Author Archives: Kimi Ziemski, MBA, PMP, CSM

Leveraging Soft Skills for Career Advancement: A Comprehensive Guide

Category : Leadership , Project Management

While hard skills are vital, soft skills are what differentiate outstanding professionals from their peers. Mastering soft skills like stakeholder management, effective presentations, tactful negotiations, and strategic communication can significantly enhance your professional life.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the importance of these skills and how investing in your Power Skills can help you reach your fullest potential.

The Importance of Soft Skills

Soft skills, often referred to as interpersonal or people skills, encompass a wide range of abilities that enable individuals to interact with others effectively. These skills are essential for building relationships, gaining trust, and maintaining influence.

Here is why soft skills are so critical:

  1. Enhanced Communication: Soft skills improve your ability to communicate clearly and persuasively, which is critical for any professional setting.
  2. Better Teamwork: These skills help you collaborate more effectively with colleagues, fostering a positive and productive work environment.
  3. Leadership: Soft skills are key for effective leadership, enabling you to inspire and guide your team towards achieving common goals.
  4. Problem-Solving: They equip you with an interpersonal tool kit to quickly, easily, and tactfully handle conflicts and challenges.

To help you develop these indispensable skills, we offer a comprehensive suite of courses specifically designed to improve your leadership and influential skills as a Project Management Professional. Let's delve into the details of each course and see how they can contribute to your career advancement.

Stakeholder & Hidden Objections

Have you ever encountered unexpected obstacles that derailed your projects?

Often, these hurdles are due to hidden objections from existing stakeholders—individuals who influence the project from behind the scenes. Identifying and managing these stakeholders is crucial for project success.

Our Stakeholder & Hidden Objections course is designed to refine your skills in identifying all stakeholders and the potential resistance they may be hiding under the surface. You will learn how to uncover objections early in your stakeholder management process, allowing you to address issues before they become significant problems. This proactive approach ensures smoother project execution and higher chances of success.

Key Learnings:

- Stakeholder Identification: Learn techniques to identify all relevant stakeholders, even those not immediately apparent.

- Uncovering Objections: Develop skills to discreetly uncover objections that may hinder project progress.

- Effective Communication: Enhance your ability to communicate with stakeholders, manage the relationship, and address their concerns head on.

By mastering these skills, you can ensure that all voices are heard and potential roadblocks are dealt with proactively.

Effective Presentations

Public speaking and presentations can be intimidating, yet they are essential for conveying your ideas and influencing others. Whether you are presenting to a small team or a large audience, your ability to communicate effectively can significantly impact your career path.

Our Effective Presentations course focuses on improving your public speaking skills, enhancing the power of your presentations, and ensuring your message is clear and impactful. You will learn how to plan, deliver, and capitalize on your objectives, making every presentation an opportunity to shine.

Key Learnings:

- Planning and Preparation: Learn how to structure your presentations for maximum impact.

- Delivery Techniques: Develop effective speaking techniques to engage and persuade your audience.

- Visual Aids: Understand visual aids and how to use them to enhance instead of detracting from your message.

- Audience Engagement: Learn strategies that motivate your audience to interact with and remember what you say.

By improving your presentation skills, you can convey ideas more effectively, build confidence, and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Tactful Negotiations

Negotiation is unavoidable in both professional and personal contexts. Whether you are closing a business deal, asking for a raise, or resolving conflicts between family members, your ability to negotiate effectively will impact the outcome.

Our Tactful Negotiations course teaches you how to develop strategies that leverage the potential of your options. You will learn to manage negotiations in a way that maintains healthy relationships with your team and stakeholders, ensuring that everyone feels valued and respected.

Key Learnings:

- Negotiation Strategies: Develop effective negotiation tactics to achieve your desired outcomes.

- Relationship Management: Learn how to maintain positive relations while moving through the negotiating process.

- Conflict Resolution: Understand techniques for resolving conflicts amicably.

- Win-Win Solutions: Learn how to create solutions that benefit all parties involved.

