STEP 1

BUILD SOME BRIDGES

Why Don’t People Tell Me Things?

You have your team. You have your project. You’ve set all the project parameters and work has started. You get to the first milestone, and that day your team tells you they’ll miss it. They have blockers, they’re working on it, they’re sure it will be done tomorrow . . . or the next day.

Now you’re frustrated. They knew the schedule. Why didn’t they give you some warning? You could have gotten them some help or at least let management know the schedule was at risk. It’s gonna look bad (and it’s gonna be bad).

Does this sound familiar?

No one likes to give bad news, so people tend to avoid bringing up problems whenever possible (especially if they think it’s going to get ugly in the telling). They’ll procrastinate and hope the problem will solve itself, they’ll hide the information, and ultimately they may try to blame someone else. People don’t tell you things if they don’t trust you. For project managers this can be deadly; we run on up-to-the-minute information. No one likes project surprises. So how do you get people to trust you?

There really are no shortcuts to gaining that critical trust from your team. All your nice Gantt charts and burndown analyses aren’t going to help with this task. You have to put in the time and establish relationships. This sounds both difficult and slippery, but there is a process to support what is admittedly the art of building relationships. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s not one and done; once you establish a relationship you have to maintain it.

You need to build relationships with people on your team one at a time and one-on-one. Relationships don’t happen in project meetings, they don’t happen in team events, and they don’t happen on demand. You’ll have to do this in person with every person on the team.

We’re not talking about BFFs-who-go-out-and-have-a-beer relationships here. You don’t have to go overboard, and you don’t have to spend nonworking time with everyone on your team (or anyone, really). You just have to create a professional relationship built on mutual respect and trust with each person on your team. It doesn’t stop with your team, either. Everyone you interact with on a project deserves attention. Your suppliers, your management, your support staff—having cordial relationships with them doesn’t just mean they think you’re a nice guy. It means that they’re willing to listen to what you have to say, they’ll put you ahead in their queue when you need something, and they’ll work with you to get things done. Your project success depends on this.

If you’ve worked with some (or all) of your team members before and have a good working relationship with each, you can just skip ahead to the care and feeding, Step 9. If, however, you haven’t worked with some or all of the people on the team or you have a poor relationship with any of them, you’ll need to get busy on the bridge building.

SUBTLE BIAS

Establishing a connection starts with understanding your own position, including what you’ve heard about someone and your basic beliefs (emotional intelligence stuff). One of the biggest barriers to building a relationship and gaining trust is subtle bias. Not the big stuff like religion, about which most people are pretty self-aware, but the small stuff like the way someone dresses or someone’s age. Before you start relationship building, be sure you do some self-examination to identify any preferences on your part, and then pay attention later to combat any bias that might get in the way of the connections you need to make.

TRY IT

Let’s try an exercise (sorry to the folks who prefer visuals).

You are managing a large commercial building project and need to engage a structural engineer, a landscape architect, an archaeologist, and a construction manager. You have two candidates for each position sitting in your waiting room, and you haven’t seen the résumés (they were screened by the Human Resources Department). Who do you pick?

Structural Engineer Candidates

Landscape Architect Candidates

Archaeologist Candidates

Construction Manager Candidates

Who did you pick? I asked you to pick based on appearance because most people count on first impressions more than you’d think, and this first impression based on appearance can carry through to deciding who is the best fit for your team. Turn the page for the choices most people make (in my experience presenting this information).

ANSWER

• Structural Engineer: Most people choose Carlos (B) over Carolina (A). In their minds, he looks the part and they assume he has more experience.

• Landscape Architect: Most people pick Joan (C) over John (D), since she seems to be quite experienced with plants.

• Archaeologist: Most people pick candidate Bob (F) over Brandie (E). He definitely looks the part of an archaeologist; they can just picture him on a dig.

• Construction Manager: Choice of Harry (G) or Hattie (H) tend to be evenly divided, according to people’s prior experience with project managers.

Now let’s try it again with some résumé and background information.

Structural Engineer Candidates

Landscape Architect Candidates

Archaeologist Candidates

Construction Manager Candidates

Did you change any of your choices based on this information? Often people don’t ask detailed questions in interviews because they’re already leaning toward one candidate based on appearance, demeanor, or assumptions.

ANSWER

With this full knowledge I would choose the following:

• Structural Engineer: Carolina (A). I want the person with large-structure experience who is known in the industry. Carlos’s (B) hands-on experience is good, but age isn’t a predictor of performance (in either direction; I work in tech and the age bias there is toward younger people), and John doesn’t have the large-structure experience.

