Last (wo)man standing: A Project Manager’s Guide to Taming the Chaos at SKILup Days 2024

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm really happy to be here and to have the honor to speak to you about one of my passion subjects. Today we want to dive into my talk, last woman standing, a project manager's guide to taming the Chaos, where I want to give you some practical tools for doing exactly that.

Before we dive in, I would like you you to do a little thought experiment. Think about the best project manager you ever worked with. What did he or she do?

And I can hear you literally thinking like, oh no, not this one because this one yelled at me when I did this. And that we ignore these thoughts on not so good project managers right now and go on in our memory and think of one really, really nice and good project manager we met. So what exactly made this person excellent?

Note this thought down either on a post-it or a post-it via chat and we can exchange or in the comments. Um, yes, note this thought down. What exactly made this person a good one?

A good project manager? I don't want to give you too much information in advance, just this much where everything you are thinking about right now is due to one important skill for project managers. And that's what we're talking about today.

And I'll tell you why it's important that we can lead ourselves. So this half an hour is dedicated to the ones of us leading teams and organizations through digital transformations. So when you leave this talk today, I want you to remember at least one practical tool or technique that you can apply in various situations.

So maybe it's the next time you want to tame the outer project chaos out there the next time when you feel everything is being too much right at the moment or the next time when you don't feel good enough, or really when you are into reshaping your role and, um, tackling your goals that you have in mind. All these situations and even more are predestined that you remember at least one practical tool from today. But before we start, you might want to know who, who will be presenting today.

So I would like to briefly introduce myself to you. Hi, I'm Karen. I'm a certified business coach.

I'm a Prince two Agile practitioner, is from master and change manager and so much more. And since the start of my professional career, I worked in digital transformation projects like from implementing a software or bicultural and organizational changes. I really supported a lot of various clients, um, and would like to tell you about my own experiences in a snackable, sometimes ironic, but however serious way.

And first of all, I would like to recap with you what a project manager does during digital transformations and why this job may be chaotic from time to time. Next, I present you the most, the two most important skills from my perspective. Then I give you an overview about self-leadership to then zoom into a model.

And after that I give you four practices which you can apply in your day-to-day business or even start today. And after I summarize the most important points from my presentation and during the whole presentation, I would like you to listen and, um, I would like to recommend you to take screenshots in 10 instead of notes. So, um, that you stay focused during the next half an hour.

And if a if questions occur during my presentation or even afterwards, feel free to contact me via LinkedIn. I'll be happy to exchange with you about self leadership and taming the chaos. All right, in this very fast developing world today with new technologies like AI or else I discovered in recent projects that digital transformation means not only to apply technology or to change business processes, what it even more means is a change of mind and a change of culture to remain competitive and to take full advantage of the business, uh, to take full advantage of the benefits of the digitization.

So let's just recap really quickly what we go through as project managers the whole day and what our role is during digital transformations. So we can imagine you have a new project and we're starting off the project and starting off the project, we have to meet expectations, but also to clarify these expectations because we know that the time scope and budget given by the stakeholders are way too high set and can never be met during the project. We then have to keep up with the ever-changing priorities set by our stakeholders.

And as we all know, they, they are, there are always two number one priorities or as I discovered recently, we even have a priority zero right at the moment. So this leads then to scope creep and we can, the, the timeline from from before or from the beginning cannot be met at all. And while the scope prices, we still wait for the resources that were promised to us in Q1.

And besides all that, we have to give regular updates for stakeholders or conduct workshops in how to work with Kanban or Jira or whatever. And we do that all during balancing the needs and trying, trying to keep everyone happy and engaged. So our job is literally to tame the chaos every day.

And now we're done with a project, we imagine being done with a project and then comes finally the time where we celebrate, but also all the things from really down the bottom of our backlog come back again to us like a boomerang and are creeping up from really down, down the bottom of our backlog for the phase two of the project, obviously. So now back to the serious part, as I gained your attention right now, and I really love my job, despite it's really challenging also sometimes, um, we know that they, there are so many more responsibilities that than I just mentioned. And to fulfill our goal to success, to to successfully deliver a project and keep everyone happy, there are two most important skills from my perspective that are crucial for the project manager role to fulfill it, to fulfill our tasks.

And these are stakeholder engagement. First, because engaging stakeholders becomes more and more important as we evolve in such a fast pace, we talk digitally, the topics we work on become more complex from time to time and the work environment too. So that means that we really have to care for stakeholders.

