6 Important Things New Project Managers Need to Know

, ,

By Andrej Kovacevik

Corporate demand for project managers is growing at a rapid rate of pace.

Talented people will be needed to fill the numerous project management positions that are becoming available; and industry insiders expect to see women stepping up to fill a significant percentage of these roles.

The Association for Project Management reports that female project managers tend to be younger and less experienced than their male counterparts. For the new female executives who are entering the field, we offer this list of 6 important things female project managers need to be aware of:

1. The Scope of Your Projects Might Change

Often, an executive or group of executives from your hiring organization will set parameters for the scope of the project you’ve been selected to manage. In a perfect world, you’d work within the scope of those parameters to complete your project. But according to Elizabeth Harrin at A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, you can’t always count on things to work out so neatly. She points out that most projects evolve through 4 formal versions of scope before their conclusion. Be flexible in your anticipation of this reality.

2. Managing Expectations Is an Essential Part of the Job

Whatever project you’re managing could potentially bring huge changes for a whole bunch of stakeholders in your hiring organization. Does everyone fully understand the implications of what’s coming? Probably not. As the project unfolds, do your best to help your colleagues get a handle on what the new normal is going to look like going forward. Be proactive about making any dramatic transitions as painless as possible for all stakeholders involved. How you handle this can make a massive difference in whether your leadership is perceived as a success or a failure by the end of the project.

3. It’s Crucial to Share Big-Picture Goals With Other Stakeholders

It’s easy for colleagues to succumb to tunnel vision and entirely miss what the main objectives for a project might be. Creating a mindmap can help to explain what’s going on and to get everyone else on board. It’s a big win if you can get all the relevant stakeholders involved in your project to understand the big-picture goals and buy in from the beginning.

If there are people who aren’t buying in, it is helpful to identify them early on and figure out the reasons for their opposition. Perhaps they even have valid reasons that should be addressed. Don’t ignore the naysayers. It’s better to work with them towards a resolution.

Obviously, you’ll first have to understand your project’s big-picture goals in order to communicate them effectively to your team. This shouldn’t be a problem — but for many project managers, it is. You might be surprised to learn that 80 percent of all project managers don’t fully understand the subtleties of how their projects support their hiring organizations’ business strategies, according to capterra.com. So if you don’t have a clear understanding of the primary motivators, you’ll have to do your homework so you can effectively educate both yourself and your team.

4. There’s a Whole Bunch of Jargon You’ll Need to Decipher

If you haven’t already earned a Master of Project Management degree, you might not be thoroughly educated about all the PM terminology that you’ll encounter as you work your way through your projects. Smartsheet.com offers a helpful glossary of project management terms you’ll want to be sure to familiarize yourself with.

5. The Role of Project Manager Is Changing in Ways That Favor Women’s Skills

According to experts at the international association of project managers, the vocation has evolved significantly over the course of the last several decades. They explain that, 20 years ago, the job of project manager was perceived as macho. Currently, in contrast, emotional intelligence is one of the foremost qualifications that top executives seek in a project manager. Today’s project managers need to excel in diplomacy, resourcefulness and creativity — a skillset that comes as naturally to women as it does to men. The pressure to be macho is now out of the picture. And, accordingly, the numbers of female project managers has been growing and is expected to grow more in the future.

6. You’ll Need to Cultivate a Professional Network

Elise Stevens, writing on behalf of the Project Manager website, explains that women will find better opportunities in the long term if they establish and nurture their own professional networks. In her opinion, one main advantage of networking is having the opportunity to better understand what leaders desire in managers and project leaders. Her network has also opened up new opportunities that would not have become available to her otherwise.

As a management professional, you cannot expect to succeed if you’re isolated on your own island. You’ll constantly need to turn to others to solve problems, find needed resources, delegate tasks and seek input. When you’ve cultivated a network, it’s much easier to accomplish all these things.

Of course, these are not the only things female project managers urgently need to know; but these are some of top things that tend to take women by surprise when they are new to project management. The sooner you wrap your head around these 6 things, the better the outcome will be for the projects you’ll manage in the course of your career.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions of guest contributors are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com

/by

Voice of Experience: Susan Brown, Wells Fargo Advisors

Susan BrownSusan Brown keeps a quote from Marianne Williamson on her desk that says, “There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you…. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

Those words, which have helped Brown grow her team and business at Wells Fargo Advisors (WFA), remind her that women must be bolder than they might have been conditioned and pass it on to others.  “We need to learn our own value and expertise—and speak to ourselves just like our best friend would,” she advises.