• Landscape Architect: John (D). Joan (C) might be called in for another role, but for a landscape architect I need to have a view of the final product.

• Archaeologist: Brandie (D) has the skills and background I need. Bob (F) is a newbie and isn’t likely to be able to do the work I need, even if he does look like the movie rendition of an archaeologist.

• Construction Manager: Harry (G) and Hattie (H) are a toss-up for me; it would depend on the situation, the rest of the team, and the soft skills (we’ll get to all that in a later step).

So what influences those initial choices? Clothing, gender, and age can all be subtle biases if we aren’t looking for them. The bias is not necessarily generic but can be based on expectations or previous experience. We have an idea of how the person filling this role should look.

Many people are influenced by the suit John (Landscape Architect) is wearing, as well as his age, equating experience with plants with the ability to imagine and present a consolidated vision.

Many people head right for Bob, the guy who looks like an older Indiana Jones. That’s the general expectation for an archaeologist, the vision we have in our minds.

In a position like the one I’m staffing, there’s often a gender bias toward men when considering Harry and Hattie, candidates for construction manager. The hardhat seems to be an influencing factor as well.

ESTABLISHING A RELATIONSHIP

If you haven’t worked with a team member before, you need to start your relationship from scratch. That means that anything you’ve heard about how easy or difficult the person is to work with can’t color your approach. You really don’t have any idea of circumstances that might have made someone else form an opinion of a team member—and remember, you’re good at this. Even if someone else had a bad experience, you’ll put in the time to have a good one. It’s always good to be informed (we are, after all, collectors, analysts, and disseminators of information), but don’t prejudge.

There are a number of methods of building a relationship, which I’ll cover in general descending order of effectiveness:

1. Stop by

If the person is anywhere within easy reach, stop by her desk or work area. Don’t make her come to you. When you stop by be sure it isn’t always for something project related. If you only bring tasks and questions people are going to run when they see you coming. Take a walk to the coffee machine, ask how her weekend went, ask what you might be able to do to help her. Let the person know you’re there to help and to run interference to get obstacles out of her way. Find something you have in common. Do this regularly—not on a schedule (that becomes obvious pretty quickly and seems disingenuous), but when you’re in the area or when you haven’t talked one-on-one for a while. Don’t use up a whole lot of her time; just make contact and start (or work on) the relationship.

One caveat to this is that if every time you stop by you see the person’s shoulders start creeping up to their ears, stopping by (at least at first) is not going to work well, or you’ve started with the wrong topic. Some people just cringe at interruptions or informal person-to-person communication. Set up a meeting instead.

2. Schedule meetings

If stopping by doesn’t work, you can rely on regular meetings. Even if stopping by works well, meetings are an excellent forum for maintaining your relationship.

I usually schedule a one-on-one meeting with each person on my team either weekly or every two weeks. It can be as short as half an hour. Yes, I know this sounds insane and like a huge time sink, but it pays off. This is not a meeting where I grill people or ask them to recite status. It’s their time. I don’t let them cancel a meeting because they have nothing to talk about. I have yet to have a regular meeting with anyone on my team when there really wasn’t anything on his mind. When you do this, keep a list of leading questions so that if the person doesn’t come in with topics, you’re not sitting in silence (it’s not a police interrogation after all). Ask how he’s feeling about the project or his work. Ask if anyone or anything is getting in his way. That will usually break the ice, and things that are on someone’s mind come up in the conversation.

Remember not to panic or react negatively in this meeting. If you need to call someone on the carpet for something, schedule a different meeting. This one is all about building and maintaining trust. You will get a huge amount of information from each person. You’ll be able to help find solutions to problems. Perhaps most importantly you’ll be able to connect the dots— see if there are patterns in what the team members are telling you, see where one team member might be able to help another, and get a good view of the team’s dynamics.

These meetings are a good way to get started, although establishing a connection by stopping by is usually a better first contact—it makes the meetings a bit less overwhelming or scary (or annoying) for the team members. They’re an excellent way to maintain the relationship.

3. Videoconference

If you’re located in the same area as the team member, videoconferencing is silly, but it’s really valuable if you’re trying to establish and maintain a relationship with someone in another location. If possible, it’s really best to visit the other location at the beginning of a project for many reasons, not the least of which is that it’s much easier to establish relationships in person. While you’re there you can spend time informally with team members during dinners, outings, etc.

