In my many years of executive coaching experience I have met few leaders who really know how others truly perceive them. Staff is often reluctant to give leaders with hire/fire authority tough feedback. Additionally, few leaders have been given a confidential 360-feedback review. Sadly, leaders with the greatest EQ challenges are frequently those who have the greatest blind spots. Some find out after it’s too late.

Your EQ is essentially hard wired into the brain in early childhood. Its what helps or hinders you in being interpersonally effective in challenging, stressful or conflict workplace scenarios. If you are a leader you simply can’t afford not to pay attention to growing your skills in this arena. If others don’t trust you or you fail to persuade with your communication style you won’t last long in a leadership role.

EQ Career tip #1. Take my EQ assessment and find out your EQ strengths and challenges. I thoroughly researched the most popular EQ tools/tests available and have great faith in the profile that I have used successfully with hundreds of clients. I am offering 10% off through Feb 29th on this popular, practical and reliable tool.

EQ Career tip #2. Ask those around you to share impact/feedback with you. Don’t make assumptions about how others perceive you.

The good news is that EQ can be improved!! EQ is my coaching sweet spot. I know the formula to help you improve what matters most to your career success. It starts with a phone call—invest in yourself and call or email me today!

Call me to discuss: 425 736 5691(cell) or 360 682 5807 (office)
or email: pinelakemo@comcast.net

Referrals are greatly appreciated!! Please pass my practical tips on to any others you think would benefit.

Powerful. In my work as a career coach, my intention is to help my clients identify their heart calling and proactively create that life. We spend much of our lives working. For most adults, a satisfying life includes work that engages and allows us to bring the best of ourselves to achieve meaningful goals. For many professionals, it can be difficult to figure out this life equation.

Follow Your Heart tip #1. Find a quiet place and start journaling your own voice. Many of us have been leading a life marching to the drum of other’s voices. When is the last time you heard YOUR voice? Can you recognize your voice when you hear it?

Follow Your Heart tip #2. Identify your talents and gifts. Create a list of what you believe are your innate strengths.

If you (or someone you know) is in career transition or contemplating a career move —call me. Unlike many coaches I don’t make you sign up for a program. My coaching philosophy is simple. I meet clients where they are at –and no two are alike. I come from a genuine intention to understand and help my clients in any way that I can which includes support, asking powerful questions and providing a safe relationship to work through difficult challenges as a third party objective thinking partner. I am an accountability partner with continued focus towards your goals. I help clients identify how to “get out of their own way” and develop new effective behaviors vs. being stuck in old harmful patterns.

Contact Info: 425 736 5691(cell) or 360 682 5807 (office) or pinelakemo@comcast.net

Referrals are greatly appreciated Please pass this email on to any others you think would benefit from my practical Workplace Coach tips.

What makes for a bad boss?  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but my top ten list would include any of the following:

1. Fails to give credit where it is due or plays favorites
2. Fails to either promote/support direct reports with higher ups (doesn’t have the team’s backs)
3. Fails to offer structure, direction and “order” for the team (clarifying expectations or what success looks like with work tasks)
4. Decision making averse or wishy washy (often combined with #3 above)
5. Fails to demonstrate a caring heart, sensitivity, compassion and attitude (no positive feedback, encouragement etc)
6. Reacts negatively to critical feedback or bad news (i.e. retaliates, gets defensive, blaming or withdrawn)
7. Rules with an iron fist (i.e. punitive, demeaning, condescending, passive aggressive or back biting)
8. Micromanages (i.e. looking over shoulders, “control freak”, nit picks, can’t delegate)
9. Isn’t open to influence
10. Doesn’t support/coach or help direct reports advance, improve or develop

Here are this week’s coaching tips towards improving if you are a boss:

• Demonstrate warmth with a smile or kind word.  Greet your people like you are glad to see them in the morning! Offer them something to drink when they come to your office.   Simply put-the golden rule.
• Don’t be stingy with credit! Be generous with praise, recognition, Atta boys and thank you’s.  The research is clear on this- humans are motivated by recognition and appreciation.  Pay attention to what your people are doing well and let them know that a) you notice and b) appreciate. Good behavior unnoticed may not be continued.

• Deliver constructive feedback regularly –not just once a year during a performance review!  Accurately describe and communicate what behaviors you want continued and those you want changed or extinguished.  It’s your job to make expectations clear for your employees.

