Welcome to the Everyday PM Podcast, the podcast where we
discussed project management principles for your everyday
life. My name is Anne Campia and I am
the host and founder of The Everyday PM.
I'm certified as a PM and I am just a project management
enthusiast myself, having several years working in very
different industries as a project manager.
I am so excited to welcome our very special guests.
Yes, we have two. We have Rich and Jim who are
joining us. They are here to speak a lot
about their professional journey.
But then we're also going to dive into a quick spoiler alert,
you could probably see it in Rich's background.
There are great meetings, build great teams, which is the book
that they have published. And I'm so excited to share kind
of the details and the contents of that with our audience as
well because I think you're all very much going to enjoy it.
So I I will encourage you to pick up the book.
I will say it again at the end of this podcast.
But that being said, let's go ahead and give Rich and Jim the
platform. So, Rich, starting with you,
please take a brief moment to introduce yourself to our
audience. Stuart Rich Maltzman, coauthor
with Jim Stewart of this this wonderful book but also a 40
year practitioner in Project management, accidentally became
a project manager after starting as an engineer and.
Now a master lecturer at Boston University teaching a suite of
PM courses. Jim.
I spent started my career as an IT network engineer and again
like Rich became the accidental project.
Man didn't use somebody to create a Gantt chart and I said
okay, I'll give that a shot X number of years ago and for the
past 20 years I've been independent.
As of this year, 20 years independent, working from home,
and I do a variety of things, running projects, consulting on
projects. The most recent one of which was
an agile transformation project for a pharmaceutical.
I became an agileist about 10 years ago.
So I do both of those things and we'll talk about how we got to
writing the book. But I write, speak and do all
those fun things. That's amazing.
I think collectively we have so far one thing in common.
Well, maybe two. We both have a passion for
project management. It sounds like we and we all
fell into it. We were all accidental.
And I do think at some point in the span of project management,
however old it is at this point, it's quite generation spanning.
I think that at some point I'm probably going to start to
welcome guests on to here that will say, oh, I wasn't
accidental. I had this planned, I went to
school for this. I didn't have experience and
this is quite amazing to hear that.
But I love that you kind of shared a little glimpse of your
professional journey with our audience, but why don't we dig
in a little bit deeper. So Jim, starting with you, you
said you became an Agile is not too long ago.
So what kind of led you to that, to that perspective?
Honestly, as an independent project manager I have to stay
current with the market and I teach a lot of.
By the way Rich and I teach. He is a teacher professionally
full time. I teach PMP fair amount of time,
not as much as I usually cuz I prefer consulting.
So some years ago Azure was sort of happening, starting to
happen. I had to started telling my
students about it, the little bit that I knew, but I realized
I was being. Disingenuous.
I didn't really know it well, so I went and got my scrum master.
This is 2013. I said, oh, I like this, I like
this. And so then to be honest with
you, recruiters would call me when they eight out of 10 times
they're requesting Agile and they'd hang up me if I didn't
have it. So I said I better get this, so.
And I liked it anyway, so I got various certifications.
And fell into it and enjoy it and I go back and forth.
I mean, my last one was, I mean I'm a certified object coach.
My last one was a transformation.
My next gig could be using a Gantt chart in traditional.
I have no rich and I've discussed this many times.
We are agnostic about the tool that we use.
We're not hung up on agile, We're not hung up on waterfall.
We do what the project calls for.
So that's honestly how I fell into it as a matter of.
If not survival, just increasing my chances of staying conversing
as a consultant. And I did like it.
So that's what brought me to this, that's that's amazing.
It completely makes sense. I mean you're you've been
relevant and have stayed relevant and innovative at the
same time. And I think that's something
that we often forget as project managers is that you don't just
take the exam and then you're done.
You should be learning all the time and try to figure out how
it's evolving as well the industry itself.
Not only that, I've seen too many.
We live in the Massachusetts area.
We're both Rich and I saw the demise of the mini computer
industry because they all said, well, no one will ever want a
computer at home. Famously Ken Olson Digital said
no one and they're all gone. So change your or die.
So you need to change and evolve with the times.
There's some other thing comes along and it's viable.
I'll go for that as well. And I think Rich feels the same
way. Well, I've had to drag him
somewhat at the Agile a little bit.
He still gets a little bit confused, but I do my best.
So Rich, over to you. I mean, what led you to where
you're at today? Master lecturer?
And then and all the great things that you're doing.
Yeah, I think any good project manager is in some ways a
teacher is in some ways a consultant.