And this is also what Prince two always has said with so many things like communication management approach and so on, which I really like. But this is another topic. So stakeholder engagement is one skill.

And the other skill is that during all these situations, I have just given examples for caring for other people, caring for quality deadlines, budget, and finding the balance between all. It's crucial that we master ourselves to tame the chaos and doing this I call self-leadership. But before we really dive into the topic, um, let's talk about one more or less obvious point.

As project managers, we are leaders because we build teams first, we encourage teams, we developed teams, we organize the project, we engage stakeholders, we solve conflicts, we communicate, we build relationships and bridges and so on, all to successfully deliver a project. And this is why we're leaders and not just managers and all leaders. And I would say human beings too should lead themselves first before leading others.

Because who we are is how we lead and who we are can be shaped when we're able to lead ourselves. And here comes the self leadership part. Finally.

So what is self leadership? The term self-leadership first emerged from organizational management literature and is framed by months, which is this guy here, Charles c months in the eighties, who later defined self-leadership as a comprehensive self influence perspective that concerns leading oneself toward performance of naturally motivating tasks, as well as managing oneself to do work that must be done but is not naturally motivating. That was 1986 when the man said that.

So self-leadership is mainly the ability to achieve personal and professional goals independently of external influences. So with internal motivation, the basis for this is good self-reflection. And in order to be able to lead yourself well, it is therefore necessary to know yourself and have clarity about your goals.

And in addition, it's important to steer your own behavior in the direction of your goals. So to not really be a victim, but, and to react to things that happen to you, but rather to shape your behavior in your wish direction. This is leadership and yeah, here, here may be also necessary to implement new behavior, but we come back to that step later.

So when you are able to lead yourself to do even that, what does it bring you? In the meantime, the exist actual actually studies about self leadership that show how people who lead themselves are or tend to be more autonomous, more productive, irrespective of their work role. They are confident and have a sense of ownership because of the control of their work.

They have the feeling that they control things, they show a greater job satisfaction, have a higher self-efficacy and achieve greater career success at the end. And I would like to mention as well that they're more resilient and stressful or challenging situations, which is also or subject from today, like taming the chaos. And they can do all of that because they know themselves, they know their goals, their skills, their motivations, and see themselves as the key to shape their job and their role and their whole future.

And to make the last thing more tangible, let's have a look at one self leadership model in particular. And because it's kind of easy, I picked the SOAR model for today. The SOAR model is an acronym and stands for self outlook action and reflection as we can see here.

And this model is invented by Ka, Nara and Gamble. Uh, these are their real names. I find them quite, quite funny.

Um, and at this point I would like to recommend the book. I put the source down here because, um, everything I tell, or not everything but this, um, this self leader leadership model you can find in their book. Um, this describes a process which is fluent in process steps.

And we will first have a look at the process steps and afterwards I will give you, um, the four tools referring to the process steps. First of all, we start with a self. And to excel in your self leadership skills, you need to understand yourself first.

So this is like the, the the starting point. This is the baseline. And this is, this is quite something where you study yourself the unique cue that has evolved based on your unique combination of personality, physical traits, intelligence, habits, beliefs, strengths, weaknesses, and also experiences as also your experiences have a huge impact on how you view situations and react to certain things.

This brings us to the outlook. The outlook is an awareness of how your biases, your limiting beliefs or your beliefs and emotions impact on how you view in situations or how you react to certain situations. We will dive into that also when we come to our tools and the action.

Mm, here the action is meant, um, is meant by leading difficult conversations, um, to act. We need to dig deeper into these difficult situations, situations and conversations. I myself put situations also in there, but the book is mainly but conducting these conversations, they enable us to successfully advance our most important situations.

Mm, yes, let's leave it like that for this moment. And afterwards, there comes the reflection part. And this is the process where we critically evaluate our behaviors, perspectives, habits and communication from previous actions or maybe from these actions here, like having difficult conversations and to gaining insights to adapt for future challenges.

Mm. And this reminds this, this might remind you of an agile tool. We, we often use already.

Each process steps, each process step here needs to be undertaken again and again. And the self, as I said is the starting point. But as we change, we can also just cover over and over again who we truly are and what might has changed within us.

So maybe also values change. Values don't change often, but values change as well. Sometimes when, when a child is born.

For an example, when we um, when we reflected to our private life, this one here, this, uh, this model, plus we can observe how we evolve, reacting to situations differently, then we would have a year, a year ago. So please view these steps not as one after another, but being fluently and, um, yes, being light like, like a watch where everything is inside each other. Okay, so let's go to the tools because for each process step, I have one tool for you.