• Choose your words carefully. Loaded words that sting with sarcasm (always a double message) should be avoided. One word or action from a boss has the potential to make or break an employee’s day—this is particularly so with young or new employees.  They are often starving for positive recognition and many are anxious to know how you are judging their work.

• Noticing your team has a bad attitude?  Look first to see that their attitude isn’t merely a reflection of yours. Boss moodiness is catchy and perpetual boss negativity can be deadly to morale. How you respond to a problem is a choice. Challenge yourself to deliver messages in a way that inspires vs. deflates. The most admired bosses inspire unity and loyalty with hope, optimism and workable solutions. Leaders have tremendous influence on the emotional fields of workplaces and their people. Positive emotions and words from a boss are fuel to increase morale and performance. Generosity of spirit, support and acknowledgement is also catchy.  When people see the boss modeling it, they follow suit.  Which would you rather have perpetuated in your workplace?

• Be mindful about how you respond to someone bringing you bad news or critical/challenging feedback.  People aren’t likely to be truth tellers a second time if they got shot down the first time. Make it safe for your people to communicate their concerns to you.

• Earn respect and trust with these fundamentals: be transparent (explain decision making), acknowledge your own limitations (its ok to say “I don’t know the answer”), be authentic, don’t play favorites, get input from your people and maybe most importantly model the behavior you want from your people.

In my experience, most of those perceived as being a “bad” boss aren’t intentional about treating people poorly.  More often it’s a lack of awareness coupled with a need for management/leadership skill development (often in the emotional intelligence arena).  The good news is these are learnable skills (I teach/coach them daily).

Companies pay a high price when they lose talent under those who lack leadership skill. Bringing in a professional coach to help an otherwise valued manager learn better boss behaviors can be a solid business investment.

Take a look at Dan Pink’s popular 18 minute internet video from the TED conference in Oxford.  His science of motivation makes a case for how business has it all wrong when it comes to incentives.  I found it fascinating, intuitive and congruent with what I have experienced for many years as an executive coach.  What really motivates talented, smart workers are factors including autonomy, mastery, and purpose (not more money). Pink cites over four decades of scientific studies enlightening us that the carrot and stick approach can actually significantly reduce the ability of workers to produce creative solutions to problems.  His formula for work satisfaction and motivation is to connect our human need to direct our lives, to learn and create and to improve our world and ourselves.

What motivates us (once our basic survival needs are met) is the ability to grow and realize our fullest potential. Wise leaders create workplace environments and cultures that support autonomy, creativity and bringing the best of their human talent to meet company goals. Google reports that 50% of their successful products originate from employee’s 20% “innovation time”—Google employees devote 20% of their work time (one day), creatively innovating on projects of their choosing.

Additionally, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi helps us comprehend motivation with his human state of “flow” theory.  Flow is a human state of high engagement and satisfaction that occurs when we bring the best of ourselves forward to meet a challenging task or goal.   If an employee has a high degree of skill and ability to do something with low challenge, they are typically apathetic or bored.  Conversely, if an employee is given a highly challenging task or role with little skill, ability or talent to succeed-they will likely be in a state of anxiety, worry or stress.  Neither is conducive to performance.

Flow is what happens when we have a high degree of challenge (with a clear goal) while we also have a high capability of skills, experience and talent to succeed with that goal.  Akin to an athlete being in the “zone”, being in flow requires three conditions:  1) an activity with a clear set of goals, 2) the confidence that one is capable of doing the task at hand and 3) clear and immediate feedback.

Given all this theory, here are my coaching tips for how to motivate your employees:

• Provide your people clear goals and expectations.  Identify what success looks like.  Make sure that before assigning tasks and roles that you are reasonably confident the individual has both the competence and the commitment to succeed.  Then keep providing ongoing clear feedback.    Feedback should be specific to behavior not the person or their intentions.
• Identify your employee’s natural gifts and talents.  For the price of a book, you can utilize the Strength finder 2.0 assessment.  This easy to use and inexpensive internet based tool can help participants identify their top 5 strengths.  Also, ask your employees how they think they can bring their best potential to the needs of the business?
• Give people a sense of purpose.  Identify and communicate how their job matters to larger organizational or business goals.  People want to be a part of something that is bigger than they are. Help them identify their sense of “purpose” with the work they do.
• Delegate more and give competent committed workers autonomy. People want to have control over their work.   I have never met a client who enjoyed being micromanaged!  When I hear talent looking for an exit strategy, its often due to their feeling they have no autonomy in the job or their talents and strengths are being underutilized
• Offer employees continuing educational training opportunities.  Mastery motivates! People want to get better at what they do.   And the good news is once they do, they will perform at a higher level for your business.  It’s a win win.
• Praise and promote.  Say thank you, recognize good work and catch people doing something well.   Promote from within.  Its sound strategy.  Dedicated employees who have already proved their value deserve more autonomy and having a culture of promoting from within motivates other employees.

