The Power of Perception - Awareness of your Surroundings

Years of experience managing projects big and small gives us a unique perspective on human behaviour. The complexity of the modern world makes it harder and harder for people to live their lives with straight line predictably. It's not just that we don't know what each day will bring, but an ever-growing sense that every day we face more unknowns colliding with other unknowns. In context of projects, this means we must dig deep as leaders to always seek root-level perspective on why our teams behave the way they do.

Body Language

To be aware of your surroundings, is unquestionably to be aware of body language. Realizing that the modern business world has more digital interaction (phone, email, text) than ever before, it is important that we seek to pick up on every subtlety on the those rare opportunities for real face-to-face interaction. Boardroom meetings provide so many chances to see real human non-verbal communication in a direct and unfiltered way. You don't need to be an expert to pick up on simple cues like fidgeting (meeting running over time), slumped shoulders (nobody is listening to me), rising from a chair repeatedly (dominance), darting eyes (unstated disagreement over something everyone agreed on), excessive texting (can either mean boredom, or even trouble at home). The point very simply is that chances to read body language should not be taken lightly and a good PM always gets an edge when being fully present and aware of their surroundings.

Emotional Intelligence

The definition of emotional intelligence is is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s). Good emotional intelligence is often something that comes with age, but also can simply be related to the types of varied experience we all have seen in our daily lives. Usually lived experience with many different types of people/personalities affords us the greatest chance to truly digest and reflect on the ways our fellow humans interact. Some people express behaviours that appear to reflect certain obvious feelings but may in fact have unpredictable origins. Team members may express frustration over bad processes, cranky clients, or lack of time to get work done when in fact the true challenges are personal health issues, money problems, or bad lighting. How are you supposed to tell the difference? Good leaders with real emotional intelligence always seek to comprehend the potential layers of human interaction, and human dischord. The best way is to carefully ponder the possibilities that may exist beneath the surface, and then let your own emotional intelligence guide your actions with caution and mutual respect.

Let Talent Be Talent

It's always important to understand that, in a modern professional work environment, people are hired because they are already talented, experienced, and uniquely motivated. Talent responds to being allowed to express talent. Good awareness of your surroundings always means that you should consider the innate talent of you team, and then guide their ability to fully express their gifts and creativity. Stifling talent, or holding back creative individuals, with the wrong kinds of guard rails such as complicated processes/systems, or micromanaging, is always a recipe for disaster. Good leaders are able to perceive the key talent drivers for team members and then consistently leverage and nuture those drivers. When talent is allowed to be talent, great results will flurish.

No matter what industry you are in as project manager, it always pays to consider the human side of every challenge first, and then work to tactics. The power of perception is the power we have as managers to let people be people.

Dave Ullrich, B.Comm, PMP specializes in IT project management consulting and strategy with his company Cilantra Solutions. He has based this approach on the results of several successful IT project implementations with teams distributed across Canada, US, and the UK. He can be reached at daveullrich@gmail.com.