Soft Skills

By Lisa DiTullio • October 23rd, 2009

I had the opportunity to speak at the PMI Congress this year.  My presentation, called Expected Behaviors for Project Team Performance:  Road Rules, Not Road Rage introduced a set of ‘good behaviors” for teams to consider and an easy way to enable team members to reduce the “noise” which occurs among team members.

I had a great time in Orlando recently for the 2009 PMI North America Global Congress. The PMI New Media Council did a presentation titled “Why Should You Care About Social Media?”.
Bas De Baar (ProjectShrink), Cornelius Fitchner (PMPodcast), and I (pmStudent) collaborated for our segment of the presentation, focused on demonstrating the use of [...]

Dealing with Ambiguous Situations
Ambiguous situations are usually characterized by conflicting signals, signals intertwined with background noise, disconnection between actions and events, and suspension of expected cause-effect relationship.  We are in the reaches of complexity, non-linearity, and/or discontinuities; our cognitive biases don’t fit, the situation doesn’t align with any of our mental frames, we can’t recall [...]

One recent morning I was enjoying the company of my peers at the monthly PMI-Silicon Valley Chapter’s PMO Breakfast meeting.  As usual the conversation had degraded (a hardware perspective) to a discussion of software methodologies, that day specifically: When using Agile, how do you handle …?  Then out of the blue one of the participants [...]

The approach to Risk Management can also be used for Opportunity Management by using a different point of view.

Having just attended the well-attended PMI Risk Symposium a couple of weeks ago, this topic is so appropriate for our current economic environment.  Many of you are doing some type of Risk Management already.  What I hope to do is to provoke your thoughts that could help increase your project or program success.
There were SO [...]

My esteemed colleague Natalie Udo’s post a few weeks ago, “What is a Project Manager?” started me thinking about what are the elements which make us successful in the business. And hopefully, I’m reinforcing Kimberly Wiefling’s recent posts on what are the keys to success as a project leader… and not being too redundant – Thanks, [...]

One of the reasons I got into Project Management in the first place is that I’ve always been interested in people – their personalities, where they are from, what makes them tick.
Growing up overseas in Japan, I attended an international school for foreigners, and there were kids from all over the world – kids whose [...]

As I was wracking my brain trying to think of interesting topics to write about for this week’s blogs, it came to me, a subject which is a sore spot and a pet peeve of mine – the fact that people don’t say “thank you” very often on projects, or in everyday business situations much (except [...]

Key success behavior #5:  “Do the right thing”, really wraps a pretty bow around all of the previous blogs on this topic this past week, and a great many more critical leadership behaviors that I haven’t mentioned at all.  Although incomplete, all together I think the five are an impressive list:
Keep Your Promises
Don’t Lie
Don’t [...]

This is an extension of my last blog about “Don’t Blame Others”.  Today I am not only urging you not to blame other people – don’t play the victim by blaming anything at all for your problems and failures.  For many years I thought that my troubles were caused by external forces.  My career didn’t [...]

Key success behavior #3:  Don’t blame others.  It’s not that other people aren’t responsible for a lot of the crap that you have to clean up as a project leader.  It’s just that blaming them doesn’t help fix the situation, and worse – it diminishes your personal power.  I have continued to lead projects only [...]

Well, this shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone, but I’m sorry to say I felt the need to put this one out there as one of the keys to success as a project leader.
Key success behavior #2:  Don’t Lie.  I recently had lunch with someone who’d been lied to by her manager three [...]

In honor of summer, I’m going to keep this week’s series of blogs bite-sized so you can get back to your beach and margaritas lickity split.  This week I’ll review a few behaviors that are key to success as a project leader.
Key success behavior #1:  Keep your promises.  Sorry if this seems trivial.  I bring [...]

I have been taking advantage of my time at home this week.  I am doing a lot of writing while I watch over my son’s recovery.  I am presenting a keynote for PMI Capital Michigan next month; this has been a good opportunity for me to prepare and practice my speech.   The Michigan Chapter is [...]

My 15-year old had knee surgery yesterday; it was his 2nd surgery in three months.  The first procedure was performed on his left knee in May, yesterday his surgeon repaired his right knee.  Prior to surgery, he endured much pain and many hours of physical therapy – he has many more months of rehabilitation ahead of [...]

I am lucky to live by the ocean.  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to spend two hours at the beach, by myself—no husband or children in tow.  I packed up a slew of unread magazines, my iPod, and sunscreen — I was ready for a blissful afternoon.  With the warm sunshine at my face, a [...]

I thought this would be a great topic for a Friday! It gives you the weekend to ponder it.
Last Friday I attended my first World Café. World Café Conversations are a way to create a network of conversations around important questions. Based on a set of design principles, Café Conversations link and build on each [...]

If you ask 10 project managers to give a definition of their role, you most likely will end up with 10 different descriptions ranging from project admin and task master to program manager. In marketing terms, our profession has an image problem: there is no standard job description and most people have no clue what [...]

I am very avid diver here in the cold California waters. If at all possible I dive every weekend. Diving is not an extremely dangerous sport, however, decisions I make before, during and after the dive form the foundation of mine and my buddies safety and survival every dive. Making a good decision relies heavily [...]

Political issues often thwart rapid advancement.  Organizations by their very nature are political.  How can you identify and characterize stakeholder traits that need to be addressed or accommodated if, as a leader, you wish to exercise influence and be more effective within an organization?
One way to help turn potential victim scenarios into win-win political victories [...]