Project Management – It’s All About Paying Attention

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About the Presentation

In the summer of 2012, Karen Davey-Winter took an eight-week road trip around the United States with her 10-year-old son. It became a project in mindfulness. Every week they had a different theme, and every week they paid attention to what showed up. They learned that when you pay attention to something, the following happens:

• You see it everywhere
• You react to it, and you learn something about yourself from your reactions
• You start noticing the impact you have on other people
• You realize that when you change something about your impact, i.e. the way you show up, you can almost always get a better result

Karen noticed that the lessons they learned on their journey apply to many areas in life, including the challenges encountered every day by Project Managers. In this presentation she uses the framework of their journey, along with some specific tools and techniques, to help Project Managers improve their leadership skills through the following:

• Emotional Intelligence – enhancing our perceiving abilities in order to pay closer attention, and then manage our reactions and behaviors by acting with intention
• Self Awareness – identifying when we are in a place of assumption or judgment, and then developing strategies for moving to a place of curiosity to allow us to be more effective leaders
• Collaboration – understanding collaborative vs non-collaborative behaviors as a starting point for determining the interests of our stakeholders and then obtaining buy in
• Cross cultural competence – identifying different cultural dimensions and adjusting our approach in order to improve our leadership of global projects

Mindfulness is the base from which leaders increase their self-awareness and understand the impact they have on others. With that foundation, and through paying attention without judgment, intentional choices can be made. We learn to show up differently and improve the way that we lead people in different circumstances and environments. In doing so, our effectiveness as Project Managers is enhanced. Because as John Kabat-Zinn says, “Mindfulness is all about paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgment”.