A workplace team stuck in conflict, silence or frustration often lacks effective leadership.   Effective leaders know how to facilitate a team in conflict towards healthy safe debate and new solutions that allow a team move forward. Without these skills, teams often waste their valuable human talent and potential.   Team members become disengaged and morale plummets. In the worse cases, organizations lose talented performers. Many HR exit interviews reveal the real reason for a talented employee leaving is their frustration with a boss’s lack of leadership and team building ability.

The good news — help is available.  There are professional team coaches and meeting facilitators that can bring in skills and tools to help people work together more creatively and productively.

A facilitator’s role is to improve the way the team identifies challenges, solves complex problems and moves forward with a successful action plan. The best facilitators can help meetings run more effectively so teams can accomplish more with less work hours.   They develop customized exercises to increase safety and team skills to make dialogue and honest candid feedback possible.

Diversity of opinions, perspectives and experiences combine to make a team powerful.  Complex team workplace problems are often best resolved with more than one head in the game. Good facilitators help team’s tackle difficult conversations in a way that increases trust and performance.  They engage everyone so that all team members have an opportunity to have their input considered.  Team meetings that are facilitated by professionals are rarely boring or frustrating.

Professional facilitator’s or team coaches can help your team:

• End meetings with actionable items and clear decisions
• Increase participation, dialogue, engagement and accountability
• Work through conflict effectively
• Surface any “elephants in the room”
• Test assumptions
• Drive to solutions vs. getting stuck with whining and blaming
• Clarify roles, task expectations and goals/objectives

Outside facilitators (meaning they are hired from outside the organization) can be effective because they are impartial and neutral without internal political agendas that are often perceived when using someone on the “inside”.   Outside facilitators have no decision-making power or authority over the team.  They do not control or dominate but provide opportunities as a “servant” to the team.  Their goal is often to empower and help unleash a team’s collective energy and talent.

Good facilitators must remain grounded and have enough personal authority to stay centered in the heat of conflict.  To be effective, they also require education and tools in group dynamics and have the skills necessary to foster healthy dialogue and help a team move from destructive patterns to healthy ones.  Yes, these are skills are worth investing in!

What do facilitators do?

• Bring in structure for effective team process — activities and tools to enhance participation, engagement and high performance.
• Know how to intervene to help a team develop new ways of communication so people can listen and understand each other’s viewpoints and participate in healthy debate
• Help teams develop their own ground rules to address accountability, attendance, how they handle conflict etc.
• Help keep meetings and teams on track, dealing with “disruptive” behaviors.
• They have tools to guide teams through solid planning, decision- making, and problem solving, idea generation and actions.
• Bring safety to a team where emotions are running high

Like most leadership skills, facilitation skills are learned through education, training, practice, feedback, observation and best practice coaching.  They are invaluable to any leader seeking to inspire and influence their workplace teams.

Few organizations can afford a mass exodus of talent.  Yet here is a brief list of common complaints I hear daily as a coach:  resentment about being micromanaged by a “toxic” boss, feeling under-appreciated and/or undervalued, weighted down by too much work, too few resources, a lack of autonomy and a mountain of processes/minutia that suck the life out of them!

Employee engagement matters greatly to performance and organizational success. One study by the Corporate Leadership Council found an increase in employee engagement can generate an increase of 20% in performance and an 87% reduction in employees’ probability of departure.   The same study looked at the top drivers to employee engagement and determined the most important is a connection between the employees’ job and organizational strategy and an understanding (by the employee) of how important their job is to organizational success. Other top drivers were manager characteristics (as well as cultural traits) chiefly, good internal communication, a reputation of integrity, and a culture of innovation.

Most workers leave bad bosses not “bad” companies. Workers who like their boss and who feel their boss cares about them are more productive and less likely to fly the coop.   We go the extra mile for bosses who we feel appreciate us and demonstrate respect for us.

