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This month we have decided to look at some of the workplace challenges faced by the project management community by taking data from the Arras People Project Management Benchmark Survey and also the results of a discussion we recently hosted over on LinkedIn.

Firstly we have a piece that looks at how age impacts the project management practitioners, in terms of outlook and opportunities in the workplace. Is ageism an easy call or is there more that older practitioners can do to open up new opportunities for themselves?

We then take on the ever present question of gender and the imbalances reported by practitioners in the project management community. Again we ask if there is real discrimination based upon gender, or is it actually for many caught up in a broader set of circumstances?

We then move on to discrimination in the workplace and share the responses from a recent LinkedIn discussion where we invited practitioners from around the world to share with us their personal experiences, both good and bad. The discussion is a real eye opener and we would still welcome further input from the wider community.

Project management issues for hiring and workplace effectiveness tackle the person asking our Question of the Month, and we also take a look at Professor Knut Samset's Early Project Appraisal, through the lens of guest book reviewer John Greenwood. 

 

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Age Concerns and the Project Professional

If you do a stock take on your qualities as a project practitioner, will your attributes truly match up to a changing marketplace's hopes and desires?

Words: John Thorpe

The 2011 Project Management Benchmark Report from Arras People continues the theme of looking at how age impacts the community of project management practitioners. Over the last six years we have gathered data which allows us to track the moods of each age group and their opinions on set topics. For consistency we have three groups; the under 34 year olds; 35 to 49 and the 50 plus.

In this article we have pulled two areas of focus which were highlighted by the 2011 data; the impact of age on the unemployed and attitudes towards accreditation. Both are areas which may potentially impact the longevity of a project professional’s career.

Due to the ongoing economic challenges in the UK and global economies we took the decision to segment the unemployed practitioners in this year’s survey so that we could profile this group against their working peers. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) were reporting national unemployment figures at 7.9% (at 19/01/2011) whilst the survey reported the unemployment rate in the project management community at 15% of respondents.

When analysing the impact of age the least impacted group was the 35 to 49 year olds who accounted for 39% of the unemployed, compared to 46% of the total respondent group. The under 34’s were roughly the same distribution whilst the 50+ group accounted for 36%, and increase of 7% from the 29% in the total respondent pool. The 50+ group were also the best remunerated before becoming unemployed with 80% receiving over £40,000 per annum.

So what are the reasons behind this, the challenges to be faced and the thoughts of the 50+ age group?

Age Concerns?
If we look at the comments left by some of the respondents to the survey there are many cries of “this is ageism”. 46% of unemployed practitioners believe ageism is a “big” issue when looking to secure their next role, compared to 22% amongst those who are employed. This figure rises to a whopping 78% for the unemployed and 47% for the employed, when asked solely of the over 50s, compared to just 25% and 18% for under 34s.

But looking deeper into the survey data we can ask; is this really the case or a convenient tag against which to pin their frustrations?

Taking a look at some of the challenges the unemployed practitioner faces when looking for their next position, we asked the following questions; were the challenges you faced based on finding suitable roles to apply for; finding positions at the right salary level; getting job interview invitations; getting job offers or do you believe the challenge you faced is based on your age. All respondents were asked to rate these challenges as small, medium or big. When looking at all the challenges based on the age of the respondents; almost all of the challenges were similarly ranked. There were no real differences between the viewpoint of a 34-49 respondent to that of the over 50; in other words no one group seemed advanced or disadvantaged.

All this changed when we reviewed the results of our loaded question which brought "age" into the question. Then we saw that 78% of the over 50s felt that age plays a part in their job search woes (compared to 30% of 35-49 and 25% of <34); however they had already responded that they had not felt disadvantaged in the job hunt process. Surely it is too easy to just look at the age factor as being an impediment for the over 50s getting back into employment because there are many other influences that impact the recruiting process.

Turning our attention to one of these factors, we can show that some of the over 50s group are not doing themselves any favours when it comes to being a marketable and in-demand professional.

