Interview with instructor Mike Lavery

Mike Lavery, an instructor with ESI International, is a management consultant with more than 25 years experience in developing the leadership skills of cross-functional and multicultural business units in Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. He specialises in the development of project teams from their formation, teaching managers and team members the communication skills needed for each phase of their project and helping them to achieve enhanced business opportunities.

Before becoming an independent consultant in 1994, he held a key position at 3M Corporation, where he was responsible for the training and development of project team members in research and development, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and finance. He was also responsible for designing and delivering international senior management development programmes aimed at influencing business growth through humanistic leadership.

Mike was educated in the UK and holds a higher national diploma in business studies from Cornwall College and a post-graduate teaching certificate. He also holds a diploma in training and development and is a corporate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the UK. Mike is also a graduate of the Institute of Counselling in Scotland and holds fellowships from two management institutes. In 1997, he was awarded the title of Master Trainer by the Master Trainer Institute in France.

Q. What are some of the most frequently asked questions you hear in Project Leadership classrooms. And how do you typically answer them?

• What’s the point in doing FIRO B? (An instrument to measure wanted and displayed inclusion, control and affection).What’s it got to do with projects!?
  
  It has a lot to do with LEADING people through projects. It helps you to understand yourself better and to understand the priorities, sensitivities and motivations of other – which may differ from your own. It’s about respecting differences.

• All this coaching and supporting is OK but I don’t have time for it. What can I do? There are only 24 hours in a day!
  
  Seriously review your time management. If you are not available for coaching and supporting people then you are not doing your job properly. Make time for these activities.
  
  The more time you spend on coaching and supporting, the sooner your people will be able to work without supervision and you will have provided them with real responsibility and ownership. In the long term you will save an enormous amount of time by encouraging independence. Over-coaching and over-caring can result in the opposite - dependence – which we don’t want. It will rob you of even more of your valuable time. Try to get the balance right. Revisit your priorities as a project leader.

• All this leadership, management and communications stuff is just common sense. Do we really need to be taught it?
  
  True, most of it is plain common sense. We make a lot of decisions which are based on intuition rather than facts or analysis. Call it common sense if you like, that’s OK. What we want to provide you with are some models to help you when common sense needs a little help or working on intuition is not good enough. For example in dealing with conflicts concerning people, we offer five possible courses of action to help resolve the situation. Before jumping in to spontaneously resolve a conflict, take a deep breath and within a second or two you could have chosen the most appropriate way of handling a critical conflict with possible long-term negative consequences. If you only use one way of resolving conflicts then you might even be seen as being inflexible. Even ineffective. Try some of the concepts out in practice. They are useful – and a great aid to common sense.

Q. When teaching project leadership, management, and communications what is the main principle which you hope people will take away?

The main principle which I hope people take away is that they lead people in a humanistic, fair and professional manner.

Although the topic of project leadership is a "soft" skill I feel that it is one of the core factors in the success of any venture. Old fashioned table-banging, ranting and raging dictatorial behaviour might work in the short term but on projects which need to capture and embrace the skills, commitment and passion of its team members it is out of place in today’s quick reacting, customer focused business environment.

We have come a long way since Machiavelli suggested that it is better to be feared than respected. We have learned from Darwin that there is a pecking order. The Alpha Chicken is the first to get to the food and is healthy, brightly plumed and always up front. The Beta Chicken is in pretty good shape as well. But...look at the poor Omega chicken, last in the pecking order. Demotivated and hungry with a touch of a chicken inferiority complex.

Situational Leadership, which we use on our course, is a globally accepted model which illustrates that the leader’s behaviour should be flexible enough to recognise how to act in a given situation and above all bear in mind where project team members are in their project related development. With the opportunity to experience changing leadership, or "leadershift" in projects we should not be perceived as the mighty Alpha Chicken, nor should we allow any team member to feel like the seriously disadvantages Omega Chicken – the last to be informed, the last to be recognised.

The greatest challenge in trying to teach the principles of humanistic management is that people are wary of anything which invites them, gently nudges them or is seen to force them to change their behaviour. We adults all have our unique characters and personalities which have taken a lifetime to develop and have firmly anchored themselves in our hearts and minds. Along comes an ESI instructor and suggests that in managing projects it is necessary to adjust ones behaviour to help team members though every stage of the project bearing in mind who they are and what they know.

Furthermore, this ESI instructor tells them that there are very useful rules in helping people through change. For example, just telling people that they are to be strategically relocated or that their resources have been heavily axed, going away having a cup of tea and assuming that your news has been accepted and willingly acted upon, is living in a PM’s cuckoo land. What I really want people to take away, reflect upon and put into practice is the ability to modify their behaviour in order to help lead people successfully through projects.

I want them to inspire, motivate and be honest with their people. I want them to provide their team with a clear vision of what the project wants to achieve and get real commitment from every contributor. These all sound very noble, maybe intangible, goals. However, if the basic principles of leadership are not respected and practised then we will be poor project managers.

In this competitive business world we all want to be above average in order to survive and maintain our sanity and bank accounts. Successful project leadership, management and communication is not simply "being nice" to people in order to get them to perform. It is not about being soft as opposed to hard. It is definitely not about manipulating people to do what you want them to do. It is about having the sensitivity to lead humans through a structure known as a project, with efficiency, dignity and if it can be managed, passion.