Andrew Yee

The best thing you can do today to is encourage someone.

Why?

1. It builds connection.

2. It creates the psychological safety that fosters creativity and productivity.

3. It's fun!

One of the leadership principles I've heard a lot is that you cannot communicate too much. This is typically stated in relation to the organization's mission, or for the desired outcome of a project. In other words, keep communicating about what is most important to the organization and the direction the organization is headed so everyone is clear on what we're doing.

The same is true, or even more so, for communicating with our organization's most valuable resource: the people who work here. We cannot communicate too much about how valuable they are to our organization.

Here's a general principle about encouragement:

"Everyone needs to be encouraged every day."

Encouragement is the fuel for productivity. People will create and produce and execute when they feel like they are valued and their work is worthwhile. Encouragement shows them that this is so.

Encouragement is important whether your work environment is incredibly relational or whether it's tough and intense. It can look like clear, heartfelt words, and it can look like shouting and high-fives. It can be formal ("I really appreciated when you...") or slang ("You rocked that!"). Whatever lifts the spirits of the people in your organization, do that!

Five Ways to Encourage Someone Today

1. Tell someone "I'm grateful for you because..."

2. Show big positive emotion when you see them doing a great job in public. Smile big, raise your voice, use big gestures!

3. Write someone a note and put it on their desk. Surprises are fun!

4. Brag about them to someone else while they can hear you.

5. Point out something they're doing well.

Have fun encouraging someone today!

People light up when you ask them for advice.

We may not like it when others give us advice, especially if we didn't ask for it. Yet we love it when people ask us for advice. So if you want to brighten someone's day and build a stronger connection with them, ask them for advice.

Here's what asking for advice does:

1) Tells them that you value them

When you ask someone for advice, it signals that you want to hear what they have to say and that you're willing to take the time to listen.

2) Tells them that they have expertise

When you ask someone for advice, it sends them a signal that they have knowledge, skill, or wisdom that others want. It boosts their confidence and encourages them to share more.

So the next time you want to encourage someone, ask them for advice on something that's important to you!

You don't do what you know is best because something else in your heart is more powerful.

You know what would be best. You even intend to do it. Yet when the moment comes, you don't do it. Something else has captured your heart instead.

Here's five things it could be:

1) Fear of Others

You're afraid that others will be mad at you. That they'll disapprove of what you're going to do. That they're criticize, judge, or condemn you.

2) Ego

You want to show that you're better than others. It's more important for you to do it your way. You're in competition with someone and want to beat the other person.

3) Rigid Adherence to Process

Things can only be done a particular way. No exceptions. You have to follow the process because that is the right thing to do.

4) Fatigue

You're too drained. You don't have the energy. You're burnt out. You're emotionally spent. Especially if you've been pushing yourself to max for a long time already.

5) Desire for Pleasure or Comfort

You want your path to be easy. You tell yourself to have a little fun along the way. You avoid the hard thing in favor of the fun thing. Or the more enjoyable thing.

The first step in being able to move forward is identifying what is capturing your heart instead of what is best. Which of these do you see in you?

The start of a new year provides a natural opportunity to reflect and set a course for the upcoming months.

I recently administered an internal survey to my team to gauge both their wellbeing and how the team dynamics are going. Many of the questions are based on research on what helps people in service professions flourish. Team members could answer as much as they felt comfortable sharing on the open-ended questions or skip them entirely. Responses were viewable only by me, and then I provided a de-identified summary of the results in a subsequent team meeting. In essence, it was a complementary questionnaire to conversations I might have with my team during our 1:1 meetings.

Here's the survey in case you'd like to use it for yourself:

Personal Wellbeing Questions:

Indicate how strongly you agree with the following statements. (Options: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree)

• I have meaningful work that clearly contributes to our organization's mission

• I have more good days than bad days in my role

• My workload feels sustainable

• I have positive relationships within our team

• I feel respected at work

Open-ended questions: (optional)

• What comments would you like to make regarding your responses to the personal wellbeing questions?

• What is going well on our team that you would like to see continue?

• What on our team would you like to see change (do differently, stop doing, or do something new)?

• What is Andrew doing as a leader that you would like him to continue?

• What is Andrew doing as a leader that you would like him to change (do differently, stop doing, or do something new)?

• Any other comments?

Hope this helps you and your team identify opportunities to work and connect more closely!

The more tense the situation, the more you need to listen.