Building Her Business, Helping Others Build Their Wealth

As Brown puts it, she “fell” into the career she loves 35 years ago, when she was working in Hilton Head, S.C., and married a manager at her current company, which meant she ultimately had to find another job. At her side gig teaching aerobics, a class member suggested she interview at Prudential Securities—where she was quickly hired.From there, Brown transferred to Charlotte, N.C., as a client associate for the firm. Her next move was to transition to a financial advisor role, where she spent eight years in a positive mentoring relationship with a senior financial advisor. Prudential Securities was acquired by Wachovia Securities and then Wells Fargo Advisors—where Brown is now a financial advisor, managing a $170 million-AUM practice. She’s proud to oversee an all-female, multi-generational team of four, which includes her partner, Karen Shane, once Brown’s client associate. Both participated in Wells Fargo Advisors’ DELTA Program, an intensive coaching and consulting process based on proven business development and practice management strategies—and realized how well they work together.

In addition to building and developing her team, Brown acknowledges her proudest professional achievement as being able to keep 100 percent of her clients in the market during the 2008 collapse. “There are only so many ways to tell people to hang in there, but they listened, and I’m pleased to say that they were all able to recover.”

Brown’s team remains focused on its mantra of “women helping women,” and is working to attract additional female corporate executives as clients. “This is what we’re passionate about, and we’ve had proven success in this space over the years,” she says.

A Program that Helps Women Grow

Brown advises women to be patient with themselves as they hone their skills, something that she feels is reinforced through Wells Fargo Advisors’ Next Generation Talent Program—of which she encouraged Shane to participate as she progressed from client associate to financial advisor.

The innovative program, which includes training and mentoring as well as a salary throughout the program before transitioning to base plus commission, has an 80 percent success rate. In contrast, Wall Street’s traditional sink-or-swim training programs garner only about a 20 percent success rate. “Being a client associate used to be a place where you got stuck,” Brown says.  “However, WFA’s program provided Karen with the training, support and development to become a financial advisor—and I gained a partner and an eventual successor for my practice in the process.”

It’s also a win for the firm, as the program yields confident and educated advisors for the next generation, as well as clients who will be served by them. Brown hadn’t realized her clients were worried about her eventual retirement until she introduced her new, younger partner, and they expressed their relief in knowing there was a great succession plan in place.

“My clients’ concern about my succession plan is simply because the relationships we’ve built are so personal—some of them already stretching to a fourth generation,” she says. “We understand their challenges and family dynamics and these deep relationships are invaluable.” In fact, she finds that her work and social life are almost inextricable. “If you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work,” she says, adding that most of her travel and exercise groups include many of her clients.

She is also imparting the importance of relationship-building to her 28-year-old daughter, Anna Berger, who joined her team four years ago. Anna graduated from the University of South Carolina with degrees in finance and marketing and had started her career in New York, when she told her mom she wanted to move back to Charlotte. Anna has her Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor designation and focuses on client review preparation, trading, social media and other duties but has plans to participate in WFA’s Next Generation Talent Program, as well. In 2017, Kelly Walker joined Brown’s team as a practice manager and handles scheduling appointments, managing the team calendar as well as coordinating client events.  She is also working on obtaining her securities licenses.  “Kelly is extraordinary at running the team and making sure everyone is executing on a daily basis. She’s a star,” adds Brown.

“I was taught that I’d be recognized for hard work and merit, yet I’m telling my daughter that while hard work is important—it’s not enough. I tell her that she has to be bold and go after what she wants because no one is going to just serve it to her,” says Brown. “However, I believe that if you’re passionate about your career, like I am, everything else will naturally fall into place.”

/by

Voice of Experience: Sarah McLean, Partner, Shearman & Sterling

Sarah McLeanAsking questions is one of the best ways to grow both personally and professionally, finds Shearman & Sterling’s Sarah McLean.

“I wish I had known when I was first starting out that most people don’t mind when you ask them questions about their work or request feedback on your work — and the more direct the question, the better,” she notes. “Specific questions lead to better discussion and ultimately lead to better information for you.”

An Early Pivot Leads to a Rewarding Career

With an undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, Sarah assumed she would become a research scientist or go to medical school. But in her last year of college she took a business law class that intrigued her with how problems and solutions are presented so differently than in science. That, coupled with the three years of research she had been doing on the pea aphid genome, led her to decide to pursue law school rather than research.