And I'd like to stick to these process steps as, although as I said, uh, for me they're fluent because you can now gain an idea on when to use the tools. And the tools I have here for you are mainly based on coaching interventions and involve very, very much self-reflection. So let's see, we start with a self and this is all about understanding who you are.

So knowing yourself very well and deeply, um, is the first step for every kind of leading roles also for us project managers. And first of all, I would like you to take some time to reflect on the following questions and maybe take notes. And also, as I said, you can screenshot this chart and save it for you for later.

First question is always, what experiences from my past strongly influence who I am today? Because there might be turning points and there might be also private, uh, turning points in your private life that also impact your job and your job as a project manager who are important to understand for you. Second, what are my five greatest strengths?

Third, corresponding, what are my five biggest weaknesses? And this is a point we tend to ignore as human beings. We love, we hate weaknesses and we love ignoring them.

But these are very important to understand so that you can maybe ask for help at, at a certain time when, um, when you need someone who, um, has a strength maybe of time management or so what you do not have. So, um, yeah, this is very important to know. And for number two and three, it is helpful to ask two to three people in your life who are very close to you, but know you from different parts of your life or from a different perspective.

Um, so you can ask them, Hey, what do you think? What are my five greatest strengths and weaknesses? Because you will then, when you have these answers, you will then be able to compare your internal and external image and reflect again, what makes you, you, what do you believe about yourself that others do not?

How do you want others to see you? And what actions can you derive from your answers right now? This helps a lot actually.

And the this is quite surprising, the outcome often. So fourth question, what do I want to achieve in my life? So ask yourself about your goals.

What do you want to achieve in your life, like on a higher level, but also in your job and in your role? What are your va your, your values that you want to live and bring in to your job? And what motivates you to get up in the morning?

So these are the, the general questions you will find. I think in the, on the internet you will find so much more coaching tools, but these are the very questions that we need to understand about ourselves. First, outlook is all about identifying emotions and needs.

And for this practice, I would like you to put yourself in the shoes of the last challenging situation that you experienced. Perhaps you had a stressful conversation, um, an exciting presentation as I'm doing right now, or you're feeling a bit overwhelmed. So we all know these things because they're not really uncommon in everyday project work.

Maybe you have one of these situations right now. Put yourself in the shoes of the last challenging situation. And first of all, I have a question for you.

Um, how do you recognize that your emotions are changing and you're, that you're being stressed? 'cause sometimes we don't even recognize that we're stressed or that we're feeling, I don't know, mad or that we're feeling anger or sadness. And apart from your deterioration in your mood, maybe you can, you can see that or you can notice that you're, you have a faster pause and a faster breathing and this is exactly why you can start to bring clarity and to come back into your thoughts and emotions.

Alright? How you do, how do you do this? Let's imagine we have like a situation, we have a conversation or, or even a conflict and we're in a room with other people.

First of all, stop what you're doing right at the moment. So I stop talking, I could stop talking right now in this presentation. You could stop, uh, taking notes or whatever you're doing, just stop it right at that moment.

And then you can breathe deeply. Like three times is always a good thing. We always like to count two, three, um, breathing in through your nose, counting to four, like breathe in 1, 2, 4, holding the breath, counting to four, and then exhaling.

Counting to six or eight helps you to calm down and symbols or, or it tells your nervous system to calm down. This is a nice thing to do. When you do that three times, then you will automatically see how calm you are getting or how calm you're feeling.

Again, right now, you can do this right now, breathe in deeply four, count to four, then hold your breath, count to four and exhale count to 6, 4, 8. It's important to exhale longer than you inhaled because um, then you get, you get more calmer. You will, you will feel it in in your tummy actually.

So this is the first part. Then you ask yourself afterwards, what do I feel right now? And where does that feeling come from?

And asking yourself, this shifts the focus from the limbic system where emotion and where, where emotion processing primarily takes place to the pre-frontal cortex where words are now searched for. So this further reduces emotional tension for you and lifts your emotion on a meter level. In other words, it helps you these two questions.

So breathing and these two questions helps you to get distance between you and your emotions and to act clear after you are asked yourself exactly that. Alright? And afterwards you can ask yourself, what do I need right now?

And then care for yourself and respect your needs, which is very important also in conflict situations because when we imagine, again, we're in a room with other people and we have a conflict and we conduct exactly these, these things here, nobody will notice us that we breathe. So this is something we should do anyhow. Um, then we can also reflect it and tell our thoughts out loud so we can, um, we can signal that we do not feel well.

