Typically, career choices are made based upon responsibilities, compensation, or prestige where a businessperson makes a change to get a higher salary, more responsibility, or greater prestige. What about the situation, though, where the driver behind a career choice isn’t any of these; where it’s the needs of a child that drive the change? My choice was precisely that.

Trevor was a happy, normal, active baby. He was able to laugh, coo, cry, and do all of the other normal things that his big sister, Briana did at that age. To my wife Patty and me, everything seemed to be just fine. At about age two, we noticed that Trevor was hardly saying any words and was very into his own world with puzzles, coloring, and videos. 

In Part 1 of Persuasion Atrophy, I introduced how I see social media and artificial intelligence not only impacting how we work and play, but also how they can fundamentally impact the skill of persuasion. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise what I call their “persuasion muscle” to ensure the skill of persuasion doesn’t go the way of long division by hand.

To apply a layer of practicality to my argument, I’d like to use The Four C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle. This installment in the series focuses on choreographing your content and delivery.

The most challenging and consequential talk I’ve ever given wasn’t to a large group of people or a room full of executives, and it wasn’t even a business presentation. It was when I eulogized my sister Lori, who died of lung cancer in 2012 at age 54.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

There are two seismic-shifting technologies that have already changed just about every aspect of our lives, and will continue to in the future. The first is social media. It’s enabled the rekindling of old relationships, the building of new ones, and the end of others. Anyone with a phone, tablet or computer and internet connection can participate in discussions with others anywhere in the world.

The second is artificial intelligence. Using the internet and its 150 zettabytes of information (that’s 150 followed by 21 zeros), AI can search, analyze and present information that is either humanly infeasible or impossible in no time. It’s changing the way we work and play.

Before going further, I am a fan of both technologies and do not in any way advocate a head-in-the-sand position on either one. I firmly believe that, as leaders and project managers, it’s incumbent on us to learn about these technologies first-hand and weave them into what we do.

I do, however, want to sound a warning bell about both technologies and how they can inhibit development of a crucial business skill.

Persuasion.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

In my article 9 Ways to Be a Better Feedback Receiver, I discuss nine points that a feedback recipient should consider when accepting feedback. Gracefully and constructively receiving feedback is a skill some master, but many never seem to learn.

Sometimes it’s about the receiver’s unwillingness to accept feedback, but it could also be about the sender doing a poor job of creating a conducive environment to complete the feedback sender-receiver exchange. The sender plays a crucial role in the exchange, which is vital if the sender has aspirations of attaining trusted advisor status.

Core to being a trusted advisor is internalizing the following:
My job is to tell you what I think, yours is to decide what to do with it.

A trusted advisor not only provides helpful advice that a recipient can put to use, but also recognizes that her role is to allow the receiver the freedom to decide what to do with the feedback. There are four paths a receiver can take:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

With the vacation season in the rear-view mirror, many of us are going to get back to the grind of working too much, not getting enough sleep, eating poorly and not getting enough exercise.   The concept of work life balance to most is just a bunch of theoretical baloney espoused by a bunch of talking-head motivational speakers and organizational leaders.  There’s simply no way out of the imbalance, right?

BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT.  Wrong.

In my blog post In-Person Jekyll, Social Media Hyde, I discuss some takeaways to consider when posting to social media. I wrote it in 2021, spurred on by an onslaught of surprisingly divisive social media posts from people who, when face to face, appeared nothing like how their posts represented them.

I am connected with many business colleagues on social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X. Many are relatively reserved in their commentary and use business platforms for business topics, and personal platforms for things like vacation pics and family updates.

I really enjoy seeing both sides of colleagues, as it helps me get a more rounded view of them and discover their interests. For example, one of my colleagues is well-established in the tech industry, but also a lead singer for a cover band. It’s really fun to see him live his Sammy Hagar alter ego on the weekends. (Sammy Hagar over David Lee Roth any day!) Whenever I see one of his posts, I know I’ll be lightheartedly entertained and can celebrate his fun side.

My focus, though, is not on those like my lead-singer buddy.

It’s on the finger-wagger.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Glenn, a junior project manager, worked on a mission-critical 18-month program led by Sara, the senior PM. Glenn was very ambitious, worked long hours, and constantly strived to take on more and more work.

About six months into the program, Glenn was feeling exhausted. He became less focused and easily distracted. He always looked tired. He put on weight. His team recognized the change in him and began to lose faith in his ability to execute.

Glenn had always been a proud PM who had never seen the need to get counsel from others on how hard he worked. But as he observed how Sara seemed so focused and intentional in her work, he decided to ask her about it in their next 1:1.

“Sara, I’m barely able to keep up and am exhausted. My team can see it in me, my wife and kids see it. You seem to have it all together. How are you doing it?”

Sara smiled. “Ah, sometimes I put on a good face. There are many nights where I’m driving home yelling at myself in the car. I’ll bet other drivers get a real charge out of seeing me so animated.”

Glenn grinned at her humble response. “I’ll bet you have those moments, but we only see the focused Sara.”

Sara turned more serious. “Glenn, there is something I learned a long time ago that I needed to focus on. I was a lot like you--very ambitious, burning the midnight oil, always wanting more. A senior PM I was working for saw me at the end of my rope and gave me some great advice which I’m going to give you. She said that if I was going to scale, I couldn’t rely on brute force to get things done; I had to build my stamina muscle.”

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

I had a discussion with a young man who, three years after graduating college, still did not have a job. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career. “I want to be a Renaissance Man,” he said.

Now, aside from the fact that it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone refer to themselves as a Renaissance Man, I envisioned someone much older and wiser, not a twenty-something young man. So I did some digging on the definition of “Renaissance Man/Woman” and stumbled across a word I’d never heard before:

Polymath.

Dictionary.com defines Polymath as a person of great learning in several fields of study. The word originates from the Greek polymathḗs, which translates to “having learned much.”

This got me thinking about how I, as a PM and leader, strive to be a person of great learning in several fields of study. The interesting word here is learning. It’s not about being a final authority, knowing all there is to know. Instead, it’s about being a student who develops expertise but continues to learn about both existing and new fields of study.

For the project management discipline, I call that person the Polymath PM.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.