For sustaining the relationship, though, videoconferencing on a regular basis is really helpful. It helps to have visual cues (is she frowning when she’s telling you something?) and to keep you from being just a voice on the phone.

4. Make calls (VOIP or phone, there’s no difference)

Making calls usually doesn’t make sense if you’re in the same general physical location, but for distributed teams, calls will help maintain the relationship. (The Vice President of Engineering at one company I worked for had a theory that the half-life of face-to-face contact is six months. I’ve found that generally true, so be sure to supplement the calls at least with video occasionally.) During a voice call you’ll have to listen for pauses in odd places, tone of voice, and other auditory cues. Have those calls regularly, and run them the same way as the face-to-face meetings.

5. Use Instant Messaging

Instant Messaging (Skype, Slack, etc.) is pretty low on the totem pole of useful relationship management and useless for initially establishing a relationship, but it does have the benefit of being reasonably two way. It’s a good supplement for other methods because it’s quick and you can do it quite often without disturbing anyone. Make full use of emoticons and be sure to follow up with regular meetings.

6. Send email

Email is worse than useless for establishing and maintaining relationships. It’s one-way communication, open to interpretation, and without any way to read immediate reaction. Be very cautious with email in general for all these reasons.

True Story I worked on a big, multiyear project with a team located primarily in the United States but with an integrated outsourced team in Romania. My first month or two was really rocky, to the point where the Romanian project manager didn’t want to work with me. I went there (for a single day!), spent the whole day with her, shared meals (see Step 9), met the rest of the team, and really established an excellent relationship. One day was all it took for us to get comfortable. We worked together for years and still keep in touch.

REPAIRING A RELATIONSHIP

If you’ve had a rocky time with someone on your team during previous projects, you’ll have to undo that damage before you can establish a better relationship. Fixing relationships that went off the rails in previous projects is a top priority for many reasons, not the least of which is that the person on the other end of the relationship is likely to talk to other team members about how hard you can be to work with. If that happens, you’ll have a lot of untangling to do, so best to get started fixing the problem immediately.

The first thing to do is a postmortem (okay, in politically correct terms, a “retrospective”) on your previous dealings with this team member. (That is, on your own, take a look at how things went before.) What are the root causes of the issues? What went well in the course of the project? What can you improve and how? You really need to focus on yourself and not the other person. You can’t control another person’s behavior, but you can control your own reactions. Walking into a conciliatory meeting armed with how the other person can change is not going to get you into a better relationship. Generally, admitting to any issues you caused (and there are going to be some, if only in the way you reacted to a situation or discussion) opens up the conversation on how to work better together.

Armed with this self-analysis, meet with the team member. Start with an acknowledgment that your previous relationship could have been better. Talk about the positives: where and how you thought the two of you connected or worked well together. Then talk about what you think you can do (right out of your self-review) to make it better this time around. Recognize what this person does well—technical skills, soft skills, whatever it is. Remember that everyone is good at something; it’s your job to figure out what that something is. (I’ll have more about this in a later step and another context, but it’s also useful for building relationships.) Ask for the other person’s opinion and really listen.

When you start with what went well, it puts the entire discussion on a different trajectory. When you talk about what you yourself can do better, it disarms defensiveness.

Find some common ground. Remember, you’re not trying to be best friends. You’re trying to establish and maintain a good, cordial, productive working relationship. We don’t always like everyone we work with, but we’re grownups and can certainly get along with everyone.

MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS

So now you have a good working relationship with every member of your team. How do you keep it up?

We’ve talked about one-on-one meetings. Keep those regular meetings with every team member. Make the meetings that person’s time, and don’t cancel the meetings because there’s nothing to talk about.

Touch base with people regularly. Stop by briefly or say hello in the hallway and ask how things are going and if the team member needs anything from you. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it keeps you in the loop between meetings. You can do the same via Instant Messaging with team members in other locations.

Talk about things other than work. Avoid hot topics (politics and religion, as always) and don’t get too personal, but even a quick exchange about the weather can keep communications more relaxed.

Use all the communication channels at your disposal to be sure you check in with your team members.