Lifelong Learning and Development
There is no doubt now that in the project management marketplace accreditation, training and professional development are major influencers which are reviewed by employing organisations. There is a growing expectation that practitioners have some form of relevant qualification, show a commitment to ensuring knowledge remains current and competitive and therefore it is in the interests of all practitioners to pay attention to their personal development.

In the PMBR 2011, PRINCE2 is unsurprisingly the most popular current accreditation amongst our respondents (51.7%); the number 2 response is "None" (27.2%). For those who still heavily value the on-the-job experience you can’t buy, accreditation still seems to be a waste of time for over a quarter of our respondents.[1]

Suspicious that this opinion was primarily of the 50+ crowd, delving deeper into the data revealed that the over 50s did indeed place less value on accreditations (see image at right).

If the older age group is not seeing the value that employing organisations place on these accreditations and training – they are ultimately doing themselves a disservice when it comes to the issue of employability. In a tough market the employer ultimately has the upper hand in deciding what is acceptable to them and many set gates through which applicants must pass before they will be considered for a role. In some cases it is not even the employer but their representative (recruiter) who will set the gates in order to cut applicant lists to manageable levels. They do not search on “experience” as it is rarely categorised in a manner that is searchable, whereas accreditations are.

Comments such as "Accreditation and education can be bought; experience can’t" and "I consider real life experience to be more important in the real life workplace" may well be true, but if that is not the answer to the question being asked it becomes irrelevant. When we asked specific age groups (younger than 34, 34-49 and over 50s) how they rationalised their career against factors like Education, Accreditation and Experience, the top two responses in the over 50s were “Combination of all 3” (63%) and “Experience” (27%), while “Education” and “Accreditation” combined for just 10% of such importance. Moreover, those with 10 years of experience or more heavily weighted its value again over the same traits.

So in summary, age is certainly impacting some project management practitioners in their careers and those searching for a job may feel that this is a real blocker to them getting back into the workplace. In reality the reliance on “experience and achievement” is probably the biggest threat as they are not selling the right product to the marketplace. Prince2 may be a box of tricks that anybody can buy, but that seems to be the key to the door through which you need to pass before being able to demonstrate the “How I do it!” element. If you are not relevant to the market, no matter how old, you are setting yourself up for failure.  



[1]
Moreover, consider the categorical breakdowns of the “none” category: contractors (32%), employees (23%) and unemployed (34%).

 

John Thorpe is the Managing Director of Arras People. To read more of his work on project management at How to Manage a Camel, click here.
 

What the Demographics Tell Us: Gender and Project Management

If you do a stock take on your qualities as a project practitioner, will your attributes truly match up to a changing marketplace's hopes and desires?

Words: Dan Strayer

In continuing with our theme of identifying the workplace challenges that heavily affect certain demographics, we move on to a second main area of concentration: gender.

We have once again used data collected through Arras People’s annual Project Management Benchmark Survey as a key reference for this analysis.


Gender Imbalances
The impact of gender on project management professionals in the workplace has been monitored over the last 6 years, and it’s an element we gave particular focus to in the 2008 PMBR. Comments relating to that particular survey were reported in our blog three years ago:

“...simply asked “Do you believe your GENDER has ever impacted your role as a Project Professional?”

...86% believed that this had not been the case, with 14% reporting that it had. A further cut by gender itself created a significantly different picture. Maybe we need to be widening the discussion to include the whopping 34% of females who stated that gender has impacted their role as a professional in the project management space, compared to just 6% of males.“

The key numbers worth special mentioning in that trend was “135 females to 62 males”. Think about that: Women made up just over a quarter of the total amount of respondents that year (27.9%), and yet the total number of women who felt gender impacted their work was DOUBLE THAT OF THE MEN (WHO OUTNUMBERED THE TOTAL NUMBER OF WOMEN PARTAKERS NEARLY THREE-FOLD)!!! Clearly, something felt amiss amongst our project management brethren, and only one of two genders were showing any real passion about it.