Her first job out of law school was with a Texas-based firm where she initially practiced health law — at the time still considering medical school—but ultimately didn’t find it challenging and switched to oil and gas private equity. She practiced with the same firm for almost 20 years, in both Houston and Austin, along the way closing more mergers and acquisitions deals than any other lawyer in Texas in 2017, according to the records of The Texas Lawbook. She then started thinking about making a change, to find a new challenge that would energize and excite her. She moved to Shearman & Sterling in April 2018, where she currently practices private equity and oil and gas upstream and midstream mergers and acquisitions.

Building the Business One Relationship at a Time

While Sarah is currently working on a number of complicated, interesting deals and transactions, what she’s most excited about is her role in business development—going out to see clients and contacts and introducing them to Shearman & Sterling. “We’ve put together an impressive team of oil and gas deal lawyers in Austin and Houston, and it has been great to get out of the office and talk to people,” she says.

She’s built an impressive array of contacts over the years, primarily because she figured out soon after starting her career that every person you meet is a potential future business contact. “I realized that reaching out to people you’ve met through business deals is a great way to grow your network of contacts, and the newer associates working on your early deals will be decision makers in 10 years,” Sarah says. “Developing long-standing relationships helps tremendously when you are asking for referrals and work.”

She often tells young women that an important trait to help build fulfilling relationships is getting over any shyness. “I was always hesitant to reach out to contacts for lunch or coffee because I thought they would be too busy or they wouldn’t really want to get together with me or a hundred other excuses. But ultimately I’ve learned that most people do want to form relationships and do have time for a quick check-in meeting,” she says. And, furthermore, even if they don’t have time or want to meet, they won’t be rude about it. “They just don’t respond, and someone not responding is not tragic or embarrassing at all,” she points out.

Taking Charge of Your Own Career

Sarah advises her peers of the value of sticking together and supporting one other, along with taking the time to nurture as many younger women as possible. She urges those in a position of authority or power in an organization to use it to dispel stereotypes and promote diversity.

While she recommends young women find good mentors and sponsors, she makes clear that often you have to make your own opportunities, rather than relying on them coming to you. “This means getting out of your office, meeting people and looking for ways to make yourself more valuable to your firm or company,” she says.

Women especially need to spearhead their own careers, because in her experience big law firms, along with the specialties of private equity and oil and gas, are male-dominated industries, which can offer some barriers.

One barrier in big law firms is what she terms “compassionate discrimination,” which manifests itself like, “I know Sarah is busy so I’m not going to include her on this pitch for new work because she has kids, and I don’t want her to have too much on her plate.” She found that this happened on a number of occasions, including client pitches where the client specifically asked for her. “I felt that men were making decisions about my career, my availability and my workload without even asking me, and this would not have been the case if I were a man.”

Despite this devotion to her career, Sarah seeks a balance with her personal life. As a mother of four children, ages 5 to 15, she spends much of her time participating in their activities or just hanging out with them. One thing she is especially proud of is all the volunteer work they do together. Sarah and her family are active with Generation Serve, an Austin-based family volunteering organization whose goal is to develop kids into community-minded leaders. This past April, they received the Wally Pilcher Family Volunteering Award for their work with the organization. She and her daughters are part of the National Charity League, and they also work directly with Austin Pets Alive.

/by

Important Conversations at Work: Improving Communication Across Differences

,

Guest contributed by Katherine Giscombe

At this contentious time in the United States, the rights of all women are under fire.

In spite of movements against sexual harassment that are gaining in popularity and support, such as #MeToo and TimesUp, there are factions within the country including lawmakers who actively oppose equal, fair and just treatment for women. And there has been an uptick in violence and harassment directed against racial minority groups, which have been condoned, and even spurred, by those in high political offices.

Boundaries between our work and personal lives continue to blur given the increasingly 24-hour a day expectations of employers, greater levels of virtual work, and increased workloads across industries. It becomes more difficult, over time, to not bring concerns about our lives outside of work into the workplace. The context of our lives affects our well-being and experiences at work, as shown in Catalyst’s research on the Emotional Tax, which demonstrates that a majority of women and men across racial/ethnic minority groups report feeling vigilant or on guard in the workplace, constantly preparing for the potential to deal with bias, discrimination, or exclusion.