By mastering negotiation skills, you can foster strong professional relationships, increasing your ability to influence as a leader.

Strategic Communications

Communication is the cornerstone of any successful project. It’s not just about conveying information; it’s about aligning your message with the organization’s strategy and objectives. Effective strategic communication ensures everyone is on the same page, leading to higher team commitment and better project outcomes.

Our Strategic Communications course helps you understand the relationship between an organization’s strategy and a specific project. You will learn how to communicate in a way that enhances team member motivation and ensures higher deliverables.

Key Learnings:

- Strategic Alignment: Understand how to align project goals with the organization’s strategy.

Message Clarity: Learn to communicate your message clearly and concisely; don’t let misunderstandings slip by.

- Team Engagement: Develop strategies rooted in team member engagement and witness how collaboration can turn into innovation.

- Feedback Mechanisms: Learn how to implement effective feedback mechanisms to ensure continuous improvement.

By mastering strategic communication, you will be able to guide your team more effectively, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same objectives and achieving higher levels of success.

Why Should You Purchase The Power Skill Bundle?

Investing in the KSP Power Skill Bundle is investing in your future. With the continued growth of technology and artificial intelligence, the importance of soft skills has dramatically increased. Improved interpersonal skills that move teams on a human level are no longer a nice-to-have but a need-to-have; soft skills are one of the main differentiating factors between why some professionals see more opportunity and others don’t.

Here is what the Power Skills will bring to you:

  1. Holistic Development: Each course addresses a different but equally important aspect of soft skills. Together, they provide a comprehensive skill set highly valued in any professional setting.
  2. Practical Applications: These courses are designed with real-world applications in mind. You’ll learn practical techniques that can be immediately applied to your working environment.
  3. Career Advancement: Mastering these skills will make you a more effective and versatile professional, opening doors to new opportunities and career growth.
  4. Confidence Boost: As you develop these skills, you’ll find yourself more confident in handling various professional situations, from presentations to negotiations.

Here’s what some of our past participants have to say:

By purchasing a Power Skill course, you’re taking a significant step towards a more prosperous and fulfilling career. These courses are not just about learning; they are about transforming how you interact with the world, making you a more impactful professional.

So, why wait?

Invest in yourself today and see the difference it makes tomorrow. Your future self will thank you!

 

Learning from CEOs’ Viral Misconduct

Category : Leadership , Organizational Culture , Project Management

Leadership "fumbles" are popping up left and right... we're using fumbles loosely.

The ability to record nearly anywhere partnered with the overflowing desire and demand for transparent and liable leadership from employees is forcing ill-intentioned and unenlightened leaders to take accountability for their actions.

Publicly.

Read at your own risk of discomfort, the latest leadership breakdowns:

Has working so hard to be empathetic and supportive of their workers been so very difficult that CEOs are beginning to break?

It feels unnecessary to further bread-crumb the details in these cases, but also just as wasteful to miss the opportunity to learn from the consequences and ask ourselves 'where did it all go wrong?'

Nobody expects perfection... and people will fumble as they learn to grow their empathy and their supportive muscles but, as Andi Owen so aptly demonstrated, if we tread this path with disregard toward others we should expect judgement about how and when those fumbles are communicated.

Along with dreadful stories about Barbara Lynch, the chef-restaurateur whose patterns of treating people badly apparently go back decades, Ms. Owen has learned that our meanest selves are generally not going to be able to stay hidden in ‘private’ or ‘internal company’ communications forever.

Nor should they be.

So, what's the takeaway? What systems do you have in place to avoid falling into the "ludicrous CEO" trap?

Here are a few questions we think you should ask yourself:

  • Do you have an accountability circle? How do you maintain transparency and honesty within these relationships?
  • What do you do when you feel that you are putting up with more than you can reasonably bear? How do you monitor your emotional response?
  • Is your organization setup to allow sharing hard truths from every employee level? How can you remove "yes-man" mentality from your culture?

It can be challenging to be an empathic leader at times, we're all human and hit our limits on occasion - but it is most definitely not impossible.

