Self mentoring
… become your best mentor.
Perhaps due to the speed, emergencies, and fast forward approach, we tend to be less aware about our experiences, what we are going through when we are involved or leading a project.
Sometimes we feel overcrowded, and we are more focused on the result that is asked to be achieved then what we need to optimize and improve.
Sometimes committed in obtaining the result we forget that are wearing out significantly.
Most of the times after the project is done even though there were a lot of situations from which we can draw a lot of lessons, we tend to disregard this phase and to move as fast as possible to the next project, next target that is required by our organization.
Within this fast moving from one target to another we are losing energy and a lot of knowledge that we can capture for improvement and refresh. While sometimes the organization has official framework to record the lessons learned and it is mandatory to write those, there is less awareness involved on transferring and applying those to the next project.
Within a project there are lesson learned to be applied for the next project and there are lessons learned to be applied on a personal level for a project manager
In my view, a project manager except from doing projects within the organization that is activating, he has a personal project of developing itself by taking the lessons and implementing a recurrent self-optimization, self-actualization process. Those processes are what I called awareness processes. The project manager must focus on those aspects so that they start. Therefore, the project manager must challenge his knowledge and the applicability of that knowledge within the context that his performing.
Some helping questions to support the starting of such processes:
1.How much added value has my practical knowledge within the context that I am activating?
2.Is my context still validating my methods and approach?
3.What are my certainties in terms of practical approaches that clearly are still getting results?
4.What is the context within I have observed setbacks, delays and negative impact as an answer to my approach?
The personal project of self-development kick-off is by questioning your status quo.
A project manager cannot become better unless he is becoming aware about the journey and not the destination. When your feedbacks from the peers, colleagues, superiors is related to how result oriented you are, then you must know that you are not aware about the journey that you are in and, you are focused on the destination.
Being focused on the destination is not a bad thing on a short term still considering you might want a career then an approach on journey awareness is more advisable. As you are leading a project, if you pay attention, you will see a lot of real-life lessons without necessarily being involved in a special training.
One way of making yourself aware about this real-life lesson can be through journaling by recording or writing the way that things are moving within the project and the impact that has on you. Making journaling is only the first step because the actual change must happen within yourself by changing the word “mistake” to the word “lesson”.
Journal your lessons because there are a lot believe me and if you do this for the first projects you will see how much improvement you get. You will get more practical knowledge than you would get from a training that is basically pushing stuff in your head that might not work for you, might not be fully adapted to your context or you might not resonate with. It is not only added value for your organization it is an added value for you. For example, while journaling a delay in your project you can identify that you need to prioritize better. All the learning starts after the project manager is becoming aware about the self-development direction and the benefit of making that improvement. If you learn to prioritize better, then you have more time perhaps to invest in the project and for your personal life.
Another way of making yourself aware about this real-life lesson is by allowing short breaks or pauses to reflect on what is happening, this is what I call window of awareness. Those can happen immediately after a “special situation” or short crisis, in the moment you chose to stop the speed, the noise the sense of emergency and to take a couple of minutes to reflect asking the following:
1.Where am I?
2.What just happen? Can it happen again?
3.How do I feel about it?
4.What must happen to avoid this in the future?
5.What I must do immediately? 6.What and how should I improve?
A lesson it is not a lesson learnt unless it is applied in a similar situation and then situation do not go as the previous one.
Remember, the maturity of the organization is not on your shoulders, you are not going to blame that the organization does not have the necessary training for your context. Y
You have a full real context that is giving you, for free, all the lessons and all the trainings that you need to be aware of and become your best mentor.