It is vital for employees and associates to be able to engage with each other in a healthy manner, and develop mutual understanding even when they do not share similar backgrounds or experiences. Further, in the workplace, as research on career progression has shown, it is essential to develop relationships with allies and potential sponsors who can help progress one’s career. But doing so can be difficult among those from different backgrounds.

Catalyst has developed methods for reaching across differences to form meaningful connections at a personal level. It starts with understanding how communication among employees and associates can improve, and providing tactics to do so. In summary, reluctance to engaging across differences can fall into three major themes:

  • There isn’t a problem (attitudes about whether issues of gender, race, and ethnicity warrant concern)
  • There’s no benefit to talking (judgments about whether it’s worth the effort to discuss these issues)
  • There will be negative consequences to my actions (experiences that influence whether someone speaks up or remains silent).

Those who feel that there is not a problem may assume that race or gender differences don’t matter, because they believe they view women and men equally, and have no racial prejudice. A way to move beyond these beliefs is to ask one’s colleagues (of a diversity of genders and race/ethnicity groups) if they have ever experienced or witnessed biased behavior, and probe on what it looked like, what was verbally communicated. Further, they can ask whether colleagues of a different racial, ethnic, or cultural background feel that the workplace respects their identity and experiences.

Those who believe there is no benefit in talking may feel that race and ethnicity are not relevant in certain places, or that talking about our differences can only further divide us. Catalyst recommends asking colleagues a number of questions, including identifying times when discussing any type of difference has led to a positive outcome. Another suggestion is to identify “off-limits” issues— then discuss how not talking about these issues can derail inclusion.

Finally, the fear that there will be negative consequences to my actions is sometimes grounded in the fear of being labeled as overly sensitive, or the belief that it is not safe to speak up in the workplace. In these cases, Catalyst recommends that an employee ask a colleague for help in providing honest, constructive feedback, especially in cases where the employee uses words that are hurtful or offensive. Other advice includes asking a team member who has been silent during a meeting if he or she would like to contribute a different perspective.

In Catalyst’s workshops and consulting engagements, we sometimes use “ice breaker” exercises that build rapport across differences. One such example is a “pair share” in which each member of the pair names three identity groups he or she belongs to, including two visible elements of difference, and one invisible. Each person then takes turns sharing aspects of their identities. When sharing one’s identities, the speaker practices demonstrating vulnerability and self-disclosure. The listener, in turn, practices suspending judgment and inquiring across difference.

Going beyond building interpersonal connections at work, employees and associates can also co-create structures at work that encourage inclusion. This might entail forming an employee or associate resource group (ERG) for all women in the organization, that focuses on the many needs encompassed by women. In working with Catalyst’s supporter organizations, we sometimes see that women of color prefer to join an ERG that represents their racial/ethnic group, rather than the women’s groups. A good way to form alliances to get more done for all women would be for a women’s ERG to ensure that its officers represent a diversity of women within the company, and also represent the interests of a diversity of women.

Reaching across differences to form meaningful and robust working relationships can enhance our personal and professional lives, and provide a fortification of support during fraught times.

/by

Dare to Dream! What Job Would You Do if You Won the Lottery?

,

By Nicki Gilmour, Executve Coach and Organizational Psychologist

Upon winning the lottery, some people might stop working.

Others would take the opportunity to work in their dream job. What is your dream job? If you do not know the answer, let us have some fun while summer is still here to dare to dream because you might just find some answers for real life by letting your mind run wild.

Let’s start with 3 questions to stimulate the process:

1. What makes you tick? ( there are many tests to take- for example, the Hogan personality instrument helps you understand you behaviors based on your personality and work environment, Myers Briggs, Firo-B etc). Do you need recognition? Is it about power for you? How high is your altruism markers? Are you hedonistic and want to have ping pong and happy hours? How social are you? Do you need to achieve at all costs?

2. How do you prefer to learn? if you are going to do a new thing, how would you like to approach it? Will you jump in and learn by doing? Or would you prefer to have time to studying?

3. What are your absolute bottom lines and how did you get to them? If you had teams of support people, would you choose to outsource child care or would you outsource work? How do you want to spend your time?

Have some fun here. Write it down, draw pictures, do a vision board, whatever works for you!

What comes out of this simple exercise for you?

If you want to work with an executive coach on this and and then the advanced exercises that will take you to the next level at work or even your next job, contact nicki@theglasshammer.com

/by