It seems like the pace of business is moving faster and faster. There's more to do with less time. The situation changes rapidly. More things keep getting thrown your team's way.

All of this takes a toll on everyone. People get frazzled. Their nerves get frayed. Anxiety increases. Things get forgotten. And people tighten up. They have less capacity to respond well. Patience wears thinner. Responses get snappier. All that to say, it's easier for teams to break apart in the heat of the moment.

Listening serves as an antidote.

Here's three reasons why listening is so important in tense situations:

1) Listening helps people calm down.

When people feel heard, they settle down. Their nervous system moves back toward normal. Their thoughts feel calmer and less frantic. Their mood improves. This creates much-needed internal space at a time when external circumstances seem toe be swirling faster than ever.

2) Listening surfaces key information.

Taking the time to listen means you are more likely to catch details that might otherwise fly by. Those key pieces of information make make the difference between success and failure, between survival and ruin.

3) Listening connects people.

Ultimately, the only way your team will make it through this situation successfully is together. So you all need to be united. Listening helps draw out everyone's thoughts, emotions, and motivations so that you can connect them together. The more everyone is connected at a deep level, the easier it is to move forward.

So the next time you find yourself in a tense situation (which might be right now!), resist the urge to keep running faster. Instead, slow down and listen. Everyone will notice the difference.

If you can keep your cool when everything is going crazy, that's when you're truly effective.

We all know those moments:

• Your high-stakes project is going off the rails and failure seems imminent.

• Your business is facing a dire threat, one that challenges your very survival.

• Tensions are high, angst is high, and everyone seems just a little on edge.

• There's way more work than can be done, everything feels urgent, and people are constantly on you and your team to deliver now.

In those situations, it's easy for people to act in ways that aren't the most helpful:

• Do what's in front of them or what the loudest person wants regardless of how important it is overall.

• Pressure other people to work harder or faster.

• Criticize others for not doing their part. Or for not giving them what they need to do their jobs.

• Shut down due to feeling overwhelmed.

• Verbalize their negative views in public settings.

As the leader in this situation, the following actions will help you lead effectively:

1. Practice self-regulation. Find ways to calm yourself, both in general and in the moment. Maintain safe relationships where you can talk about your stress and frustration. Engage in activities that give you enjoyment, both at work and outside of it.

2. Reduce tension between people by moving through it, not avoiding it. Speak calmly to calm others down. Meet with agitated people privately (when possible) to help them verbalize what's bothering them. Address public conflicts immediately before moving on to other business. Help people understand each other's perspectives.

3. Remind people of what's most important. Regularly describe both the main priorities and the reasons behind them. Tell them what they can ignore right now, even if it's broken or people are complaining. Tell them what has to be accomplished if you're going to be successful.

4. Clarify people's next actions. Tell people the specific action you need them to take. Be as descriptive as possible and remove as much ambiguity as you can. Give specific deadlines for when something needs to be done.

Leading in wartime is hard. Yet that is where you will grow the most as a leader, and how you lead during those times will make the difference between success and failure.

For further reading on this topic, I recommend:

• Andrew S. Grove - Only the Paranoid Survive

• Ben Horowitz - The Hard Thing About Hard Things

• Rita McGrath - Seeing Around Corners

A project doesn't really start until things get messy.

Someone misses a deadline. Something unexpected happens that changes the requirements. A key person goes out of the office. Tension arises between stakeholders.

Those moments challenge the hearts of the project participants. People start getting anxious. Some get frustrated or angry. Some get impatient or impetuous. There can be a divide within the group.

It's during those moments where you as the project manager are so important. It is your courage that will lead the team toward successful completion.

There are three ways you can display courage in the midst of the mess:

1) Be Calm

Keep your cool, even if you're freaking out on the inside. Take some deep breaths. Speak more slowly and deliberately. Doing this will help others calm down too.

2) Be Humble

Be up front about what you know and don't know. Seek help and include others as needed. Demonstrate that you are in a learning mode and that it's okay to not have all the answers. This will help others feel confident that you're being truthful and trustworthy rather than faking it.

3) Be Decisive

You're going to have to decide what to do even if you don't have the full picture. So make the decisions. And call others to make their necessary decisions. The mess is easy to get stuck in. Displaying courage by being decisive will get you out.

Note that being decisive doesn't mean making decisions fast. Sometimes the most courageous decision is to do nothing and bide your time when everyone is pressing you to move fast. Courage is making the right decisions at the right time.