My coach’s tips for increasing employee engagement:

• Conduct an employee survey.  Take the temperature of the organization and determine how they feel about morale, culture and management.  Get input about what they would change.   One suggested survey resource– the Gallup 12 question engagement survey.
• Assess the strengths and career aspirations of your people.  Ask them what they do best—what are they doing when they are in the “zone” or in flow.  Find out how they think they can best contribute to the team or business. Help design their day-to-day work to maximize their potential to deliver their best.
• Assess whether or not your processes/systems are helping or hindering your people’s success and performance.  Ask them what they would change and how they would change it.  Often manager’s get too far from the action to know what is working or not from the vantage of those on the front lines.  Ask them!
• Delegate and “coach” vs. micromanage. No one likes having someone look over his or her shoulder all day!  Talented, committed people want (and deserve) autonomy and decision making authority.  If they aren’t growing, improving and allowed to captain some of their own ship, odds are they will bail as soon as they have an opportunity.
• Appreciate and recognize your people when they deliver for you.  Reinforce what you want done again. Call them, send an email or better yet, go shake their hand, look them in the eye and say thank you.  Sadly, most American workers report very low levels of workplace recognition (one Gallup survey reported 60% of workers saying they receive no praise or recognition in their workplaces!)   If the only time your workers hear from you is when they do something wrong—you qualify as a bad boss.
• Set clear goals and expectations.  Define what success looks like when delegating projects.
• Give and receive constructive specific feedback.  Offer helpful feedback regularly.  Most people want to know how they are doing and if they are behaving in a way that is problematic for the business or coworkers.  This gives them an opportunity to change and improve. In turn, bosses need to go out of their way to create safe conditions for their people to give them reciprocal feedback (this means the boss should NOT get reactive or defensive when they do!). Ask your people what they want more of or less of from you.
• Involve your people in creating a culture of innovation.  Facilitate brain storming sessions and opportunities for them to contribute to improved ways of delivering for customers/clients.

We pay a high price in business when tough subjects are avoided.  Fearful employees walking around on eggshells are typically disengaged, unmotivated, and dissatisfied.  Games of masquerade and pretending all is well prevail. Because tough issues are avoided– collaboration, improved communication, relationships and team productivity go by the wayside.  Frankly, in my career coaching experience, most talented or high performing individuals will soon seek greener pastures in this environment.

As a team coach and facilitator, I try to help foster “dialogue” to transform this unhealthy dynamic. Simply put, dialogue is a conversational style that can dissolve barriers and fosters collaboration, trust, accountability and partnership.  Dialogue is possible when there is trust, mutual respect and a commitment to inquiry and understanding.  Dialogue can be a critical tool in workplaces to promote team learning and finding “shared meaning” even in conflict and disagreement.

Bringing in a skilled “outside” third party objective coach and/or facilitator can help foster dialogue and bring safety and skills to your workplace.  They can help:

• To create safety for participants to surface the “elephants in the room”.  Skilled facilitators can create conditions where people feel safe to speak truth.  Whenever there are issues/topics that team’s avoid I find blocked creativity, collaboration and learning.  Avoidance isn’t a strategy.  In my experience avoidance only makes things worse.  The issues don’t go away they just bubble up in unhealthy ways like water cooler backbiting, rumors, and pent up frustration that eventually “blows” and good people leaving.
• Teach your team healthy interpersonal skills like active listening.  Teams can get mired in conflict without listening.  Real listening with an intention to understand one another vs. debate or out argue one another is rare.  Listening doesn’t just happen magically.  Most people need to be taught listening skills due to the human tendency of justifying and defending vs. truly trying to understand the other’s perspective.  Listening is critical for a healthy workplace and to be able to get real with one another.
• To promote inquiry through asking the right questions and promoting a climate of curiosity.  Skilled coaches and facilitators know the right questions to ask (often the “unasked” questions) to promote balanced participation and reveal the thinking behind positions or ideas.  Facilitators can help surface and make assumptions visible for all while challenging participants to suspend judgment while they explore the issue. Learning can then happen through inquiry, reflection and dialogue leaving a team stronger and better able to tackle future tough subjects.
• Develop team norms to continue fostering learning, dialogue and shared meaning when tacking difficult issues and challenges.  Few workplace teams spend enough time figuring out how to work together more creatively and collaboratively.  They get sucked into the myth that workplace meetings should be “task” focused.  High performing teams spend as much time on task as they do fostering effective communication and teamwork.

An outside expert facilitator can help your team develop better group process and meeting ground rules to foster accountability and healthy productive meetings.  Another benefit—meetings with skilled facilitators are rarely boring as usually there is healthy debate and open exchange of ideas and feedback!   It’s not uncommon for me to hear participants describe well-facilitated meetings as “the best we ever had”.