Establishing trust is important, but trust is a two-way street. While your team members are learning to trust you, you need to be able to trust them as well. Part of this is up to them—they have to actually be trustworthy. A lot of it is under your control, though. Unless it will torpedo the project, start from a position of trust. Don’t make a team member justify every estimate or statement; trust him to do the job he was hired (or volunteered) to do. Be approachable; if there’s a problem, you want people to come to you with it right away, not fear for their job if they have an issue. If a team member does something that seems to violate the trust, do your best to figure out why it happened. (If someone misses dates, she could be overly optimistic, and you will need to add contingency and get her some help with estimating. If someone has other assignments on her plate, you need to know what they are and get some relative priorities so the estimates are more accurate or so you can petition for adjustment of the priorities.)

Finally, don’t be too quick to offer solutions. As project managers, we spend a lot of time figuring out how to solve problems or how to do things better, but sometimes people are coming to you just to talk or vent. Before you interrupt with how someone might solve a problem or make a situation better, ask if the person wants advice or just wants to let you know what’s going on.

A HIERARCHY OF RELATIONSHIPS

Some teams are really too big for you to be able to establish a relationship with every team member (I’ve had 300-member teams, for example, spread across four locations in three countries). In a very large team you probably just want to try to recognize the names of all the team members and know what group they’re working in.

For this kind of project, you generally have a group of team leads or managers that you work with. Be sure to establish a relationship with each member of this core team in the usual way.

One of the difficulties with a large team like this is that the information you get from your core team is only as good as the information they get from their own teams, no matter how strong your relationship with the core team members. That means you want these core team members to establish the same kind of trust with their own teams that you’ve created with them. The way they do that may vary from culture to culture, although the channels are the same.

Encourage those relationships by asking leading questions, questions your core team members will only be able to answer if they’re working well with their own teams. Questions like “How’s your team feeling about the schedule?” and “What blockers are your people running into?” and “What’s the stress level like on your team?” as well as the usual questions about risk, schedule, and progress will encourage them to build relationships with their own teams. Never underestimate the impact of leading by example. If you work hard at establishing and maintaining relationships with the core team, you’ll demonstrate both the value and the methods for paying it forward.

NOT JUST FOR TEAMS

Now that you know how to build and maintain relationships with the individuals on your team it’s time to broaden your view.

Of course, your team is the most important set of people with whom you need good working relationships, but there are other people who can make or break your project. Some of these people are specific to projects you’re working on; others are going to pop up again and again in different projects you take on. Both are important.

Take some time to identify those key people outside your team. If you’re running a software project, that might include people from a Database Administration or Operations group, for example. Be sure you’ve got the right person. The right person might be the one who gives (and enforces) instructions and assignments, but that’s not always the case. Your key contacts are the people who can get things done for you, either because they’re experts, because they’re at the right place in the chain of command, or because they’re well respected and well liked among their peers. After you’ve identified these key contacts, put them on your relationship list and start building. You’re going to need to work a little harder both to build the relationship in the first place and then to maintain it because you often won’t have daily interactions with these key contacts and probably won’t have regular meetings with them. Take a look at Step 9 and see if you can use some food to enhance the relationship (take them to lunch or out to coffee). We all get busy and can let time slip away from us, so think about setting some reminders on your calendar to touch base with each of your key contacts. That way you’re not only reaching out when you need something from them. Be sure to reciprocate as well—help your key contacts out whenever you can.

TRY IT

You run an operations group. You rotate technical experts through your support and operations departments for assistance as on-call support (when there’s an issue, there’s an expert to call in for advice and support).

You’ve assigned one of your best people to work a weekend shift as that next line of defense. He’s gotten you out of numerous jams in the past and you trust him completely based on that track record.

During that weekend shift there’s a critical system problem. The operations support team calls your expert. He doesn’t answer or get back to the team for four hours. During that period of time the team calls you for help. In those hours you frantically look for someone available right now who can help. The recovery is botched but eventually completed, causing you to miss your service-level commitment.

You are not happy. How do you respond?

PART 2

What you didn’t know, but would have if you’d established a relationship and the associated trust, is that your expert has a child who recently developed a chronic and serious medical condition. He had to take his child to the emergency room during the shift. (Like many things that affect your project’s success, this isn’t something you’d think—or want—to ask. The trust has to be there for the person to volunteer the information.)

What might you have done differently if you had known?

(Some possible actions: assigned him as a backup only, or assigned a backup to him in case he wasn’t available, or not assigned him at all to off-shift work until the medical issue is resolved.)

As you can see from “Part 2,” maintaining a relationship has immediate and important benefits. It’s always worth the effort.