Project Communications Management Mohammad Tawfik

AUC, Spring 2013

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Contents Contents ........................................................................................................................................................ 2

Course Objectives ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Intended Learning Outcomes: ...................................................................................................................... 3

Course Schedule ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 5

What are your life goals? .......................................................................................................................... 6

SMART Objectives ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Improving yourself .................................................................................................................................... 8

Getting better with people ....................................................................................................................... 9

Innovation ................................................................................................................................................... 10

The SCARF model ........................................................................................................................................ 11

Appendices .................................................................................................................................................. 11

Your brain at work (Rock, 2009) ............................................................................................................. 11

Positive Intelligence (Chamine, 2012)..................................................................................................... 12

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 15

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Course Objectives As a project manager, you are required to lead a group of people to accomplish targets set by the higher

management. Further, you will need to go through the process of negotiating the project objectives and

outcomes with subordinates, suppliers, and managers, all needing skillful tactics and understanding of

the person or group you are talking to. In this course, you will learn the necessary tools to understand

the people you are interacting with as well as the necessary skills for delivering your vision, persuading

others to follow it, and convincing others of the accomplishments your team have made.

Intended Learning Outcomes: By the end of this course, the attendee will be able to:

1. Distinguish between different character types

2. Identify best approach technique for different personalities

3. Apply techniques for building trust and persuasion with coworkers, suppliers, and managers

4. Build and deliver effective presentations

5. Apply techniques of effective leadership

6. Identify key habits that result in ineffective performance

7. Apply innovative techniques to changing team culture

8. Negotiate effectively in different project settings

9. Deliver messages in an effective form

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Course Schedule

Lecture # Topic ILO# 1

11/2/13 Introduction The DISC personality model

- 1

2 18/2/13

The big five theory Building trust and influencing people

1 2

3 25/2/14

Building trust and influencing people 2,3

4 4/3/13

Increasing the effectiveness of your message What is a presentation?

2,3 4

5 11/3/13

Capturing the attention of your audience What to say and what to display?

4 4

6 18/3/13

Leaders and managers Motivation Different tasks require different motivations

5 5 5

7 25/3/13

What not to do as a leader? Expressing appreciation

6 5

8 1/4/13

Innovation Different people use different techniques

7 1,7

9 8/4/13

Destructive habits in organizations How to change habits?

5,7 7,8

10 15/4/13

Root cause of problems Resistance to change

7 7

11 22/4/13

Negotiating your way through people Developing your negotiation muscles

1,3,8 3,8

12 29/4/13

The SCARF model Business presentation

3,8 4,8

13 6/5/13

Game theory and negotiations 8,9

14 13/5/13

Statistics and negotiations Psychological tips in negotiation

8,9 8,9

15 20/5/13

Wrap up and conclusions -

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Introduction

How many times have you asked yourself, “why am I here?”?

How many times did you get an answer that satisfied you?

Why are you here in this class?

Why are you here in this country?

Why are you in the world?

I might not be able to give you an answer for any of the above questions; however, I encourage you to

try to find them for yourself. Finding answers to the above questions is essential for you to know how

your life is intended to satisfy you.

“If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Lewis Carroll (Alice Adventures

in Wonderland)

The above quotation is quite essential for any successful life, and most importantly, for any happy life.

You need to have a purpose for what you are doing in order to pursue it. If you are studying to get a

degree, ask yourself, “Why do I need the degree?”

Your goals should satisfy your needs. “What do you need?”

Philosophers and psychologists have wondered for centuries about what makes humans happy. Is it

wealth, power, health, children, strength, or something else?

Abraham Maslow, (1908-1970), was a psychologist who was well known for creating a new branch of

psychology named “Humanistic Psychology”. This field of psychology focuses on what makes people

happy, rather than, why are they sad or ill. The most famous conclusion of his work was summarised in

what is known as the “Hierarchy of Human Needs” (Maslow, 1943) which ranks the needs of humans

according to their importance and assumes that a human needs to satisfy the most important need first

then, pursue the satisfaction of the following one. Those needs are:

Physiological Needs

Need for safety and security

Need of Belonging

Need for esteem

Need for self actualization

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Later, personal development skills’ experts Stephen Covey (Covey, 1989) and Hyrum Smith (Smith,

1995), together with many psychologists, argued that the human needs are not hierarchical in nature,

rather flat! That is, the needs of the human need to be all satisfied to certain levels for the human to live

in happiness and harmony. They agreed that the human needs are the need to:

Live

Love and be loved

Learn and Acquire new experiences

Leave a legacy and feel valuable to others

Note that in this list, the need to live may include both physiological needs as well as safety needs.

