The 5 crucial conversations . . .

Following up on my earlier post, I downloaded the documents from silencefails.com and vitalsmarts.com.  Here is a list triggers for those five critical conversations:

1.  When you experience fact-free planning.

2.  When Sponsors are AWOL.

3.  When people are skirting the priority setting process.

4.  When people play project chicken by ignoring problems

5.  Team Failures when a team member can't or won't support the project effort.

Funny, but I experienced at least two of these triggers on my projects today.  In only one case did I engage in a critical conversation, but that went quite well.

In the webinar, they also explained that we need to go deep to have these conversations.  To do this, remember CPR (Content, Process, Relationship).

The contect is the here and now.  If that message is not working - go deeper to discuss the process.  If the process discussion fails, for for relationship.  While the webinare didn't take us to a fourth step, it is likely find another project :)

I think this is valuable advice.  I recommend the webinar and slide presentation to any working PM.  Another nice tool to have available when things aren't quite right on a project.

5 Critical Conversations - I finally watched the webinar

Better late than never!

I watched the GoToMeeting webinar and I am glad that I did.  The webinar discusses some research into critical discussions at five key project times.  The research is available at silencefails.com.  As you can guess from the site's name, the general message is that we, as project managers, must engage and do it well when one of the five situations present themselves.

silence fails