Cases like these are ideal for bringing light to our shadow selves by giving us a real life emotional prompt for self-evaluation.

Organizational Culture That Supports Learning Curves

Tags :

Category : Leadership , Project Management

Have you seen the LinkedIn post that everyone is talking about? The one about the “crying CEO.”

If you need some context, take a quick look at this CNBC article: CEO posts crying selfie on LinkedIn after laying off employees – and it goes viral.

To start: No, this is not another comment on, critique of, or complaint about the original poster. Instead, I would like to address the impact of the publicized angst that has resulted from the original post.

So many of the team leaders I know and work with are trying to create an environment of psychological safety. This is not about whether I agree or disagree with the substance or style of the message delivered. I think it’s important to talk about the overwhelming number of comments and the overarching tone of responses to the message itself.

Each and every one of us is bombarded with so much information – some true, some valid, and some simply a waste of our intellectual energy. Many of us spend a great deal of time and energy just parsing this information down to “yes, I should pay attention to this” OR “no, this is not worth my attention.” But beyond that decision process, we still receive messages and perceived dispositions about topics that are not helpful.

When someone sends a message, whether you agree with it or not is not always the point.

Do you have to comment on it? Do you consider how your response will affect the whole? And do we have to reinforce an ethos that says one mistake or one bad delivery will be the defining factor of our reputations?

It is all too easy to take a lesson from this that will not help us encourage contribution, creativity, or foster psychological safety. The message coming from this is that the only real safety we have is to not say anything at all. If you say something, and you’re wrong, or you’re awkward in delivery, just remember there are thousands of people who will gladly point that out to you. That makes the learning curve even steeper, posing a problem for the leaders who are encouraging their teams to create an environment and culture that is both diverse and inclusive. A culture where we will make mistakes and learn rather than make mistakes and burn.

So, if we’re talking about the “crying CEO” – let’s talk about the environment behind the responses to the post. What kind of culture are you trying to create and how do you encourage learning curves in your teams?

#KSP #ProjectManagement #TechnicalProfessional #EthicalLeadership

Soft Skills That Are Actually Hard Currency

Category : Leadership , Learning & Training , Project Management

There are four specific aspects of leadership that make a great deal of a difference in your level of professionalism and the overall performance of your team. Good leadership is built on skills that go beyond scheduling, budgeting, and change management. Understanding how to utilize strategic stakeholder communications to uncloak hidden objections while navigating camouflaged negotiations will directly improve your leadership skills and the influence of your role.

A 2019 Global Talent Trends study conducted by LinkedIn showed that 92% of talent acquisition professionals stated that soft skills are equally or more important to hire for than hard skills, and 89% said that when a new hire doesn’t work out, it’s because they lack critical soft skills.


So, why are these key values not being taught in any technical leadership curriculum?

The skills you should be mastering

 

Stakeholder and Hidden Objections

Each project has a set of stakeholders that will directly influence the outcome, and as a project manager it is your responsibility to know who they are and what they want. Unfortunately, stakeholders and hidden objections are often missed at the opportune time resulting in unforeseen escalation of costs.

‘Uncover Concealed Partners & Concerns’ will refine your skills in identifying stakeholders that might not be obvious. Using a simple technique, we teach you how to amplify your stakeholder identification process, as well as how to implement these skills to properly uncover objections and expectations that might not be in plain sight.

A 2021 discovery report on the most sought after skills highlighted that nearly two thirds of respondents placed a higher priority on “soft” skills. “Leveraging data from 82 million employer job postings, America Succeeds announced findings that reveal the critical importance of Durable Skills training for long-term success in the workplace” Emsi, 2021.

Effective Presentations

Virtual presentation skills have rapidly become a crucial skill to master during the shift to working from home. It’s never been more challenging and yet simultaneously important to be able to captivate a room while both entertaining and influencing your audience.

‘You ARE a Public Speaker’ – it’s something that you do every day.  We focus on specific areas of public speaking, presentation power, and team briefing to increase the comprehensibility and impact of your communication skills.  Using our framework enables you to plan, deliver, and capitalize on your objectives.

