You couldn’t believe how much money could be saved every day with clear communication. If you can’t meet in person, call, if you can’t call, chat, mail, pigeon post, … but arrange a point in time where you can talk person to person.

It just works. We even had a hotel desk bell at Nascom that we hit every time we called with a client as a novelty.

• Full adress of the location (and name of the meeting room)
• Telephone and/or mobile number of your main contact
• The number of the reception desk of the company you’re visiting
• A full written down list of names of the people attending
• If you’re not sure if a name on your list a man or a woman, check Google Images, try Gulnihal for instance, it’s a common Turkish girl’s name but you probably wouldn’t know that if you’re not from Turkey

Why? Should get lost or stuck in traffic you should call the people you’re meeting. When you arrive, and it’s a big site, hopefully you can find the right building and the meeting room. You often need a full name of the person you’re meeting at the reception desk or you won’t get in. Now you’re in the room with all the new people, time to say hello to everyone.

Imagine saying something like this to CIO just-forgot-his-name …

Hi mister .. euhm … sir! Isn’t mister Gulnihal attending?

… you get the point.

I got rescued in the nick of time once by a lady bringing in coffee, before I heard her say a few names I was dying inside, hence the checklist.

During the meeting do the following:

• take notes, even if someone else is taking care of the minutes
• keep focussed on the purpose of the meeting
• assume rapport if there is no clear reason not to
• when things get hard to explain, get out of your chair and/or make drawings
• keep an eye on the body language of the people around you
• mind your own body language (check out “The Definitive Book of Body Language” it’s a good book)

Whatever happens, a meeting should always result in a set of actions for the participants.

Have your business cards ready for everyone at the end. good luck!

Some things I learned:

• Be specific and compact in the goals you set for others.
• Learn how to delegate correctly.
• Take a step back, see if your behavior matches your goals.
• Let people know up front that you are going to evaluate their work.
• If you have to reprimand someone, finish with an encouragement.
• If you have to reprimand someone, reprimand the behavior not the person.
• If someone does something good, praise it, do it soon.

The book is a short story about a man who wants to learn about becoming a manager, you read about how he learns these lessons from a successful manager known as “The One Minute Manager” who does all sorts of things in one minute. It’s easy to look past the story and that’s the point of the way the book is written. The advice the book dispenses is really good. On the back it says …

… a powerful recipe for getting big results from people …

… and that’s true.

There are a lot of good one-liners and lists taking up a full page making the book even shorter than 112 pages, it really takes a very short time to read but it’s powerful stuff.

My score: 8.5/10

There’s no sense starting an argument against a

wall of emotions.

Arguing just doesn’t work at that moment. It’s easy at times to go into offensive mode yourself before the storm goes down, just don’t. If someone is very very mad about something they almost certainly didn’t chose to feel like that.

Here are a few thing to remember that will help you to stay calm yourself:

• Everybody has the right to their emotions, even the angry person in front of you.
• Get yourself some time and give the angry person time, wait until the anger fades, only then a real discussion is possible.
• The more compassionate you are toward an angry person the higher the chances are on a positive outcome for you if there’s a discussion.
• It is always possible to be compassionate without yielding to an argument by confirming that it is an argument.
• Venting anger doesn’t relieve it.

OK, I just got angry myself, now what?

• Apologize for the angry moment, explain how you felt.
• Realize it’s a matter of emotional discipline, learn from it.
• It’s a natural thing, don’t be too ashamed.

Same advice goes for people who go into drama mode or start to cry. Having a strong emotion is not a choice. Deal with it in the best way you can.

• 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.

Try some of these:

• in a stressful moment: What next thing makes the most sense at this time given the current situation?
• someone complains, ask: What can we do about this?
• when in doubt: What are the next steps?
• when things surprise you: What are these things telling us?
• after a setback: How can we learn from this?

I got inspired by a post by Steve Pavlina I remembered from long ago, in the recent past I started noticing that my CEO and other senior project managers ask these kind of questions quite a lot.

It’s funny how common sense this is, all you have to do is do it.