Financial Rewards
Three years on, and the most recent PMBR’s remuneration breakdown offers a glimpse as to just why some females may feel so fobbed off about their lot in PPM life. Let’s start with contractors. Comparing day rates by gender, women either easily outweigh or find an even keel with male counterparts for rates up to £499/day. Yet although both male and female day rates drop off considerably from £500 onward, female project manager contractor rates actually flat line at the £600-649 range onward, whereas a percentage of males still report remuneration levels climbing, even in these recessed times. In all, 49% of female contractors report a day rate of £349 or less, while 27% of males (an increase from 2010 of 11%, you’ll notice) report the same.

As for employees, it’s a very similar picture: For those project practitioners of all titles making less than £20k per annum on up to £40k, you’ll find 60% of all female respondents, compared to just 37% of all males. Then comes the sea change: so stark is the pay discrepancy at the top (41% of males earned £50K or more; just 16% of females) that not a single female respondent reported an income of greater than £100,000 per annum (whereas 3% of males do).


The True Value of Assignments
Elizabeth Harrin, the award-winning project management blogger at A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, is all over the story behind gender issues regularly. In March, Harrin wrote of the harrowing trend that relegates women to the marginalised, lower priority projects. Citing a study conducted by Lisa Henderson and Richard Stackman...

"The researchers write:

‘Female project managers and team members may be locked in a vicious cycle of project assignments on lower-cost, smaller projects, leaving them more marginalized both geographically and culturally from power-gaining experiences in comparison to their male counterparts…[T]he historical "glass ceiling" for women…exists within contemporary project management as well.’

"In short, women are segregated on to smaller, cheaper projects and spend more time working on virtual teams than men."
 

Harrin's post on PMBR 2011 was also an astute breakdown of the gender issues: pointing to one respondent's comment in the Report that ageism and sexism were "still allowed" in the contract market, she was quick to remind readers that:

“Just for the record, sexism at work is not allowed, although you only have to speak informally to women to know that discrimination of all sorts is still very much a part of working life.”


In the 2008 PMBR, respondents told us that women were perceived merely as, at best, project support, not project management. Moreover, that year’s respondents also pointed to a growing concern that maternity and pregnancy were an issue, as well as a perception that women in the IT sector felt forced to "work much harder in their roles to prove their worth and gain self-respect". Considering that Harrin’s posts today support the perceptions offered three years ago, the value of the female project practitioner would seem to be diminished.


Impact on Unemployment
Taking the data from the survey for unemployment it would appear that the female practitioners have not been impacted harder than their male counterparts. The overall mix of respondents running at 70:30 (Male: Female) against 74:26 for the unemployed practitioners in this year’s survey.


Impact of Working Patterns
The final cut of data for this piece takes a look at the environmental and cultural aspects of the differences between gender groups to see if this may unlock some of the earlier noted discrepancies.

If we look at working patterns at the highest level, part time v full time the survey results provided us with a similar split across gender. Just 9% of female respondents reported that they work part time against 7% of males.

Further analysis of hours worked by gender opens up a picture of significant difference as can be seen in the graphic below.

Typical hours of work by gender

Put simply it would appear that the males working in programme and project management support the statement that "PPM has a long hours culture". Taking the modern working week as say 35 hours, a staggering 93% of both males and females report that they typically work more hours than this.

Notching up to the 40 hour limit the gender gap starts to open, with 65% of females in this group compared to 42% of the males.

So over 40 hours per week we have an even wider gender gap, with 35% of females in this group compared to 58% of the males.

At greater than 48 hours per week, we hit 5% of females compared to 18% of the males.

So it would seem that yet again it is not so simple as to say that all women are discriminated against in terms of remuneration, that may be the case for some and if it is illegal it should be routed out and removed. For the wider population it would appear that the discrimination is not gender-based but also impacted by other factors such as role type, work-life balance choices, personal circumstance and demands of the role in terms of hours and location. Some are potentially fixable; but are they all?

