In this episode, hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome discuss strategies to improve project delivery by focusing on resilience and self-care. The episode covers practical tips for project managers, emphasizing the importance of personal and team resilience, empathy, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and ethical behavior. They explore techniques such as regular breaks, the use of self-assessment tools, daily stand-ups, and promoting open communication to foster a supportive project environment. Additionally, they address handling prolonged stress and maintaining motivation with creative progress tracking and relevant slogans.

Main Take-Aways

Tips, tools, and techniques for enhancing your ability to build and employ resilience on projects, both in preparing for and dealing with project challenges and setbacks:

1)     pay attention to human behaviors

2)     practice self-care and prioritize physical health

3)     build upon your emotional intelligence, especially empathy

4)     consider using personality assessment tools

5)     utilize project meetings as opportunities to deal with setbacks

6)     incorporate resilience aspects into project planning processes

7)     develop strong personal relationships on the project

8)     create an environment of transparency and open communication, ethics and authenticity, collaboration and problem solving

9)     help mitigate times of prolonged stress

10)  accept situations where it is better to put people over projects

11)  use motivational affirmations

Show Notes

Today’s Project Managers Coffee Chat: Tips, Tools, and Techniques to Develop Resilience

00:27 Introducing practical tips, tools and techniques for developing and applying resilience in project management

00:44 Tim believes that human behavioral aspects play a large part in developing the habit of everyday resilience.

01:16 Merv adds to that by discussing self-care and prioritizing physical health. To build resilience on the project you must build resilience within yourself. He continues by differentiating between endurance and resilience.

03:10 Tim advises that you build upon your emotional intelligence – educate yourself – in helping to build your resilience. Merv adds that tools such as Myers Briggs or DISC personality assessments can help in this.

04:45 Merv uses project daily standups as an opportunity to help project teams maintain perspective, especially after setbacks on the project.

05:31 Tim continues this thought by advising project managers to have resilience top of mind in all project planning activities to prepare for potential setbacks ahead of time.

06:26 Merv suggests that developing strong relationships on the projects leads to a strong sense of resilience within the team. Tim agrees and advises that you give team members permission to reach out to you and each other for help when needed.

08:02 Merv creates an environment of transparency on the project with open dialog to build trust.

09:00 Merv agrees with Tim that ethics and authenticity add to that trust you are developing on your projects.

10:48 Merv confesses that, as a logically oriented IT professional, he has had difficulty in developing the empathetic side of his character. This is an important aspect of developing your resilience as you work with your team members.

11:48 Merv encourages you to build supportive project environments for better collaboration, problem solving, and resilience.

12:33 Tim introduces the topic of dealing with prolonged stress by reminding your teams of progress being made on the project, helping them to understand that there will be times of extra effort tempered with times of normalcy.

15:39 Merv uses an example of a situation where a project on which he was working was falling behind; rather than overworking the staff to make up the time, they took a project delay to reset and rejuvenate.

17:53 Tim likes to use creative affirmations to help motivate his teams and remind them to be resilient.