And so, even in my engineering days, I found myself for the 1st
10 years of my career before I got the tap on the shoulder
saying, hey, we need a project manager over here.
I found that what I was doing often was solving problems
through education. I remember having problems with
the systems test engineering and we could have solved this with
100 new systems. But I found it was just a matter
of the testers and installers not understanding what they were
testing and installing. So we actually got rid of the
socalled dog pile of of defective components by
instituting a training program and I found that.
That teaching and learning was actually something as Jim just
said, it's lifelong and it's very valuable.
It actually can save a lot of money time and pain if it's if
it's done well. So I I found that I was we use
the term pracademic that I liked the idea of of academics but not
for the pure, you know, you know, 45 page paper aspect of
it, but more for the. There's really a kernel of
knowledge here that people can use.
Same with Agile. I mean, like Jim said, he kind
of had to drag me in there, but there's a lot of really rich,
important information and practices and mindset in Agile
and that everyone could benefit from.
So I I like this idea of lifelong learning, and I've been
actually teaching. In one way or another, not just
as I mentioned in the job, but at community colleges since the
80s. Even teaching, as Jim mentioned,
mini computers, even teaching. This is definitely a frustrating
job, teaching seniors how to use a computer.
Now I is a senior. And I have to keep up with the
technology with ChatGPT and other generative AIAI systems
and and like Jim said as new stuff comes up I think both of
us are just hungry to keep learning that So that's been my
driver and but but getting stuff done just getting stuff done
excites me and I I I love to see in my case it was telecom.
I love to see a telecom network go up and have fiber optic
connections between Los Angeles. And New York or the better city,
Boston in some way, I'd like to see that.
I'd like to see that. I like to.
See for sales. Rich, we just lost our New York.
Sorry. No Yankees.
Anyway. Anyway, I love to see that come
together. I mean, we used to joke around
in our department. We love it when a plan comes
together and and and that idea of starting with literally
vapor. An idea.
And then turning that into reality.
That's what project managers do. And that's why when I made the
shift to project management, I just stayed with it and then did
it and now teach it and do it. And I really enjoy it.
I love that. And our audience is not just
comprised of project managers. And a lot of what you both
shared in your professional journey is very much applicable
to people outside of our industry as well in terms of
just wanting to be in a job that where you can see the fruits of
your labor. And and I think you that that
kind of it's and sometimes it's really not immediate for PM.
Sometimes you're on a job for 10 years, who knows what you're
working on. But just the sheer fact that you
know that you created something from nothing.
I I love that, Rich. I love that you shared that
about your journey. So I and I, I also AM a parttime
educator. I think all three of us again
collectively check another thing on on the list about learning
and also wanting to give back to the industry.
So I want to get to the aha moment of when you both decided,
hey, we should write a book. Where did that come from?
Was it several conversations? Did Jim just wake up one day and
call you Rich and say I got an idea, or how did that come
together? It almost was like that.
Isn't that funny? Rich had written several books.
We've been friends for over 20 years and I thought, I guess
Rich doesn't like me. He never approaches me to write
a book. So I kept thinking because I
really wanted a coauthor and so but I didn't know what to write
about. So and I've told the story
before. We have Rich and I and another
gentleman all did some consulting work for a woman who
runs a life sciences consulting company.
And I used to go out and do big meetings with her at
pharmaceuticals and which is where I got at the farmers by
the way, through her. And thanks to her and I would
help do two big two and three day planning meetings, mostly 2A
day, and facilitate those. And I learned a lot doing that.
So one day I'm at lunch with this friend of mine.
He says, you know what I would read about those big meetings
you do with that woman? I would, I would read about
that. And I said, oh, really?
So using my marketing survey of one person.
I then went to Rich and said I remember this discussion too
because I had a sort of, I wasn't explaining it well to get
through. There's no Rich.
It's about meetings and the big, he says oh I get it.
We both done our meetings and stuff and this is actually the
second book, by the way, we we did 144 or five years ago.
We say everything is either poster pre pandemic but pre
pandemic. And it was more about those big
two day meetings found publisher.
Rich found a publisher. So the heart of it was those two
big two big two day meetings. But then that publisher went out
of business. Let's redo it find a new
publisher. And this one focuses somewhat
more in agile but somewhat more in team building and a variety
of conflict management and what we talked about bullies talked
about that last time too. So less on the two day thing and
one more thing is the good combination Rich and I have is.
You'll sometimes get too academic because if rich, you're
getting too academic uses. Yeah.
But Jim, you have to have some academic.