Dan Strayer is a Marketing Coordinator of Arras People and editor of Project Management Tipoffs. To read more of his work on project management at How to Manage a Camel, click here.

Discrimination in the Project Workplace: Fact or Fiction?

Project managers worldwide might be getting pushed around for things that mean little to their ability to do the job well.

Words: Dan Strayer & John Thorpe

Many efforts have been made over recent years to remove the impact of discrimination in all aspects of our daily lives; many laws have been created, updated and then publicised to raise our awareness of what is acceptable behaviour in our culture / society. They provide those who have been discriminated against some recourse through the legal system and provide a stick with which individuals and organisations may be hit if they fail to observe.

However data collected over the last six years through the Project Management Benchmark surveys suggest that for all this effort there are many in the project management community who still feel that discrimination is still real and impacting their lives. Areas of equality don’t seem to be holding up! Remuneration by gender, unemployment and employment opportunity according to age and restrictions on career opportunity have all been regular themes amongst the respondents of the UK’s leading survey in project management trends.

So with this in mind we thought it would be a great time to ask practitioners in the project management community if they have seen examples of discrimination in the workplace. Have they experienced it personally at work or through events like interviews and promotions? Are there other areas of discriminatory practice that need to be talked about? Are there examples that can be misconstrued as discriminatory, but are actually just a burdensome fact of life?

Here’s a sampling of what our respondents had to say through the LinkedIn discussion...

Peter Taylor, author of The Lazy Project Manager, believes he has been lucky; "Maybe I have been blind and lucky but I can't say I have seen discrimination within my industry (software) and my profession (project management). I have to say that I was concerned a few years ago when I found myself a free agent unexpectedly that ageism might be a factor in finding a new role. But I was fortunate that my network and experience led me quickly to a great new opportunity."

So far, so good from a male point of view; but how about views from the female contingent of project management? Anne Workman, a Project Manager at IBM, also reports no personal setbacks…yet! "I have seen a lot of discussion on this topic, but I have to admit to never actually feeling that I am being held back, or treated differently, because I am female (I work as a technical project manager now, having moved from software engineering). I am sure there used to be a lot of discrimination - but it is not something I have seen evidence of in over 7 years since university, and 4 yrs previous to that working part time while at university."

Anne added, "However, in terms of women working in the executive / top technical roles I agree that there is a gender imbalance. My theory is that this is due to the work life balance skew that seems to be the ‘norm’ for the top roles. There seems to be an expectation that as you move up the ranks that you have to give up a lot of the ‘life’ part of the balance, be on call a lot of the time and work very long hours. Personally, and I expect this is true for a lot of women, I don’t feel that the benefits of being in a top role make this cost worthwhile. I would like to see more focus on working sensible hours, and a priority on work life balance from the top, so it filters back down the ranks, so people are not expected to give up everything for the job, and you can actually work flexibly, even while being in a senior position. I think if this was the norm there would be a much more even gender distribution across the senior/executive roles."

Kathy Winterbotham, an established PMO at AQA, still has trouble shaking traditional labels even in doing the most mundane tasks. "As part of the PM team I have never experienced discrimination with regard to pay, conditions and workload," she said. "However, my only niggle is that when answering another colleague’s telephone, being female, am occasionally thought of as 'the PA' and as such should know exactly where they are and could I put an appointment in their diary. Not wishing to be rude, or giving the department a bad name, just laugh it off and advise them to send XYZ an email as I may not see them for a while."

David Sawyer, a project manager & Juggling Sand blogger, feels intolerance hurts businesses.

"If you choose to make your company male, able-bodied, heterosexual, white, middle-class, etc, then you are not reflecting the diversity within your supplier and customer base and therefore you limit your chances of success,” he says.

“I went to an ‘Industry Day’ the other day and a colleague remarked about the lack of diversity at the event. I looked around and everyone looked the same - white, male, well-spoken, pinstriped suit. As women are proven to be better at reading body language and customer liaison, it made me wonder how switched on any of the companies were. I’m not suggesting that anyone discriminated while they were building their company, but it seems odd that there wasn’t even one person in the room who didn’t fit ‘the mould’."