According to that, you are in continuous pursuit of satisfying those needs. At any particular point in

time, you are working to satisfy one or more of those needs depending on the opportunities you have as

well as your internal feeling of deficiency in one or more of them. Further, you might risk you life, for

example, to satisfy another need such as the need to acquire new experiences such as in the case of

bungee jumping or sky diving!

Now, let us go back to the question that started all this: “Why are you here?” The above suggests that

you need to set your goals in a manner that will satisfy all your needs as a human being. Accumulating

wealth will not give you happiness if you lack the family or friends towards whom you feel love.

Similarly, being the most famous person in the world will never make you happy if you cannot afford to

pay for your basic life requirements!

What are your life goals? Do you think that Bill Gates is successful?

Do you believe that Alexander the great was successful?

Are you sure whether they were happy or not?

What would make YOU happy?

Have you been told that success is becoming rich, having good family, being the leader of a big

company, or being a great engineer?

Are you sure that this is what will make you happy?

What are you passions? Do you love playing music, studying mathematics, drawing pictures, building

machines, teaching children, nursing ill people, swimming, or earning a lot of money?

One thing I am sure about, that is, you will never be happy spending your time doing just one thing, nor

will you be happy doing everything but the thing you love most!

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Spend time by yourself, search for your own passions, experiment with a lot of them, and surely, you

will find out what it is. Then, examine your life carefully to find out what combination of socially

acceptable norms and self passions could satisfy your life goals and human needs and set your plans

accordingly.

“It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the business of life, to work harder and harder

at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall.” Stephen R. Covey

Your plans have to satisfy your human needs, personal needs, and social needs. In other words, do not

try to live against nature, regardless of your passions, nor against your society needs. The key word is

“Balance” your life.

SMART Objectives “I want to live in a good environment!”

What do you think about that statement? I believe that most of you would agree with that statement.

But, have you thought about the definition of good? Does it mean that there is no pollution, the people

are happy, or the temperature is adequate?

Can you live in an environment with no pollution? What makes people happy? What is an adequate

temperature?

“I want to build an apartment building”

When? Where? How tall? How wide? How much will it cost? Do you have the funds? Will people want

to live in it? Don’t you think that answering the previous questions is essential before you start building

the building?

A goal or an objective needs to be Specific. An apartment building is different from a hospital building or

a school building

A goal needs to be Measurable. A building that covers 1000 m2 is different from one that covers 200 m2.

A building that may accommodate 100 families is different from a building that can accommodate 500

students or 200 patients.

A goal needs to be Action-Oriented. Do you want to build the building, or restore an old building? Do you

intend to be involved in the whole process from the conceptual design down to finishing the apartment,

just be a part of the design team, or actually building the building with your own hands?

A goal needs to be Realistic. It is realistic to aim at building a 10 floor building in the centre of Cairo,

maybe a little tough to aim at feeding all the starving people in Somalia, but impossible to raise your

GPA from 2.0 in your first semester to 3.5 in your second semester!

A goal needs to be Time bound. Building a new 10 floor building might not be a hard job, but planning to

build it in 2 days is quite impossible. If you do not plan to graduate in the next five years from the school

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of engineering, might not be a good idea, while putting your plans such that you graduate sometime

before you die is a much worse one!

Finally, when you are setting goals for a small business projects, you might be able to specify all the

above SMART aspects for all or most of your tasks, but when you are planning for your life goals, you

might need to define further objectives that may help you achieve each of the main objectives.

Improving yourself According to the book, “The seven Habits of highly Effective People” (Covey, 1989), the human maturity

passes through three stages:

Dependent

Independent

Interdependent

Strictly speaking, no one can be really independent! The independence that Covey aims at is the

“Emotional Independence.” An emotionally independent person is one whose reactions to external

motivations are built on his personal values and believes rather than the inputs from the environment.

According to (Smith, 1995), the 9th law states that:

Your self-esteem must ultimately come from within

In other words, if you are an independent person, you will not need others to make you feel happy, or

force you feel sad. Satisfaction and self esteem can be generated from inside your brain and that is the

essence of the first habit “Be Proactive” (Covey, 1989) that leads to Independence.

In the search for proactivity, many scientists and world figures have mentioned a lot of statements. One

of the most important ones was by the psychologist Viktor Frankel

The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.

The second step towards independence is planning. Covey sais that you need two habits to plan

properly: “Begin with the end in mind””and “Put first things first”. The first (Second habit) draws upon

the importance of having major goals in your life (Life Mission) in order to be able to set your

intermediate goals. The second (Third habit) involves the arrangement of tasks and objectives according

to their priority in achieving your life goals.

