Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
In just about any situation, it’s much more important to
listen and understand than it is to be immediately understood. Certainly, when faced with a problem on your
project, it is important to act as a facilitator and get all the right people
involved in the conversation.
The team
members or Subject Matter Experts on the project will often have a very good
understanding of the issues and will be in a good position to provide input on
how to best resolve them. By listening
to their concerns, understanding of the situation and suggestions, you will be
armed with all the right information to make key decisions to move forward.
When we fully understand the situation, we’re better able to
ask the right questions to get to a resolution.
After having gathered the facts, try to provide options for the key
stakeholders to review. You can
accomplish this by modeling each scenario in Microsoft Project and even use the
‘Inactive Task’ feature (in Microsoft Project 2010) to show what the schedule
would look like with and without the proposed solution.
As project managers, we’re often the hub of communication
and will experience much better results if our stakeholders feel understood
before we report status or propose changes to the project. In your next team meeting, try letting team
members take the lead on reporting status to the group instead of repeating
what they told you prior to the meeting.
You will find that they are much more open to being influenced if they
feel understood first.
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