What is interesting in reading everyone’s opinions is the elevated level of discomfort intolerant behaviours in the modern project atmosphere have produced. Some of those who took part in the discussion relayed previous experiences that made working for the company unbearable. Robert Kelly, a certified PMP & Project Manager at Lenovo, told us of a well-known agency whose practices he "could not stomach."

"Consistently, management asked me why I would spend any time with a consultant. ‘He is a dinosaur,’” Robert recalled hearing. “At one of the largest financial services firms I was bringing on a few Project Coordinators and the approving client VP said to me, ‘Are they in our corporate directory? Have I seen them before?’ After referring back to the resume and their skill set, the VP said...I want to SEE them. Not a single minority was selected for his round of approval.

"How this all translates to hiring, promotions, salary, I am not sure, but there is still certainly levels of bias in the workplace."

Geoff Crane, a Project Management Consultant based in Canada, feels that the imbalance is on the side of options, not options removed, as Workman suggested earlier.

"With so many global companies in need of PMs, gender and race discrimination *seem* to be things of the past. Of course, those are just my observations," he said. "The problem with discrimination is, it’s easy to not see it if you’re not in a group affected by it. It’s not always overt behaviour (i.e., Kathy’s example). So...I’m aware of ageism. So far, though, I can’t say it’s really affected me."

Up to this point, we’ve seen mainly Western-related examples. But for the sake of perspective, it may be helpful to consider just how much worse off those affected by prejudicial hiring practices would be without the enlightenment we’ve had thus far.

Kareem Shaker is a Project Manager at Dubai World in the UAE and regularly maintains a widely-followed blog. He lays it out plain and simple: the Western approach has nothing on the Middle East for discriminatory practices.

“If you want to see the real discrimination, come to the Middle East! It’s very much ridiculous how a majority of candidates and professionals are evaluated here; many factors that you really cannot any control upon can decide your pay, benefits, position, influence, your present, and ultimately your future,” he told us.

In fact, Kareem suggested those Westerners wishing to work in the Middle East had a type of discrimination immunity that worked in their favour.

"If an Indian, Arab, Pakistani, etc. applies for a job he may get X monthly salary," he told us. "On the other hand, a Canadian can get 3X monthly salary for the same job and he could even be less qualified. And more ironically if an Arab candidate who may have a Canadian nationality applies for a job they give him X rather than 3X.

"Many job advertisements mandate certain nationalities, and discrimination does not stop at the interview process - it goes beyond the entire tenure of an employee!"

In terms of gender bias, David Hitchman, Consultant at ScrumIT, is a sceptic to the notion of a discriminatory society that shows disfavour to women and minorities. "I would be surprised if there was real discrimination against women or minorities these days - I far more often see ‘positive’ discrimination in favour of these (of course that means discrimination against others, but that’s always glossed over),” he said. “Perhaps there are other factors involved - the number of technical people, those prepared to do ‘what it takes’ (often visits to customers in other countries) and so forth."

This provides a flavour of the discussion and the full thread where you can add your thoughts is shown at the end of the article. The summary we derive is that discrimination exists in the project management environment at both the conscious and subconscious levels. Legislation in many societies helps to reduce the blatant discrimination which used to exist (and still does in some societies) but it can never go all the way. As individuals, many of us do not "see" discrimination because we do not think that we are in a group that is impacted by it, though subconsciously this may also in some cases reduce our capacity to see ourselves being discriminatory through our actions however small or insignificant it may seem.

Learn more about the Project Management Benchmark Report here.

If you’re on LinkedIn, join the Arras Group and check out the discussion to add your two cents.

Dan Strayer is the editor of Arras People’s Project Management Tipoffs newsletter. To read more of his work on project management at How to Manage a Camel, click here. To read more of John Thorpe's work, check out his article on ageism above.

FAQ of the Month

FAQ of the Month
Arras People & Project Management Tipoffs this month welcome you back to a feature that reveals more about some of the Frequently Asked Questions we've answered recently.

