1st Edition
The Influential Project Manager Winning Over Team Members and Stakeholders
If you want to be a successful project manager, you need to become a person of influence. Without influence, there can be no success as a project manager. And, although all key success criteria point to the importance of developing soft skills as a project manager, few books exist about how to develop the power of influence for achieving better project and business results.
Filling this need, The Influential Project Manager: Winning Over Team Members and Stakeholders supplies detailed guidance on how to improve your influence skills to achieve better business results. It explains how to set and meet ambitious goals for you, your team, and your stakeholders.
The book describes how to listen actively to influence others and details how you can build partnerships that can pay dividends for a lifetime. Each chapter highlights real-world scenarios about a particular subject linked to the influencing skill being covered. Each chapter also includes practical forms, templates, helpful tips, and best practices to help you develop and refine your skills of influence.
- Details the ten keys to influencing others to support you and your ideas
- Outlines techniques for improving your listening skills
- Includes a trust assessment for determining your level of influence and if others see you as trustworthy
- Demonstrates how to build a network of informal alliances to achieve success
Supplying you with the vision of influence from an experienced project manager’s perspective, this book will help you procure the informal power required to become a successful influencer. After reading the text and performing the trust assessment, you will gain the understanding required to lead project members down the path to project success.
Part I: Training a Better Horse
Ten Keys to Influence
Dialogue
Persuasive Conversations
Preparation
Alignment
Situation Review
So, What’s in It for Me?
Your Idea
Overcome Objections and Obstacles: The Art of Persuasion
Next Steps
Emotional Flow
Classic Mistakes
Summary
Influence Assessment
Practice Active Listening
Practice Active Listening
Open and Purposeful Questions
Reinforcement
Paraphrasing
Contradiction
Disclosure
Active Listening: A Case Study
Summary
Active Listening Assessment
Develop Trust
Sharing Common Values
Credibility
Risk and Opportunity
Distance
What We Say and What We Mean
What We Say and What Is Heard
My Interests and Your Interests
My Background and Your Background
Summary
Trust Assessment
Practice Your Integrity
Integrity Is Needed to Succeed as a Project Manager
Integrity Is an Inside Job
How to Measure Your Integrity
Become a Person of Integrity
Importance of Integrity
Project Management Integrity
Summary
Influence Checklist
Influence to Win
Achieving a Win–Win Discussion
Focus on Interests
Offer Options
Craft a Story
Agree in Public, Argue in Private
The Winners
Why Do Winning Streaks End?
Persistence
How to Break Out and Master a Turnaround
Summary
Winning Checklist
Practice Your Generosity
Customized Generosity
Earned Generosity
Measured Generosity
Requested Help
Five Characteristics of the Generous Project Manager
Altruism
Optimism
Trust
Energy
Ability to Lead
Philosophy and Principles of Generosity
Summary
Generosity Assessment
Understanding People
Why People Fail to Understand Others
Fear
Self-Centeredness
Not Appreciating Differences
Not Acknowledging Similarities
How Do People React to Your Style?
Some Things Everybody Needs to Understand about People
Everybody Wants to Be Somebody
Nobody Cares How Much You Know until He or She Knows How Much You Care
Everybody Needs Somebody
Everybody Can Be Somebody
Anybody Who Helps Somebody Influences a Lot of People
The Ability to Understand People
The Other Person’s Perspective
Personal Empathy
Positive Attitude about People
Projecting Warmth
Projecting Strength
Summary
Understanding People Checklist
Develop Commitment
The Hook
Personal Introductions
The Teaser
Ask for Advice
Making Commitment a Two-Way Street
Using Territory Well
Building a Tribe: Belonging, Meaning, and Recognition
Belonging and Meaning
Recognition
Gaining Commitment by Giving Control
Public Commitment, Private Challenge
Manage Conflict in Private
Publicize Agreements
Summary
Commitment Assessment
Cultivate Your Informal Power
The Power of the Informal
Four Ways to Build Your Informal Power in a Project
Project Manager Feelings
Informal Power
How to Increase Your Informal Power as a Project Manager
Summary
Power Assessment
Understand How to Convert Your Project Vision into Reality
The IRM (Idea, Resources, and Money) Principle
The Idea
Human Resources
Money
Have a Plan B
Crisis and Opportunities
Summary
Vision Assessment
Part II: Sell Your Horse
Develop and Sustain Your Influence
The Selling Model
The Right Assignment
Having the Right Experience
Being Successful
Enjoy What You Do
Taking over a New Team or Role
Having an Idea
People
Having the Money
Budgets
Influencing Decisions
Meetings
Presentations
Style
Substance
Conflicts
Only Fight When There Is a Prize Worth Fighting For
Only Fight When You Know That You Will Win
Only Fight When There Is No Other Way of Achieving Your Goals
Summary
Getting Buy-In and Making It Happen
Part III: Ride Your Horse
The Myths of Influencing
Mistakes and Myths
Main Mistakes
Lack of Trust
The Influence Myths
Myth 1
Myth 2
Myth 3
Myth 4
Monitor and Control Your Horse
Summary
Summary and Conclusions
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Alfonso Bucero , MSc, PMP, PMI-RMP, PMI Fellow, is the founder and managing partner of BUCERO PM Consulting (www.abucero.com). He managed IIL Spain for almost two years, and he was a senior project manager at Hewlett-Packard Spain (Madrid Office) for more than thirteen years.Bucero is a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), ALI (Asociacion de Licenciados, Ingenieros y Doctores en Informatica) and AEIPRO (IPMA member). Bucero was the founder, sponsor, and president of PMI Barcelona, Spain Chapter, and he is an IPMA Assessor. He was a member of the Congress Project Action Team of PMI EMEA's Congresses in Edinburgh (2005), Madrid (2006), and Budapest (2007). He graduated from PMI's Leadership Institute Master Class 2007 in Atlanta at the PMI NA Global Congress. He was president of the PMI Madrid Spain Chapter for two years and has served as Component Mentor for Region 8 Southwest since 2011. He received the PMI Distinguished Contribution Award in 2010 for his long and varied body of work, and the PMI Fellow Award in 2011 from the PMI for his sustained contribution to the development of the profession internationally. Bucero has a computer science engineering degree from Universidad Politecnica (Madrid), and is a PhD candidate in project management at the University of Mondragon in Spain. He has 31 years of practical experience and 25 of them in project management worldwide. He has managed and consulted on projects in various countries across Europe. Since 1992, Bucero has been a frequent speaker at international PMI Congresses, IPMA Congresses, and PMI SeminarsWorld. He has been a keynote speaker in several congresses worldwide. He delivers project management training and consulting services in several countries worldwide. As a project management believer, he defends passion, persistence, and patience as vital keys for project success. Bucero has been a professor for MEDIP (Master in Construction and Proj