He'll pull me that way. So you have a good combination
of the science of meetings and the academic stuff with the
footnotes and whatnot and the down and dirty on the ground
type of stuff that we put together.
So that's how the book came to be.
And and and so this one's been out since late June at book two.
So we're we're thrilled about that.
That's incredible, Rich. Did you?
Were you surprised? Did you want to say no to Jim?
But then you felt bad about saying no to Jim about writing a
book. I did not.
I did not want to say no to Jim. I think I said yes pretty
quickly and we got to work on it pretty quickly.
And as Jim said it, there's a lot.
Well, you can probably get a little bit of the the, the humor
and the banter that we have that comes across in the book.
And it's not just us that's important to know.
We have a lot of war stories from people around the world,
from men and women around the world.
That we, we call them war stories, meetings that have gone
really well, have gone off the rails in weird ways.
And the book is peppered with those.
And that that was one of the things people seem to like in
the first book. So we went out and got more.
We're both pretty active networkers on LinkedIn and
elsewhere, PMI conferences and so forth and we've.
We've gathered, hunted and gathered these some of these
stories to to make the the book a little more interesting.
I I personally love the structure of it.
So. So let's start with great
meetings, build great teams, amazing title, perfect.
It's one of those things that would catch me if I was looking
at a laundry list of project management related books and
looking on the shelf that I would definitely pull that off
the shelf #1 because we all have to be in meetings.
A huge part of what we do as project managers is either we
are the ones orchestrating the meeting or we are participating
in it. So we've seen kind of both roles
and everybody wants to understand how do you make for a
successful meeting with your project team.
So the first thing you both claim is that you will let us
know through the book what is the secret behind happier, more
successful project teams. And it sounds like it starts
there, but I'll have you both react to that comment.
I guess if I can go on with that one I I was a little duties
about the about the title at first only because it isn't just
we're not naive to think it's just great means to build great
teams. We say that in the book that
that there's more to it than that but we we felt that this is
a nuts and bolts book. This is a book that
interestingly, I don't know if you know this, Rich.
I looked at the top 20 books on meetings on Amazon.
Almost none of them deal without around a meeting.
TEDx and talks about, but none are nuts and bolts books.
This is nuts and bolts book about how to run a meeting, the
challenges you have to overcome, the type of person you need to
be to do that. So we feel like the it's the
converse. We're trying to fix a problem
which is there are too many bad meetings.
One of the mantras in Agile. Is that doesn't have to be the
scrum ass that runs a meeting. Anybody can run a meeting.
No. If you want chaos, anybody can
run a meeting. Not everybody can run a meeting.
Not because you have to be a genius, but you have to learn
how to be good at it so people aren't necessary.
I'll tell you a little secret. I go.
I haven't told you this yet Rich.
I go to Weight Watchers. I'm not ashamed to say that I go
to Weight Watchers every week. I went last week and the I've
been seeing the same woman for who The leader there for years.
I said I wrote this book. She said bring it in.
We'll do a show and tell. There were about 40 people
there, and they passed around. It never got back to me.
I mean, I got it back, but they were so busy reading it and
looking at it that I never took forever to get it back to me.
And one one came up running to me.
Yeah, I have these board meetings with my condo unit.
Another one was like, I'm an IT project manager.
I realized in a room of not just a bunch of guys and gals losing
weight, but people are actually running meetings and don't know
how to look. Look at this.
Wow.
I guess in fact, I'm going to raffle one of them off their
Ridge next week. So they made.
Losing weight and gaining knowledge.
Right, right. Well, I'm at least gaining
knowledge. So anyway, I I'm sorry, I
haven't ramble on, but I think I believe that great meetings
build great teams, that's part of it.
If we can have a longer title, it would say something like what
are the great things about meetings?
They help build great teams and blah, blah, blah.
But we had to, you know, make a shorter thing.
So that's my that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Yeah, you're right, Jim. There's a lot more to to this.
That's why this book is focused and it's nuts and bolts on
meetings. I mean when you think about what
what makes a great. Project.
What makes a successful project? And we could have another
argument about what success means and project management.
But what makes a great project is a great team.
But what makes the great team isn't only the meetings.
It's but it's part of it. I mean, you have to have the
right team, you have to have the right people.
It has to be chartered and it has to have a purpose that
people buy into. The people have to.
The right people have to be in an act.
Active in in that team, a lot of that takes place through
meetings And so that's that's kind of the common thread is
that if if you first of all recognize that you're going to
be in a lot of meetings, I mean this is a meeting, a classroom
meeting is a meeting, right. When you sit for dinner with
your family, that's in some ways a meeting.
