If they know you respond to texts quickly and voicemails on occasion, you can work with them to send you messages via the media that are appropriate, given the urgency of the message. Should a stakeholder violate that regime, such as sending a low-importance message via your high-priority medium, don’t just ignore that. Work with them to create the best habit and outcome for both of you.
Be open to individual interpretations of urgency. Let’s say you are a project manager who is very comfortable dealing with risk. You’ve created a plan, and if a risk appears to be coming to fruition, you know how to respond. This is not stressful, as it is an everyday occurrence. However, as a risk appears to be surfacing as an issue, you may have a stakeholder that is panicky. Put yourself in their shoes and treat their panic with compassion. Yes, it may be a simple risk response, and you’ll take care of it. But understanding that this appears as a matter of utmost urgency to someone else and respecting that goes a long way to being perceived as easy to reach.
Use your stakeholder’s vocabulary. We all have habits around the words we use. Our families, communities, education, and experiences built these over the years. Your pathway to the words you use rarely matches the pathway of your stakeholders. If you want to be understood with consistency, strive to use the vocabulary your stakeholders deploy. If you are unsure of the meaning of the terms they use, ask for clarification. Sounding like your stakeholders increases their confidence, and they will feel you are on their side when you communicate.
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This Office Hours discussion will examine the usual and not-as-usual approaches to risk management that all project managers should be embracing. Despite being a vital part of project management, risk rarely gets the attention it deserves. Join me and my fellow grizzled PM veteran Ian Sharpe as we talk about how risk management saves us, fails us, and how, sometimes we misunderstand the concept!
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Additional thoughts can be found in my project management and outsourcing classes on LinkedIn Learning, including:
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This article is part of Bob’s Reflections newsletter series, which discusses project management, outsourcing, and “intelligent disobedience”, a leadership approach. If you want more of this content, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article is posted.
Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library or check out https://intelligentdisobedience.com/
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MBA em Administra??o e Dire??o de Empresas | Mestrado em Dire??o de Recursos Humanos | Especialista em Opera??es de Armazém | Gest?o de Equipas | SAP & Excel | Lideran?a Sináptica
11 个月Bob McGannon, your advice on being easily reachable is practical and insightful. I appreciate your tips on carving out time for responsiveness and prioritizing communication channels. Your understanding of individual interpretations of urgency and using stakeholders' vocabulary effectively is commendable. Looking forward to your LinkedIn Live session on risk management and exploring your courses further. Your newsletter provides valuable insights for professionals. Keep up the great work!
Consultant | Technology Program Manager | Problem Solver | Talent Synergizer | Fraud/Risk/Compliance Specialist
11 个月Thanks Bob McGannon for these insightful tools for my favorite subject - communication. Effective communication can mean the difference between a good Project Manager (PM) and a great PM. That said, I really appreciate how you incorporate a managed approach which still allows the PM to provide excellent service while maintaining a sense of balance and control. If out-of-balance, i.e. texts ar 3:00 in the morning, a project manager will become ineffective and burned out. So, about that title, ‘Easy to reach’…in reality there will usually be a stakeholder or leader who feels their position entitles them to a response that may not fit the parameters set out, but instead demands immediate responses. Tricky. This requires the best skills you have in relationship building and interpersonal communication to come to agreement.