This section is here to help you realise where to get help with your most basic and far-reaching questions alike. With just a little search, you can use the Arras People website to get ahead in your hunt for gainful PPM employment and advice. From time to time, we'll go beyond FAQs with this running feature as well - we're also happy to point you towards the tidbits of information you can do with, be it a handout, a testimonial, or reasons as to why a candidate can turn to Arras People. The main idea is to channel your regularly-asked inquiries into sections of the website that are set up to deal with them in a convenient fashion.

This month's Frequently Asked Question:


Image by sarbathory and re-used with permission.

Book Review - Early Project Appraisal

Early Project AppraisalAuthor: Knut Samset
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Size: 224 pages

Reviewed by John Greenwood

Professor Samset’s book is about doing the right project, (as opposed to doing the project right) and about not starting impossible projects that deliver no value however well they are executed. His rationale for evaluating project concepts early, and thoroughly, is summed up early in the book with this description of the early stages of the project:

"...in which the main premises are decided, when the consequences of decisions made are greatest, and when the information available is lowest. It is also the time at which the cost incurred in making major changes is minimal. This implies that it pays to do a proper job before the concept is chosen and the project is planned in detail."

Having stressed the value and importance of early appraisal of projects, he then observes, possibly implying that failure to recognise the value of appraisal is at the root of so many failed projects, and that perhaps the industry as a whole is ignoring early appraisal and perpetuating the malaise through its training, texts, and bodies of knowledge:

"It is therefore a paradox that most of the curriculum and textbooks for students in the profession termed Project Management focus on how to manage a project during its implementation phase, while the problem of how to arrive at better concepts up front is largely neglected."

In addressing Early Project Appraisal, Prof. Samset has produced a book that is overflowing with ideas, strategies, tools, and relevant examples. This makes for a demanding read, not due in any way to the style of language, but purely due to the rate at which the thinking and information is presented, challenging the reader to assimilate all of these ideas. Although the book comes with a hefty price tag attached, comparison with other works suggests that for the material presented, it actually represents good value.

The book is divided into two parts; the first discussing the aspects of front-end assessment of projects, and the second part describing tools and techniques to effect that assessment and draw meaningful conclusions.

The first part of the book addresses appraising the project in a number of stages. Firstly, understanding what the project is really about – what are the benefits, drivers, success factors, and uncertainties. A model showing the build-up of levels of success is shown, that incorporates implementation and short to long term benefits, illustrated by examples of both success and failure. Then, understanding the uncertainties, and the effect these have on perception of the project’s success at each stage. The book considers using the planning activities as a vehicle for understanding greater detail of the project and of the uncertainties and risks that are associated, refining and elaborating the project concept. There is a section that addresses the predictions of costs and benefits made during the early stages; why costs are generally underestimated and benefits overestimated, and why these systemic errors are not always due to the nature of uncertainty and the lack of sufficient information, but due to vested interests. Despite the wealth of information and ideas, the book favours the use of simple planning methods, the use of intuition, and the re-use of learning from similar projects, in a three-stage approach encompassing Definition, Development, and Assessment of the project concept.

Part two of the book refines the ideas from part one, and offers 10 strategies to perform the stages in part one. Considering the problem as a system, Prof. Samset provides an overview of system analysis through the use of SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). He describes how to tease out and treat the uncertainties and to prioritise those that have the capacity to do most harm, those that may yield most benefit, and the continuum between these two extremes. A structured approach to cost estimation and benefit analysis, followed by a section detailing how to analyse and classify risks, and setting a risk policy are provided, which apply approaches familiar to implementation project managers to the strategic project appraisal. Finally, Prof. Samset discusses statistical analysis of project schedules, to provide a distribution (S-curve) for possible completion and milestone dates, explaining how these are used to identify sensitivities to environmental conditions that may cause delay and dislocation to the implementation schedule.