These skills are often disregarded as soft or interpersonal, the influence that they have is oftentimes the difference between effective versus incompetent leadership. A 2020 Business Insider article mentions that the importance of fostering these skills should not be ignored. “In the age of automation these skills are becoming more important.  Although some tasks at work will be automated, soft skills like emotional intelligence and the ability to teach, won't be.”

Tactful Negotiations

Not everything is on the table during a negotiation. Discussions can start before the meeting is even scheduled. Learning how to see the concealed aspects of a negotiation will afford you the peace of mind necessary to make more cognizant decisions in your favor.

‘Don’t Leave it ON The Table’ is a valuable approach to negotiating based on making well-informed decisions. This framework for negotiating is straightforward and geared toward understanding the impact and potential of your options. Mastering your competency skills in this area is vital toward managing and maintaining healthy professional relationships with your team and additional stakeholders.

Even though there has been more focus placed toward “soft” skills in the past few years, studies show that mastering these competencies has been crucial for leadership roles well before this time. A 2016 article from Hult International School of Business states that “Building cooperative relationships, responding effectively to multiple priorities and working well with people from diverse cultural backgrounds are just three of the many soft skills required by today’s global leaders. So much so, in fact, that 92% of the respondents in Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends report rated soft skills as a critical priority.”

Strategic Communications

Early communications affect your project just as much as planned meetings later on. Understanding the role that communications plays in your project, team, and organization will help you identify the appropriate guidelines necessary to lead you to success.

‘Persuade Through Deliberate Conversation’ the critical role of the relationship between an organization’s strategy and a particular project, and how this correlation affects team commitment levels. Understanding these systems, which are already taking place, and managing their connectivity is the groundwork toward successfully achieving higher expectations and deliverables.

This means that the time and energy you spend expanding your competencies in the ‘soft skills’ give you the power to be able to enter, leave, or shift career paths, industries and organizations.

These courses are designed to go beyond the basics while being easily digestible, immediately applicable, and time management friendly for intermediate and experienced managers. Purchase the entire bundle or select an individual course to focus on and study the material on your time.

If you want to learn more about the Power Skill Bundle or other KSP Project Management Solutions, reach out to us at contactus@KSPPartnership.com.

The Teacher Named ‘Failure’

Category : Leadership , Organizational Culture , Project Management

I’ve always thought that any failure is a waste unless one learns something from it.

But when K-Mart sank under the weight of a $1.8B IT infrastructure project in 2017, it seemed that the lessons learned from it would be bitter ones.

K-Mart began a $1.8 billion dollar IT infrastructure modernization project that ultimately bankrupted the company. When Sears Holdings bailed them out, they closed over 600 stores and laid off 67,000 employees.

In 2018 Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In 2019 CNN Business made the point that they believed a major key was the 12 months the organization went without a CEO.

The failure that taught me a huge lesson about absent leaders came when I worked on a team where the ‘project manager’ was present in a physical sense only. Tall, with the stance and stride of an athlete, he was charming, almost always smiling slightly. He had made a science – a lifestyle! – of putting off making decisions. In several cases, indefinitely. Frustration was a constant companion to the three smaller teams responsible for more than 75% of the work. The other two team leads and I did our best.  The project manager had been decisive about and micromanaged only 1 area – the communications channels with the senior leadership team. The three of us strategized about solutions. In the end, having inadvertently given him just enough rope, he hung himself.

Leadership from anywhere at the table (or on the Zoom screen) does not negate the need for the final voice.  Together with my colleagues and having built a team culture of open and safe communications, we knew we would get the best information from our teams. We had also learned the bitter lesson about the impact of avoiding the responsibilities of leadership. Getting that lesson this way was powerful.  Not one of us has ever forgotten the cost of being unwilling to make a decision, communicate it and execute on it.

What are the leadership lessons you are teaching?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/business/sears-outlook-bankruptcy-anniversary/index.html

http://fortune.com/2017/01/26/sears-fitch-downgrade-burn-rate/

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