The project messes are your opportunity for your relational intelligence to shine for the benefit of the whole group. Be courageous when those moments come!

If you want to crush a project manager's spirit, say one of these ten things.

Also, as a project manager, you may be saying these things to yourself. This is just as destructive as someone saying them to you. So pay attention to your own self-talk! (I may or may not have said all of these things to myself at some point.)

Here are the ten statements that will crush a project manager's spirit. Substitute "I" for "you" in the statements below if you want to evaluate your own self talk.

1. I can't believe you missed that.

2. You should have planned for that.

3. I can't count on you.

4. I'm not sure I can trust what's going on here.

5. This project is so disorganized.

6. You're playing favorites.

7. You don't know what you're talking about.

8. How could you let that happen?

9. No one likes what you're doing.

10. You're not qualified to be here.

Correcting issues on your project happens much more easily if you have positive connections with the people you're wanting to correct.

There are two types of connection that would benefit your ability to issue corrections to people:

1. General connection - Try to build an overall positive relationship with them. Get to know them. Express appreciation or respect for positive things they bring to the project, such as their expertise, their enthusiasm, their resourcefulness, or their ability to connect with others. Find moments where you can interact about whatever in a natural, unforced, relaxed manner. Give them things without expecting anything in return. The more you do this, the more positive sentiment and goodwill you build up between you two. This relational foundation will make it easier to issue a correction because you two already have a positive connection.

2. Connection in the moment - Either before or during the conversation where you issue the correction, also find ways to connect with them. Acknowledge how they are feeling or may be feeling. Give them the opportunity to tell you their perspective on what happened, and truly listen to them. Let them know that you want the best for them. React non-judgmentally to whatever they may say. The more you can help them feel that you are connected to them in the moment, the more you will help de-escalate their emotions and be able to receive the correction in a way that will be productive.

You might think that establishing connections is wasting valuable time that you could spend moving the project forward. However, the reality is that taking the time to establish connections results in greater speed during one of the key times you need it most: when something has gone wrong and needs to be put back on track.

Effective project management systems will help settle the emotions of people involved with your project.

This is because well-run systems will help manage people's expectations and give them ways to trust what is happening on the project. So then there's less of people going at each other.

Here's six systems that will help you:

1. Project requirements list with change log - Everyone can be clear about what is part of the project and what is not.

2. Timeline - Everyone can know what is happening when.

3. Master task list - Everyone can see what is being worked on and trust that what they're concerned about on the project is being addressed.

4. Communication schedule - Everyone can know when to expect the next set of information.

5. Master document repository - Everyone can trust that all of the information about the project is secure in one place.

6. Development roadmap - Everyone can see what your future plans are and trust that there's a long-term plan beyond what's happening now.

High emotions on your project may indicate that you have a project management system issue.

Visualize a store. If the customers are angry, frustrated, anxious, or discouraged, then you might think there's something wrong with how the store is operating.

The same is true for your project. If you notice multiple expressing the same sort of negative emotion, such as anxiety, frustration, or anger, then you may have a project management system issue on your hands.

Here's some specific behaviors to look for that may indicate heightened negative emotions:

1. People keep emailing, calling, messaging, or asking when something will be done.

2. People complaining that they're overloaded with requests.

3. People angry or frustrated with each other because someone didn't do something.

4. People complaining about project speed. Either things aren't getting done soon enough for them or they're feeling pressured to deliver faster than they believe is possible.

5. Conflicts or tense remarks during project meetings.

If you see any of these, don't worry. They are solvable. Both working with the individuals involved and implementing system-wide fixes will help you.

Why is a word that can cause you more problems than it solves.

It's true that "why" is a question that works fine in technical or scientific contexts. When used in project management contexts, however, it can have two undesirable effects:

1. It can lead to confusion because people may not know why. Sometimes we don't know the reasons things happen or people did what they did. So asking creates confusion because the person legitimately doesn't know the answer and feels put on the spot. People can easily shut down or withdraw in those situations.

2. It can trigger feelings of condemnation or defensiveness. We can easily imagine a parent or authority figure confronting a child over something wrong the child did. "Why did you do that?" Usually accompanied by a pointing finger, a raised voice, or an angry look. We may even have a memory of that happening to us. Being asked "why?" can send us back to that place and lead us to feel those same emotions and bodily sensations all over again. If we start feeling condemned or judged, we may shut down or become defensive. Neither of which are good for project engagement.