I view contracting as a continuous process in any business interaction involving an interaction/transaction between people.  Continuous is an important distinction as many think of contracting as something you do only in the beginning of a business transaction.   To my way of thinking, anytime an employee or colleague is taking on a task for you, the principles behind contracting apply.

I had an experience with a vendor this week that offers us a “best practice”-contracting contracting example. I called a well-known software provider for technical support this week (I was in “pain” making the call).  From the moment a voice answered (albeit a recorded one), they were “contracting” by setting clear expectations, “your call will be answered in three minutes or less”.  From the consumer perspective this is better than being put on what feels like terminal hold.  I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I wouldn’t be waiting all day for live help.

The first live voice that came on the line began by setting expectations and clarifying their “role” with me on the call, “I am here to first identify/assess your problem and determine who best in our system can help you…” From there she brought onto the line an expert in my “trouble” area.  This software technician began by establishing expectations, explaining how much help he could provide (something along the lines of you get two calls with this product for up to x amount of minutes per use.)  When he realized that my problem was going to require more time than allotted, he re-negotiated with me after hearing my distress, telling me since it was my first call into their system on a new product, he would take the extra time required to help me.  This is important because had he not fixed my problem, I would have returned my product, as my customer expectation was it should work! After he finished walking me through step by step his solution to “fix” my problem, he asked if he had resolved my problem to my satisfaction, which gave me a final opportunity to identify and communicate any  “missed” expectations.

Most failures in business are more failures in managing expectations than they are poor performance.  The number one way to lose trust with customers, workplace colleagues or your boss is to not meet expectations.  Defining realistic expectations up front can save you a lot of trouble, heartache and lost business on the back end.

From my coach’s perspective, most interpersonal workplace or business conflict is a result of missed or unclear expectations and can often be resolved with a return to “contracting” to re-negotiate or re-clarifying expectations when things go off course (preferably while they are still small).

My coach’s tips for contracting:

• Think of sharing expectations as simply communicating what you want to have happen specifically in a future situation.  Whenever you are giving a task to an employee or colleague, think of it as a contracting situation.
• Don’t assume expectations are naturally shared or are clear.  Take the time to clarify standards and success criteria up front. What does success look like and how will we measure it? Don’t assume that you agree on definition of words like “adequate” or “quality performance”.  The same words often mean different things to different people.  Spell it out—define your standards for words like clean.
• Paraphrase or summarize when trying to understand expectations, “This is my understanding of your expectations of me on this project…”
• Specify desired outcomes (quantify where possible)—who will do what by when and at what cost.   Identify schedule and deliverables.
• Define roles—“My role in the project will be to…”  “Your role in this project will be to…”   Identify who has decision -making authority and what level of support, and communication (frequency and form: face to face meetings/email/text/reports etc) will be needed.
• Manage meeting expectations by contracting at the beginning of the meeting around how much time we have agreed to meet, the meeting objectives and/or agenda etc.
• Lastly, ask if anything is unclear or confusing before walking away.

So what is coaching?  Coaching is a collaborative partnership centered on achieving goals.  The primary objective of coaching is to develop the person being coached. In a nutshell, it is a way of leading that supports, champions, guides and challenges an individual to maximize their potential and performance.  Coaching can be applied to a wide variety of management situations—identifying strengths and challenges, motivating, delegating, relationship/team building, providing feedback, resolving every day workplace challenges, helping employees become more self aware and change problematic behaviors or seize opportunities to grow and improve.

There are key differences between the old style autocratic or “boss” way of managing people and coaching.  Whereas the old school boss tended to get things done by lecturing, directing and telling, today’s boss who acts as a “coach” asks powerful questions, makes effective requests, listens/observes well, is perceptive and offers constructive effective feedback to help someone learn and develop.

The best leaders in workplaces have learned how to empower and motivate their people vs. try to control them.  One reason– today’s younger workforce (comprised of Gen Y/Millenials) is quite different than past generations (vets and baby boomers).  They have different expectations of their leaders and workplaces.  Generally, to motivate today’s younger worker requires more personal attention, recognition and tolerance on the part of management.

The great challenge for many organizations is how to train their managers to utilize coaching skills.  People aren’t born with innate coaching skills and frankly few business schools are focused on teaching the skills required to be an effective coach.

