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April 20, 2014

Taking one for the team

Project Management requires thick skin and controlling your emotions. You are in the spotlight all the time. How you react to a situations defines you in front of everyone.

Once upon a time years ago I was verbally assassinated and yelled at by an IT Director at a monthly Project Management Office Stoplight meeting. I was going to explain a major change in a project that postponed a phase of an implementation to a later stage in the project. Earlier in the the day before the status meeting the Senior IT Director called me and my core team to meet with him. He asked me to defer implementing a phase of the project requiring me to rework the project plan. We all agreed that this would not delay the overall completion of the project but allow focus on other areas of the project that would deliver a better solution.

The Stoplight meeting was held in a conference room and if you could not attended in person a bridge line was setup to call into. The Senior IT Director called into the bridge line and the IT Director attended the meeting in person. Once I started to explain the change in the project the IT Director just unloaded on me not giving me a chance to explain why the project is changing to deliver a better solution. She turned red with anger raising her voice at me with the attendees in the room in shock. The Senior IT Director in a calm voice asked the IT Director many times to let me speak. I just sat down and could not get a word in and just looked at her as she insulted me. She then stormed out of the room slamming the door. The Senior IT Director asked me to leave the meeting and go back to my office so he could call me. I was not shaken up but disappointed that a person that I knew for a long time would behave so unprofessional in a meeting. I received the call from the Senior IT Director and he told me "thank you for taking it for the team". I will speak with her he said. Sadly that IT Director was terminated a week later.

The project was delivered on-time and a big success.


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