Your goal is to keep all project participants fully engaged and invested in making the project successful. Moments of confusion, condemnation, or defensiveness break that engagement because people start focusing on themselves instead of the group and the project. When you stop asking why, you eliminate a potential sources of these kinds of issues. Think of it like risk mitigation for the relationships on your project!

The project is too big for you to know everything yourself. You need everyone's input in order for the project to be successful.

As the project manager, you need to create ways to hear from everyone on the project.

Here are different ways to hear from people:

1. Open conversation during project meetings

2. 1-on-1 meetings

3. Surveys for how people are feeling about the project

4. Written status updates

5. Hotline for people to report issues

6. Hallway conversations

7. Direct email or other electronic communication

8. Stopping by someone's office

If you say you're too busy to connect with the people on the project, they you likely need to delegate project tasks to others so you can devote more of your capacity to the project coordination role.

And in every communication avenue you create, these are key principles that would be good for you to follow:

1. Help the other person feel comfortable with you.

2. Believe that the other person genuinely wants to be helpful (unless you have evidence to the contrary).

3. Maintain appropriate confidences.

Hopefully this helps you form more effective connections with the others working on your project.

You are the main person who will connect with everyone on the project. So the better you are able to communicate with each person, the better your project will go.

Here are eight questions worth answering about each person on the project:

1. How do they best receive information?

2. Do they like to get things done early or at the last minute?

3. What annoys or frustrates them while they're trying to get work done?

4. How do they like to be recognized for their good work?

5. What's important to them about this project?

6. How vocal are they about their frustrations and complaints? To whom?

7. What is their most common behavioral pattern when they get into conflict?

8. What helps them feel valued or respected?

You may think that this feels like a lot. Perhaps even more than you signed up for. After all, you simply want to get the project done. I hope this post helps you see that the more you can communicate with others, the easier it is to get things done.

You are a person, not a robot. Therefore you must show your emotions. How you do it matters.

Here's three tips for showing your emotions related to the project:

1. You need safe people with whom you can process your raw emotions. Process with them and not with anyone else.

2. Overcommunicate your genuine positive enthusiasm. Others will benefit from it more than you know, especially when they are in the thick of the project and things feel more challenging.

3. Use negative emotions to call attention to situations where people are violating agreed-upon standards. Delivery dates, project values, and quality measures are three areas where this can work.

The need to manage your emotions as a project manager is undeniable. How you manage your emotions will determine your sustainability.

Emotional labor, first coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, refers to the work involved in managing one's own emotions and expressions when interacting with others. This typically refers to a workplace setting. Basically, you have two options:

1. You can display something that you're not currently feeling (surface acting)

2. You can seek to changes your values and emotions to match what you're needing to show (deep acting)

In the moment, we probably need to surface act quite a bit because the situations call for certain emotional responses and we cannot change our hearts and values on the fly to match the situation. The challenge is that surface acting creates emotional dissonance in us, which can result in a variety of ill effects, such as:

• Emotional exhaustion

• Depersonalization (feeling detached from yourself)

• Reduction of a sense of personal accomplishment at work

• Feelings of distress or cognitive dissonance

• Burnout

• Physical ailments such as high blood pressure or insomnia

So what can you do to manage your emotions in healthy ways?

• Maintain relationships with safe people so you can express what you're really feeling

• Practice self-regulation techniques like deep breathing or meditation

• Find ways to set boundaries within your job, or at least between your job and your personal life

As project managers, we must manage our emotions, yet we can do it in healthy ways so that we can be healthy while also being effective.

Being a project manager means needing to manage your emotions.

It means:

1. You can't tell everyone how you really feel about what's going on.

2. You may need to suppress your frustration when someone shares an update you don't appreciate.

3. You may feel lonely because no else sees the totality of the project like you do. You may have to hold that loneliness because others have a hard time relating to your situation.

4. Other people get to present their problems to you. You likely cannot present your problems to them.

5. Your stress, anxiety, frustration, sadness, and concern will ripple through the project if you start expressing them.

6. You need to be gracious when other people blow up on you (especially if they're a superior). Other people will not be so gracious with you.

7. You may feel overlooked or overburdened because of how much you do behind the scenes. You may not have others you can share this with.

Such is the reality of being a project manager. As you see, learning to manage your emotions successfully will help you navigate these situations and more.