In a similar track, Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995) introduces the laws that he believes will get you to achieve

more with your time and reach more life satisfaction. The first 7 laws state that:

Law 1: You control your life by controlling your time.

Law 2: Your governing values are the foundation of personal fulfilment.

Law 3: When your daily activities reflect your governing values, you experience inner peace.

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Law 4: To reach any significant goal, you must leave your comfort zone.

Law 5: Daily planning leverages time through increased focus.

Law 6: Your behaviour is a reflection of what you truly believe.

Law 7: You satisfy needs when your beliefs are in line with reality.

In the process of planning your activities, both Covey and Smith emphasise the importance of reviewing

your mission statement or life goals whenever you are setting intermediate goals or tasks in order to

make sure that your activities are in line with your main objectives. Further, regular daily or weekly

planning is highly recommended for the tasks you need to do is of extreme value to true efficiency of

time management.

Getting better with people When you reach the level of Independence, according to (Covey, 1989), through embracing the first

three first habits, you become ready to go through the second stage of maturity to reach

Interdependence. The three habits you need to embrace to go through this stage are:

Think Win-Win

Seek first to understand then to be understood

Synergyze

When you think win-win, you are always seeking the mutual benefit of both you and the other side of

the interaction. You will never act in a win-win manner unless you truly believe that there is enough for

every one (the principle of abundance). Similarly, the 10th law proposed by Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995)

states that:

Give more and you’ll have more.

That was the first step towards gaining people trust, make them feel that you care about their needs;

the following step is the fifth habit: “seek first to understand then to be understood.” This habit needs

you to activate your patience and listening skills. Listening to people and giving them the opportunity to

express their point of view does not only allow you to understand it, it also gives them the feeling that

you care about them and love them (satisfying two of the primary human needs discussed earlier).

In the same context Dale Carnegie (Carnegie, 1937) stated two principles, among the twelve principles

to “Win People to Your Way of Thinking,”:

Principle 8 - Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view.

Principle 9 - Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.

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Innovation Innovation is a word that may be used in different contexts to point at the new ideas and inventions. In

our context, we will distinguish between inventions and innovation in that inventions are always new

ideas or creations, that may or may not be useful to people. On the other hands, innovations are new

ideas that may bring new inventions or old ideas and inventions to some new use that must be useful to

people. In the words of "Business Improvement Architects" website:

Bringing creative ideas to life

Many books and articles were published on studies of innovation. The conclusions of those researches

propose different ways to increase the probability of obtaining an innovative idea. That is, nothing really

insures that you will get an innovative idea in any field, rather, suggestions of things that you may do

can increase the possibility of getting one.

In the book, “The Idea Hunter” (Boynton, Fischer, & Bole, 2011), the authors proposed the I-D-E-A

principles in which I stands for be Interested not just interesting, D stands for Diversify the hunt, E stands

for Exercise hunting, and A stands for Be Agile. The first principle, “Be interested not just interesting”,

proposes that you encourage your curiosity. Your curiosity will lead you to explore and investigate things

that come to your way, even go through some new experiences to examine what they may have to offer

you. Children are born with an unlimited amount of curiosity; they always follow the urge to learn and

acquire new experiences which, in turn, allows them to know more about the world. And many of us

have seen how that can lead a child to innovate things and ideas that may never come to the brain of an

adult!

The second principle, “Diversify the hunt”, encourages you to examine hunting for ideas among people

that have different background and in different environments that the one that you are used to. If you

are an engineer who specializes in mechanical engineering, it would be of great use if you discuss your

ideas with communication engineers as they will have a different perspective of the idea you are

discussing. Even better, if you decide to discuss the idea with a friend who studies medicine or

literature, you will find that they do not see the world as you see it at all. The same principle applies

with people that have different social or cultural background.

The third principle, “Exercise the hunt”, as proposed by the authors, emphasises on the importance of

“keep it in your mind”

Finally, the fourth principle, “Be Agile”, suggests that you should always keep moving between different

ideas and different places that you might find new ideas in

In another book, “Where good ideas come from” (Johnson, 2010), the author

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The SCARF model The SCARF model was presented in (Rock, 2009) to present the aspects that affect the responses of

people you are interacting with. SCARF stands for:

Status

Certainty

Autonomy

Relatedness

Fairness

Each of the above

The sense of status enhancement helps people to develop motivation towards the purpose of the work

as well satisfying their ego. Meanwhile, the sense of certainty reduces the anxiety levels associated with

uncertainty, in turn, this encourages the person to be more involved in the

Appendices

Your brain at work (Rock, 2009) In his book, “Your brain at work,” David Rock introduced an excellent model for the brain as a stage with

actors playing their roles and the director trying to manage them in a way that with make the play

perfect. He also presented the concept of energy needed to light the stage and retrieve actors from the

audience to perform their roles.