Light relief is provided at the end of the book with a chapter entitled; “Boondoggles and White Elephants”, where some of the examples cited earlier in the book are revisited as either Boondoggles; projects that waste time and resources in futile activities (Concorde is cited), or as White Elephants; projects that deliver a product that presents a burden or cost to the client, and leaves him with more problems than he had at the start. The favourite example of the latter is the Millennium Dome, although its very recent success in the hands of the private sector is not mentioned.

In summary, as mentioned in the preface, this is a book aimed at strategic decision makers, and in that context it provides a wealth of information and guidance. It is also of interest to project managers insofar as it provides a framework to question the project’s existence before agreeing to take a role, and to gain a view of the “big-picture”, and to extend the understanding of project analyses from the tactical environment into the strategic.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: John Greenwood has around 15 years of project management experience gained in the engineering and IT industries, and has been an active member of the PMI UK Chapter. He holds a degree in Physics from the University of Birmingham, and has worked for a number of years as a Systems Engineer in the defence electronics industry.

DO YOU WANT TO REVIEW A BOOK FOR TIPOFFS? Contact us today.

Q&A

"As a younger project management practitioner, I get this feeling in my working environment that my youth & inexperience is working against me. I wonder if you might have any tips on what it takes to command more respect as a younger PM?" – Andrew, Clacton-on-Sea

 

Lindsay Scott

Lindsay Scott of Arras People says: Thanks for your question – the easier and straightforward answer is to make sure you deliver successfully; actions definitely speak louder than words. This is the case for any project practitioner regardless of age or experience levels. Do an outstanding job; which not only means delivering the project successfully but also making sure you’re doing that whilst managing expectations of those around you. Sure, there are some practitioners around who may get results by being aggressive or confrontational but really your long term strategy should be delivering results AND being a good guy too.

You should take a look at your own experience levels and think about what areas you need to improve in – don’t just look at the technical know-how of being a project manager but the areas that make a difference to the type of manager you are. Make sure you study and practice those nuances of project management like leadership; team creation and management; conflict resolution; motivation techniques; negotiation and delegation. All these areas of management will help you develop and become a practitioner who is worthy of respect from both your superiors and the team you manage.

As I stated upfront age does not really come into it; it's how you choose to gain that valuable experience using all the resources available to you. Another resource to consider is finding a mentor within your current organisation who can act as a sounding board as you develop and learn. The wonderful thing about project management, indeed any kind of managerial role, is that there is help there in terms of management theories and techniques that can assist in terms of giving an insight into “how” you manage but really the style, technique and approach you take are all down to you – albeit with a little trial and error on the way. A mentor can be a great way to help you steer and navigate your way to finding your individual approach.

One final piece of advice is the old Greek philosopher quote; "we have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak"; its one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given as a novice manager. Often respect comes by not actually having said a word at all.

If you would like to put a question to Lindsay or any of our other project management consultants, contact us and it could end up in a future edition of the Tipoffs Q&A. Also, be sure to check out our Project Management Careers clinic / Project Management Careers Advice pages for more advice related to project management careers.

Got a question for us? Contact us today.

Social Media Roundup

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From Arras People & How to Manage a Camel

 

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Vacancy of the Month

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Previous Editions of Tipoffs

Project Management Tipoffs Archive

Project Management Success - March 2011

Arras People talks to the successful project managers of the world about the keys to forging a successful career in projects & programme management.


Project Management Training - February 2011

Arras People launches the PM Training Directory with a variety of contributions from our newest sponsors in this special edition of Tipoffs.


Portfolio Management Guidance - January 2011

With a new guidance ready to discern the best-practice format for portfolio management, Tipoffs takes a look at what the practitioners affected by it have to say.


What Is and What Should Never Be - December 2010

We look back at what was in 2010, what will be in 2011, some of the aspirations for project managers going forward and divide relevance of experience and training.


Benchmarks for 2011 - November 2010

Day rates and salaries are explored for project managers, plus we formally introduce the PM Benchmark Survey 2011 and our hopes for the subsequent report.