I recently stumbled upon a leadership trend called “conscious unbossing.” It caught my attention, not because I knew what it was and wanted to learn more, but because it was such an odd phrase that I couldn’t unsee it and had to find out what in the dickens it was.

Claude and Copilot gave me very similar definitions:

Conscious unbossing is the deliberate choice by talented professionals to opt out of—or step back from—leadership roles in favor of career paths that better align with their personal wellbeing, values, and definition of success.

Okay, I can buy this; a professional makes a conscious choice to not climb the ladder and organizationally lead others. Some were meant to be a thought leader and are more sustainably content than in a people-leader role.

Chasing a promotion because a professional thinks that’s what they’re supposed to do as opposed to what fits into their life doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen many professionals who opted to move into individual contributor (IC) roles because they wanted to have thought leader impact without the stress of being a people leader. The Claude/Copilot definition holds water in my book.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Me needing to meet with other managers or my staff.  Vendors wanting to meet with me.  Meeting with customers.  Meeting with other organizations.  Meetings to decide what meetings to have or not have.  It was meeting after meeting after meeting.  I had to actively control my calendar to say no to meetings that didn’t make sense, push back on meetings where I didn’t need to be there or where we could get work done through other means. 

• Delivering bad news where people will likely have questions – No one likes to find out bad news by reading a memo.  If you’ve got bad news that will affect people directly, get them in a room if logistically possible and deliver the message.  It gives people an opportunity to interact as well as it being a more humane and sensitive way of delivering bad news.
  

What are some effective alternatives to people getting in a room together to meet?   Try these on for size:

• E-mail – Great for dissemination of information and for some decision making that may not be contentious or controversial.  Just watch for when a topic does turn contentious or controversial; you’re best to take the discussion offline and get a meeting together for the relevant parties to discuss.
• Web sites – Also great for dissemination of information or for getting input
• Audio/video conferencing – Effective when logistics prevent people from physically meeting or when a person only wants to listen in on a meeting
• One-on-one discussions – Effective when a decision or direction can be made by just a couple of people and then others can be informed through e-mail or web sites

I recently stumbled across Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report. One statistic jumped out to me: Global manager engagement has been consistently dropping from 31 percent in 2022, 30 percent in 2023, 27 percent in 2024, to 22 percent in 2025.

In plain English, this means in 2025, only 22 percent of managers surveyed were genuinely enthusiastic and invested in their work. The other 73 percent were coasting or entirely checked out. Individual contributor (IC) engagement has been roughly flat—20 percent in 2022, 18 percent in 2023 and 2024, and 19 percent in 2025.

Think about this for a minute. Less than 25 percent of managers and ICs jump out of bed each day fired up about their job. It’s also interesting to note that the engagement gap between managers and ICs has narrowed from a 10-percentage point difference in 2022 to just a three-percentage point difference in 2025.

On the bright side, among U.S. organizations, the 2025 manager engagement number is 36 percent, and in best practice organizations the number jumps to 79 percent. While these numbers are encouraging, it doesn’t mean there’s not a problem. Managers (including project managers) are responsible for translating an exec’s why and what into how. If managers aren’t engaged, then driving the how becomes more risky.

Taking the position that a professional, whether a manager or IC, needs to do whatever is in their power to improve their engagement, I’d like to give you five things to consider to improve engagement for both you and your team:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Shane was a hot-shot project manager with a large consulting firm. His management typically brought him into problem projects. His disciplined approach and honest assessments of where things were at helped to right the ship on a number of projects while minimizing adverse cost/schedule/scope impact.

He was very confident in his abilities, and started boasting more and more about his track record. He made a great impression with both his clients and management.
Until one project came along.

Shane was brought in to help with chronic schedule shifts. This project was the first one his consulting firm was doing with the client, and the firm desperately wanted to demonstrate their value-add to better position them for future projects. Shane met with Marge, the fair but no-nonsense project sponsor.

To say Shane was unprepared was an understatement. He kept referring to Marge as Mary. He hadn't read the project brief, so he fumbled when she asked a basic scope question. He referenced a deliverable that had already been cut from the project two weeks earlier.

The meeting lasted 11 minutes, with Marge making an excuse to end it early. After Shane left, Marge called Shane’s manager and told her Shane wasn’t a good fit. Shane was never allowed back at the client, and his reputation took a hit with his management due to the negative impression he made.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

 We increased the amount of her allowance, gave it to her quarterly, but then had her use her budget to buy all of her own clothes and other personal items

- We kept track of inflows and outflows on an excel spreadsheet

- If she wanted something we would ask her if that was where she wanted to spend her budget.  If she said yes then she made the purchase but then she had to wait until she had enough money in her account to buy other things

- Right after we put this into effect, she and my wife were in Nordstrom and our daughter saw a pair of flip-flops she wanted.  She asked my wife if she could get them.  My wife responded, “Is that where you want to spend your money?”  She ended up buying flip-flops at Target.