When reading the book you may come out with different important concepts such as:

“Prioritize prioritizing,” this concept dramatises the importance of setting priorities to what you are

doing as well as emphasising that it is an energy consuming process that needs to be preformed when

your brain is still fresh and full of energy.

The Prefrontal Cortex, that is where you perform your planning, decision making and creative thinking.

“Multi-tasking decreases performance dramatically,” there is no real multitasking, you just switch

between tasks reducing your performance and consuming a lot of energy in the process. E-mail and

instant messaging reduce your IQ to the level of a 4th grader!

To increase your attention, you might need to increase your blood glucose level or just prioritize

prioritizing and control spending your energy

There is a limited number of information that can be held by your brain at a single time, thus, try to

simplify the ideas to the simplest possible phrase to be able to handle several ones

Control distractions. Internal and external distractions

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Managing external distractions. Switch off all communication devises when trying to focus on mental

activities

Internal Distractions. Most distractions are internal. The idle brain constantly creates thoughts

randomly, also, ideas will normally stay in your brain for about 10 second if you do not keep them there!

Your brain needs a good level of stress and alertness to work properly. Dopamine is a chemical that help

your brain to work … it is generated by good expectations or rewards. Humor and positive expectations

generate dopamine. Fear produces adrenaline which also help attention, but it might have negative

effects as well. So be careful using the fear technique so that it might not turn into panic!

Over alertness reduces your capability to concentrate!!! To get out of over alertness try to activate other

parts of your brain … take a walk or have a shower

Activate your director: Meta-cognition, or think about your thinking

Positive Intelligence (Chamine, 2012) This book, “Positive Intelligence” by Shirzad Chamine (Chamine, 2012), is one that describes a lot of the

everyday problems that we may face with our minds. It describes 9 different types of destructive ways

of thinking and gives them names as different charactes:

STICKLER: Perfectionism and a need for order and organization taken too far.

PLEASER: Indirectly tries to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, rescuing, or

flattering others. Loses sight of own needs and becomes resentful as a result.

HYPER-ACHIEVER: Dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and

self validation. Highly focused on external success, leading to unsustainable workaholic

tendencies and loss of touch with deeper emotional and relationship needs.

VICTIM: Emotional and temperamental as a way to gain attention and affection. An extreme

focus on internal feelings, particularly painful ones. Martyr streak.

HYPER-RATIONAL: Intense and exclusive focus on the rational processing of everything,

including relationships. Can be perceived as cold, distant, and intellectually arrogant.

HYPER-VIGILANT: Continuous intense anxiety about all the dangers and what could go wrong.

Vigilance that can never rest.

RESTLESS: Restless, constantly in search of greater excitement in the next activity or constant

busyness. Rarely at peace or content with the current activity.

CONTROLLER: Anxiety based need to take charge and control situations and people’s actions to

one’s own will. High anxiety and impatience when that is not possible.

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AVOIDER: Focusing on the positive and pleasant in an extreme way. Avoiding difficult and

unpleasant tasks and conflicts.

Then the author presents different techniques that may be used to overcome those “saboteurs”. First,

he introduces the “Three gifts techniques” which is based on the fact that any bad situation has its

positive outcomes! Then, he introduces techniques to weaken the saboteurs, namely:

Empathize

o Visualize the child

Explore

o Curiosity and fascination of what is being explored

o When exploration is needed?

o Fascinated Anthropologist (power game)

o Discover things as they are

o Try to be fascinated by exploring how the other parts of the situation

Innovate

o Change the way you use to find solutions

o Come up with as many ideas is you can WITHOUT evaluating the ideas

o Yes And (power game)

o Every idea is appreciated by getting what is good about it and then adding some more

value to it

o Yes, and what I love about this idea is ….. and maybe we can …

Navigate

o Check more paths

o Setting main life goals and values, helps you like a compass to reach the target through

different paths

o Flash forward (power game)

o Look back at this situation from the perspective you will have at the end of your life

Activate

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o Get things done without procrastination

o Get everything else out of your mind

o Pre-empt the saboteurs (power game)

o Anticipate the saboteurs actions and be ready for their attacks

At the end, he introduces some techniques to increase the muscles of the “Sage” or your controller.

Activate your sage by being aware of your physical senses 10 seconds 100 times per days. Use your daily

routines to remind you of the fitness routines; 10 to 15 minutes per day may help you and 21 days is the

target to get you in the habit of PQ strength.

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396.

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Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. [Online]

http://www.wikipedia.org/.