Are You Building or Eroding Trust?
In the workplace or on projects, how do you decide to trust someone? Most people determine their level of trust by watching and judging others’ behavior. It takes a lot more time to build trust than it does for a single behavior to destroy it. Trust also has to be reinforced by consistent...
5 Project Interview Disasters – And How To Prevent Them
During 50 years as a consultant, I’ve participated in many project interviews held by potential clients as part of their consultant selection process. I’ve been a member of a proposing team, a selection panel member and interview coach at different times. I’ve seen a variety of interview...
Team Communication No-Brainers
Teams come in all shapes and sizes. Team members come with diverse communication habits and preferences. As a project manager or team member how do you accommodate these preferences and still have cohesive team communication? Here are 5 No-Brainer Tips for facilitating effective team...
The Heart of Consensus Building
What makes people willing to work together to come to consensus over polarizing situations? Whether it's a construction project, new development, a piece of legislation, or any dispute, the way the parties interact and consider the issues will significantly influence that level of willingness....
Tracking Project Progress
What's the perfect "tool" for tracking project progress on engineering projects? Is there a "system" that can track all the following information that is typically needed to assess if you are on or off track on your project? Costs to date Invoicing and payments status Milestones and deliverables...
Managing Scope Creep
Scope Creep on a Project is Bad: - True or False? It depends! For the Client/Customer, it is bad if there isn't enough budget or it's an unwelcome surprise, or it could be good if it adds value to the project. For the Consultant/Provider, it could be good as it adds to the value of the services,...
Defining Customer Expectations
How do you know what your customer/client really wants before you start work on their project? Just saying you always meet with the client at the start of the project sets a low bar. Often, they are clearer about what they don't want than knowing what they do want. Just hearing their demands and...
Effective Conflict Management
Anyone like to get bad news? How about "surprise" bad news? You've probably been on the receiving end of it, so you know what you felt, panic, disappointment, anger, hurt, fear, stress? How did you react outwardly? Be honest, did you "Kill the Messenger" - Fight Response or "Raise the Drawbridges"...
Win-Win Resolution Process
Have you encountered situations where you have observed or are dealing with two opposing positions that seem to be mutually exclusive and there seems to be no hope that they can be reconciled? Often it seems impossible to resolve because people get personally invested in their positions and to...
Water and Wastewater Finance and Pricing
"I'm proud to be a contributing author on Alternative Project Delivery Methods in this newly released comprehensive guide to financial management and pricing practices". You can find out more about, as well as purchase the book here.
Ten Steps to Building Consensus
So you want to get a group decision on an issue or action! Where do you start? How do you guide them through the decision-making process so you end up with an acceptable resolution that can be supported by all? Here is a short animated video featuring a group trying to get to a decision on an...
Eight Step Approach to Effective Feedback
Giving constructive feedback to someone may rank close to giving a presentation and death in terms of people's fears! There are many reasons given for this: being paralyzed by the projected reaction or push back, not knowing how to address the issue, hoping the issue will just go away, not wanting...
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