2.  Both our kids got checking accounts before age 16 and credit cards at age 18.  The rationale for doing is that we wanted to make sure they learned about the concept of interest and making payments versus paying their bill in full every month.  We wanted them to learn good habits while at home as opposed to learning bad habits while at college.  While discussing with our daughter, she asked the question, “You mean if I don’t pay it off in full every month then I’m paying interest to the bank and getting nothing in return?”  After I told her that was exactly the case she vowed that she would always monitor her spending so she could pay her bill in full every month. Both our kids are experienced with credit cards and neither has paid a dime in interest charges because they couldn’t pay their bill in full every month.

3.  Our eldest is out of college and youngest is still in college.  When our eldest got her first job as a nurse we had a deliberate discussion about her saving for retirement.  She contributes the maximum amount to her 401k, has saved up enough for six-months of living expenses, and lives off the rest.  She drives a ten-year-old car because it’s “good enough”.  She still indulges in the nice purse or a weekend away, but does so within her means.

4.  Most of the discussion has been about our daughter, but we did the same things with our son.  He and his big sister are better disciplined money managers than many adults I know.  Oh and our son is also mainstream autistic and still is able to manage his finances like a hawk.

May 2026 Update: My kids are both in their 30's now and my daughter has kids of her own. They are both excellent money managers, have good savings and retirement accounts, and have never paid a dime in credit card interest. if you've got kids be intentional with teaching them about money early on. It will pay huge dividends later in life. 

One of my column readers recently sent in this question: One of our senior project managers left abruptly in the middle of a 3 year million $ contract. What experience and education would you consider in promoting a replacement? 

Ooh, good meaty problem.  Not so simple a solution.

First facet, preparedness in case of flight:

• Have a project succession plan in place for key project team members.  This includes not only the project manager but key analysts, developers, and other hard-to-replace team members.
• Assess whether the project manager is already a flight risk because of prior circumstances.  For whatever reason, the project manager may be at flash point and ready to leave or already looking to leave.

• Document if there are there specific skills required of the position.  Some project management positions can be filled by a good generic project manager, while others may require a specific functional, technical, or industry skills. 

Next facet is actions if a flight occurs:

• Execute the succession plan if the planned successor is ready to assume control.  Sometimes the successor will be able to easily slip into the shoes of the prior project manager.  At other times the successor may have to share workload with his or her manager or other project team members to lighten the load and better minimize project impact.
• Don't expect much out of the fleeing project manager.  He or she may be physically be around for another week or two but mentally the transition to the new job has already begun. 
• Stay close to the situation.  Don't just assume that because there is a new name in the project manager box on the org chart that all is going to go well.  Keep close watch over the new project manager and be ready to assist if you see problems starting to crop up.
• Keep the team calm.  When a leader flees the situation is ripe for confusion, dissention, and infighting which can lead to budget and schedule problems.  Keep the team focused and motivated through the transition.  Most importantly, keep them informed on what is going on.
• Position the next successor.  This is good for two reasons:  it helps mitigate the risk of another PM flight and is a natural learning opportunity to build up new project managers.

My wife and I frequently travel to the southwest, where we have many friends and family members. During our time there, we contact several of them to get together for lunch, dinner, or coffee.

This is very important to us because we like to keep up with what’s going on in their lives, and build upon relationships already established. Most everyone responds fairly quickly, even if it’s with, “Sorry, we’re out of town and won’t be able to get together.” We certainly understand these types of responses.

It’s the non-responses that bug me.

Each non-responder is someone we’ve always had good relationships with, and had good times when we’ve met with them. During our last trip, we knew at least two of them were busy with work and life, so we would have gladly accepted a response of, “We’re just too busy right now.” It was getting no response at all that just didn’t set well.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

So okay, Microsoft Project is a super flexible tool in helping you as a project manager define your project tasks, dependencies, and resources.  Quite frankly, though, the workplan you define in MS Project is only as good as the thought that goes into it.  Too often I've seen savvy MS Project users completely bungle a project because, while the tool was being used appropriately, the workplan didn't make sense to the project team and didn't reflect what really needed to be done.  The team consistently expressed confusion about what needed to be done by when because the project workplan wasn't reflective of the actual work which needed to be done.  Great exercise in using MS Project, but poor execution of the project.  Blech.