Coaching techniques and competencies are very different than those required of more “old style” management and supervision. As a result, many of today’s older managers are challenged having to “unlearn” past lessons and techniques that are no longer effective in today’s workplace.

Simply asking your managers to “coach” employees won’t equate to success. Learning how to coach is akin to learning a new language.  There is an art to coaching.   To develop someone’s ability to coach requires an investment in training/coaching to master new behaviors.  Developing expertise (as with most skills) will almost always require ongoing feedback and modeling by someone with more advanced skills. One of the best ways to develop coaches is to have the up-and-coming coach be coached by a professional coach with exemplary coaching skills.

Coaching is a relationship centered on helping the “coachee” realize their aspirations and goals. Trust, respect and rapport are critical foundations to a solid coaching relationship.  Frankly, some managers have great challenges in the interpersonal and emotional intelligence arena. Though it is possible to learn behaviors that lead to increased trust—this endeavor isn’t easy (the best results typically come when a professional coach who specializes in this arena is brought in).

When leaders are trusted and respected, employees under them will respond to their feedback more effectively.  The best coaches are patient, perceptive, self aware, reflective, open, supportive, keen observers and good listeners.  They are adept at giving valuable feedback that doesn’t generate defensiveness and are interpersonally effective. They help their employees by uncovering their blind spots and challenging limiting beliefs. Most of effective coaching this takes place through observation, assessment, dialogue, inquiry and conversations.

Tips to develop a coaching style:

• Listen and observe well.  Note how someone learns best (see previous column on learning styles) and what their strengths are.
• Delegate more and direct less (once you have assessed the employee has the skills required to do the task and has the necessary commitment).  Always make clear what the parameters are when delegating (i.e. time, budget and other resources).
• Use errors as learning opportunities.
• Help your people learn to solve problems themselves vs. doing it for them.

Effective project management equates to many factors.  The basics are good planning, risk management, organizing and managing resources. Being able to establish and manage realistic expectations for actionable follow through, clear communications and end results often equate to “best practice.” The most effective project managers (PMs) are skilled not only in making the complex simple but being able to communicate the complex in a way that is both understandable and actionable. The best can anticipate the unforeseen including potential roadblocks and obstacles. Project managers that are worth their weight in gold are those with strong problem solving, negotiation, attention to detail, adaptability and interpersonal skills that equate to successful projects and positive customer relations.

To believe every item in a complex project will flow flawlessly isn’t realistic.  Given that, here are my coaching tips to help when the unexpected happens (and it will!):

• Learn from mistakes (vs. assigning blame elsewhere).  A natural reaction of many project managers is to simply point a finger at either a team member or customer when things go wrong.  This often negatively impacts the relationship (and future business). Instead, “debrief” the problem or situation and “mine” the learnings so you (and your team) can apply them in the future.  Making mistakes the first time is one thing – what drives customers crazy (and away) is allowing the same mistakes to be made again and again.
• Expect the unexpected. Set reasonable expectations (allow time for problems). Contingency plans are important! Plan for problems and challenges. Identify “go to” resource partners for complex concerns or critical project elements. Having a good relationship with those who can help you in a jam or direct you to the right resource is important.
• Have checks and balances prior to project execution.   Increase the potential for accuracy, particularly for critical information on projects.  Establish a process to ensure another set of eyes (or multiple sets) that will provide review and authorization on detail items that have big consequences (this will also help you sleep better at night!) Examples of critical items include calculations, IP configurations, published contact information and security reviews/approvals.
• Be willing to negotiate with customers and vendor partners when things go wrong.  Keep your customers out of trouble if you want future business- there is frequently shared responsibility for mistakes that do happen. Being flexible, admitting fault and “splitting the difference” can often mean saving an important customer or future partner relationships.
• Identify and have access to key sponsors in the customer system.  If you are having trouble getting response, compliance or action required for the project to be successful, make sure the communication is coming from the right person in the system with the necessary authority and power to get action. Consultants and change agents take note– communications to resolve these issues ideally should come from the sponsors directly, particularly if getting action becomes problematic.
• Stay positive and cool.  You losing your head when things go awry won’t help. In times of crisis people will gravitate and likely respond positively to those who display confidence and competence.  Focus on finding opportunities and thinking creatively while keeping calm.
• Keep the end goal, and the relationship, in mind.  Yes, achieving the end result is important but so is how you got there. It’s the people end of the project management equation that often trip up project managers.  How you respond in times of crisis and dealt with others will be remembered long after the project is finished.