Hosts Merv Jersak and Tim Jerome share personal stories and strategies for building effective relationships with executives, peers, and team members. This episode emphasizes the importance of trust, effective communication, active listening, and maintaining strong professional relationships. Through anecdotes from their professional experiences, they demonstrate how project managers can lead both upwards and downwards effectively, adapt to different organizational cultures, and establish credibility and trust with clients and team members for long-term success. The discussion concludes with a look forward to exploring personal traits that enhance team leadership in project management.

Main Take-Aways

Stories are powerful teachers. Today’s story lessons:

the value of using story with teams and management

the importance of having personal boundaries and standing up for personal principles

the rewards that often come by developing strong relationships with managers and peers

the benefits of sharing information and keeping open communication channels

the importance of building strong relationships with customer management

the value of building a strong corporate culture

the need to build trust and confidence with client executives

Show Notes

Today’s Project Managers Coffee Chat: Leadership Lessons from the Trenches – Stories of Executive Engagement

00:52 Tim begins with a story of how his manager sensed a lack of confidence in him in a particular situation, and took the time to teach him about the organization’s culture. He used story to help Tim understand, and Tim’s take-away from that moment was to use story with his teams and management as he progressed in his career as a project leader.

04:17 Merv recounts a negative experience with management as he had to stand up for his principles and push back against his manager. He eventually left that position, but it was important to maintain his own boundaries in dealing with a manager bully.

07:05 Merv then gives three short vignettes about developing strong relationships with management and peers that will bring their own rewards even years later. It was important for him to treat these individuals as he himself would have wanted to be treated by them. It’s important that you maintain those relationships.

08:50 Tim tells of a painful time when his entire organization was dissolved, and the lessons he learned by maintaining excellent communication and sharing information with his manager such that they all got through the experience successfully.

12:06 Merv’s most meaningful experiences in this regard came from cultivating relationships and trust with his customer management. He developed strong bonds of trust and confidence with those executives such that they relied upon his advice and often increased his roles and responsibilities.

16:08 Tim’s experience with client management was in a situation where the executive gave him a view into the internal culture of the organization, and how it was founded on the sharing of ideas. From that he learned an important lesson of establishing corporate culture and of how to relate to upper management.

17:19 Merv provides an example of how in a corporate culture of “saving face”, he was able to garner the trust of his customer executive such that they acted upon a difficult request of his.

18:43 Tim wraps up by summarizing the week’s podcast episodes on the importance of relationship building with management and peers.