Here are a few things I learned:

• When some bad news for your team stresses you out or makes you angry for some reason, take care not to contaminate other people on the project. Take some time to cool down before you bring the message. Keep things objective and focused when you do.
• If you need to get a higher sense of urgency in a team, emphasize goals, values and time constraints. Hard situations always have an optimal directions to steer things into, never panic.
• If a stakeholder (any kind) screws up badly, it’s still a stakeholder who most probably wants the best for the project. When you talk about this in your team, play the ball, not the player.

A mood is a contagious thing, when you see happy people you tend to feel happier, everybody does, it’s the way our human brains work. In that light you as a project manager are regarded as a kind of mood barometer of a project because you are supposed to have the most parameters to be happy or sad about the way things are going. Happy people are good.

Think about this when you are having a bad day. It’s easy to get caught in complaining about something to team members, don’t do it, you don’t have to lie when things are looking bad but that doesn’t mean you have to moan about it or start a speech and list your personal frustrations. You have your own boss to do that to

Watch “Saving Private Ryan”, there’s a part where Tom Hanks says complaining always goes up the ladder, it’s true.