I was invited up to Glasgow to speak on the 18th May and completed my Scottish hat trick after events in Edinburgh in March and Aberdeen in April. One head of PM capability for a multi-national engineering firm asked how the skills covered in my talk / book relate to emotional intelligence (EI) frameworks.
One of my slides, available on the supporting website under ‘free stuff‘, in fact shows the standard quadrants of EI – self awareness, self control, social awareness, and social influence, populated with competence-based applications from the book. Moreover, relating to his role as head of profession, I linked the EI framework back to a composite of various competence frameworks for PM which I constructed in the first chapter of the book. What competences do you think are necessary for effective management of projects ?
The APM’s competence framework is now being used to support applications for Registered Project Professional (RPP), which we hope will soon convert to Chartered Project Professional. Have you seen the RPP road show yet ?
I pointed out that APM’s on-line assessment tool for PM competences has now been licensed for use by more than a dozen major government departments, and several large corporates, to help assess and develop their communities of practice (CoPs). Does your organisation have a competence framework for PMs ?
After assessment, of course, we have the challenge of how to improve competences. This was the exact purpose of my book ‘NLP for project managers’, as no amount of training in method based approaches for project management will help to change behaviours. As Bob Assirati, Major Projects Director of the OGC, says in the foreword for my book, ‘Method is important, but knowing how to use it is more so’. How do you think competences can be improved ?
One of the Scottish branch committee was a psychology graduate and asked how NLP might relate to the content of her three year degree. I used the analogy of psychology being like the study of the anatomic detail and minute workings of a car engine, whereas NLP would be simply about how to drive it – ‘press this pedal to go faster, and turn this to change direction’. As such, NLP can be described as applied psychology. I involved her in one of the brief exercises and she saw it in action, noting that it gives results in minutes. What is your favourite description of NLP ?
Feedback from the talk was very positive, including the written comments:
- ‘Interpersonal skills reinterpreted’
- ‘Thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining’
- ‘Enjoyable presentation by someone who is comfortable with his subject matter’.
- ‘An accessible speaker, with a comfortable style and humour. Interesting topic, but of great relevance to the PM community’
Since being asked by several corporates and government organisations, I have now starting to deliver in-house talks on NLP4PM, and I had a further two enquiries from this event.
After discussion with one large multi-national, I will also be offering shorter 1 & 3 day in-house courses. As these courses are made up of modules against each of the PM competences, it is easy to tailor to in-house competence models, or focus on common areas that need coaching and support. See www.nlp4pm.com/training for more information. What skills would you put in your course ?
Peter Parkes
07764 319600