We can signal where the feeling comes from, maybe from the situation, maybe from a certain trigger or so, and then what we would need right now, like maybe a break or, or a little walk in the park or so. Um, and this is caring for yourself, respecting your needs and making other people respect your needs as well. This is a very strong tool I would, uh, highly recommend because I, uh, do it myself.

Actually everything I do myself. But this I do very often. Alright.

And after that you can continue with the task that you conducted before very easily. Okay, we move forward into action. And the process step action refers to leading conversations in intentionally, as I said before.

And I would like to add that is that it is equally important to do anything with intention no matter what. And therefore I would like to introduce you to the reflection time at the beginning of your workday or at the beginning of the week, maybe even. Um, and I prepared five questions, which I also answer.

Um, so before the day starts, take 10 to 15 minutes of retirement reflects what do I want to achieve by the end of the day? What challenging situations do I may face? How do I want to deal with the situations?

How do I want to meet whom exactly today? And what is my goal for this difficult conversation? Maybe what I, what I'm about to lead and asking yourself this, um, will help you to act intentionally and to be more successful during your day or your week because you set your goals straight and this makes us more successful.

All right? And after that we come to the reflection part. Um, and we're always conducting retrospective for the teams, for our agile teams, but why don't we conduct them for ourselves?

So like we started the day with the action thing, with the action reflection questions. Um, we also want to end the day or the week. So, um, this is what we do here.

So we have six questions to end the day or to end the week. And, um, to recap again, what did I want to, to achieve at the end of the day or the week? What did I actually achieve?

And here it's, it's very important to not blame yourself but to perceive first because, um, sometimes we get into the the blaming spiral. I do it very often, um, and therefore I cannot recommend it. So, um, first perceive like very naturally or very, very objectively, what did you want to achieve and what did you actually achieve?

And in which situations did I react in a way that corresponds to my ideal and then which not. And also here, no blaming, just perceiving and what can I do tomorrow to be the leader? I want to be respecting the other questions that were answered before and what did I really do well today or this week?

And what am I grateful for today? Or who am I grateful for today? The last two questions are a nice ending for your reflection because they focus on the good and give you a good feeling and also, um, great dopamine and so on.

And when you're done, you can start over and over again with these tools I just gave you over and over again with these process steps. As I said, they're, they're fluent in each other. Um, yeah, and you can start right now doing these things.

I have one little gadget for you as well because if you would like to assess how strong your leader yourself leadership skills already are, I put also the A SLQ, so it is the appre abbreviated self-leadership questionnaire in these slides. So please take a screenshot or uh, see, um, see the source I put here because this is a scientific self-assessment invented by Huen et al, where you can rate nine questions on a scale from one to five. And all these questions go back to three self leadership strategies of the father of self leadership.

Obviously from Charles c months, we've heard him before. Um, in the, in the definition I I put in the beginning Angus what the process steps and the tools I gave you. You can also find on a meter level, like we can see here on a meter level.

The meter level is in, in the brackets here. You can find these things also in these questions. So this is a nice tool to assess, um, where we are and where we want to be maybe in a month or so and to conduct it over and over again as well.

And because I said that this was nine questions and you have the following four questions and you can now take a screenshot. When you now think of the thought experiments from the beginning, what did you have in mind? You can read your notes maybe or read in the comments or chat.

What made the project manager you thought of an excellent one and as I said in the beginning, I'm pretty sure that no matter what aspects you had in mind, everything goes back to them being able to lead themselves, to reflect themselves and that they're good at the job because they know themselves, they do things with intention and they're able to reflect as well as derive actions for the future. And to end my presentation, I would like to share the key takeaways with you. So first of all, self leadership is an essential skill and helps project managers as well as every leading role to tame the chaos within us.

And outside self leadership is about knowing yourself, your skills, your emotions, beliefs, your goals, and your motivations. The process steps of improving our self leadership are self-leadership or a self outlook, action and reflection, the sore model, what we had and include each different roles we can use to improve our self-leadership skills. Breathing and asking yourself how you feel as well as where the feeling comes from.

Helps distancing from your emotions and acting with clarity again. And also you can put your key takeaway in the list. Alright, uh, thank you so much for being there, for listening to me.

I hope you enjoyed this talk as much as I did and let you keep some of the insights in mind and heart. Reach out to me on LinkedIn when you have any questions, remarks, or feedback on the presentation. I'm really looking forward to reading from you and to exchanging with you.

And yes, enjoy the other presentations today and have a nice one. Goodbye and thank you.