{"id":7042,"date":"2011-07-29T15:52:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T22:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=7042"},"modified":"2011-07-29T15:52:41","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T22:52:41","slug":"tune-and-trust-your-intuitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=7042","title":{"rendered":"Tune and Trust Your Intuitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As you learn about project management, one critical thing to absorb is to trust your sense about situations.\u00a0 This may not be something that you\u2019ll learn about in most trainings or school or from many mentors \u2013 but it\u2019s critical.\u00a0\u00a0 By \u201cyour sense\u201d, I mean your intuition, the gut feel you may have about a situation, your client or your co-workers.\u00a0 It is something that can be learned and my experience has taught me to develop and trust my intuitions.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just finished a two-year consulting engagement as PM for business process re-engineering and organization change management.\u00a0 My work started out with some bumpy moments.\u00a0 The overall project manager was supportive of the work I was doing but my immediate client was somewhat resistant.\u00a0 I told him that with my many years of project management, I felt it was necessary to check in with all the people who would be affected by the new business processes.\u00a0 He said that a little, cursory checking in was fine but he didn\u2019t want to have his people \u2013 all of whom I was training \u2013 to spend much of their time contacting stakeholders.<\/p>\n

The immediate reaction I felt was, \u201cOh darn\u201d \u2013 I said it to myself in somewhat stronger language, to be sure \u2013 but then I asked myself, what do I need to know about this person and what are my intuitions about him that can help in us working together effectively.<\/p>\n

First, I wanted to find out what were the means of communication that were most effective with him.\u00a0 Did he prefer email?\u00a0 Or phone conversations? \u00a0Or in-person meetings?\u00a0 Or was there some other way I should explore: Skype, texting, Twitter, etc.<\/p>\n

It was a hit and miss affair.\u00a0 I\u2019d send an email and see how effective that was.\u00a0 I\u2019d call and those tended to be halting and not involving much give and take.\u00a0 And I\u2019d travel to the site where he worked to hold in-person meetings.\u00a0 His work site was a good hour-and-a-half away from my work site, so meeting in-person was clearly a significant commitment on my time.<\/p>\n

I found that emails and the phone weren\u2019t effective.\u00a0 Skype and other new media weren\u2019t communication channels in which he was at all interested.\u00a0 In-person sessions seemed to work best.<\/p>\n

In those in-person meetings, he was often uncomfortable, shifting his position from one pose to another; crossing his arms and uncrossing them; looking at me directly and then looking away while he was talking.\u00a0 To put him more at ease, I used the technique called mirroring: I simply assumed whatever body position he had assumed and tried to talk with the same emphasis and emotion that he was exhibiting.\u00a0 This put him at ease and communication seemed to go better.<\/p>\n

The additional dimension I added to our interactions was my intuitive response to him.\u00a0 I asked myself, \u201cHow do I feel I should be with him?\u00a0 Should I be friendly?\u00a0 Cool?\u00a0 Business-like and competent?\u201d\u00a0 I asked myself, \u201cWhat is my body telling me?\u00a0 What do I really feel about him?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, this may seem a little touchy-feely but we all have responses to people.\u00a0 And it almost always shows up in how we feel.\u00a0 For me, it\u2019s been a long struggle to recognize and appreciate that in myself.\u00a0 I\u2019ve worked fairly seriously on trying to sense what is going on in my own reaction to someone.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done work in enhancing the awareness I feel in my body: what am I feeling in my chest?\u00a0 My navel area?\u00a0 My legs?<\/p>\n

With this person I was working with, I felt a strong feeling in my chest area that I just needed to be present for him.\u00a0 Calm, collected and showing that I was listening and really, really bringing him and what he was saying into my consciousness.<\/p>\n

Over the two years I worked with him that was the demeanor I tried to embody when I worked with him.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t always able to keep that mental and physical attitude but I was able to do so most of the time.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that our work relationship was warm and incredibly friendly but we did have a good working relationship and maintained a cordial work relationship.<\/p>\n

The message behind all this for me is that it is critical for me to pay attention to the small things I may overlook: how a person holds themselves; senses in my body about what it is to work with a particular person.\u00a0 There is a lot of good information coming to each of us and we just need to attune ourselves to it and use those senses to inform the way we work with people on our projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you learn about project management, one critical thing to absorb is to trust your sense about situations.\u00a0 This may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1523,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,848,849,850],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","category-communications","category-1-1-leadership","category-team-leadership","category-organizational-leadership"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}