So just like we make thousands of decisions every day, so it
would make sense to learn more about a good decision making we
we assert. I think correctly that project
managers had better learn how to be good meeting attendees and
good meeting facilitators. And to Jim's point, if you're
not the person to run the meeting, and some of these two
or three day meetings are good examples, you may want someone
else to do it right. And even if you're running a
meeting, one of the tips we give in the book is if you're running
the meeting, you're probably not doing a good job of taking
notes. And vice versa, if you're
spending all your time head down or taking notes, you're not
running the meeting. So maybe it makes sense to have
a deputy or an assistant who's chartered, especially on a
virtual meeting like this, to watch the chat and see what's
going on. Kind of what's the undercurrent,
the hubbub, the buzz. Find out what's happening there
while you are watching people's body language.
People who are like out of the video folks can see or like
this, or closed off of people who are clearly not.
Paying attention. You know they've got one or more
devices ready and they're buying something on Amazon.
So you know you got to you got to be you as the project manager
should own the meeting. This Jim made a really, he he
helped the book significantly, making this point that sometimes
you might not even be everyone's best friend because you've
you've, you've let the meeting go out of get out of hand,
trying to be friendly with everyone and letting everyone
talk. And now you're in, you know
you're in a 45 minute. Extra.
More the point free advice. You know somebody doesn't buy
the book. As one consultant I go to said
stop looking for unconditional love.
So don't go to a meeting wanting everybody to like you.
This guy will like me if I let him go on for 10 minutes.
This person will like me. You get to the end of the
meeting, you've accomplished nothing.
By the way, side point, the woman who runs the the weight
marches meeting, I said to her. You do everything in this book.
She's also a teacher, she said. It's like dealing with a bunch
of eight-year olds or whatever she has.
She did it. She did it to me once.
Rich. I I'll tell the jerk around the
session sometimes. So a couple weeks ago, I was
joking about something. She came over, stood next to me
and put a hand on my shoulder. Right.
She did. That one of our techniques.
She she did that to me, you know, you did that to me.
She said yes, I probably did. So anyway, she's really good at
that and I think that's the one I wanted to jump in with the
piece of advice I wanted to give.
If you never buy the book, be lucky if you do.
But if you never do, stop worrying about being like that
will kill you and being a project manager and doing
anything. You're not there to be liked.
We're not there to be disliked, but they have to respect what
you do and they will walk all over you.
If they see that you're weak at that, or that you're trying to
be liked, people will be looking at you.
Like when is GM there to stop this person from talking?
I've had that happen where I've let people go a little bit too
long in a class. Okay.
I better get this back on track here.
You might hurt that person's feelings, but as often as not,
one more thing, I've lost track. The number of people who said to
me, yeah, I do talk too much, and then they keep talking.
They recognize it, but they never do anything about it.
Yeah. So I've heard of those.
People do one question one. Kind of parent point to all of
this. Your behavior and success at the
meeting is a microcosm. Fancy word, A representation of
how you're viewed as a project manager?
Yeah, so one of the things people will walk away, not
saying out loud, but thinking to themselves maybe in harmony, is
if this person, male, female, can't run the meeting, how are
they running this project? And I want to point out that
rich set of multi syllabic word, which is micro chasm, that's the
kind of dopey dad humor. Just one guy wrote a review, a
guy who interviewed us, He says it's funny and I thought, who's
the dumbest dad humor? This is funny, but okay, we'll
take it right so. Whatever works.
Right. I think a few things to tease
out of what you both said. I mean, the first thing that I
didn't even consider is everyone's in meetings and
meetings. The representation of meetings
doesn't necessarily mean. What you would probably picture
in your head as people are gathered in a conference room
anymore, right? This to richest point, this is a
meeting and for us to spend so much time in meetings every day
and not have any type of training on how to facilitate
meetings, well, correct. That's mind boggling to me.
I don't know why. That just was an ah ha moment
for me. As you were saying, that area of
communications, people come into the workforce, sometimes they
come in that, like, they bring all the high school habits, but
people come into the workforce with really no idea.
This is the microcosm of the fact that, to use Rich's word
that I think he might have made-up his communications,
people don't know how to communicate well.
They don't know how to respond to e-mail.
They don't respond to Texas. Hey, I thought we're in the
middle of a text conversation. You just appeared for like an
hour and a half, so they don't communicate well.
And then within that, nobody's really told them that running a
meeting was something. Of course you know how to run a
meeting. Anybody knows how to run a
meeting. It's a soft skill.
Rich showed me something interesting.
It's not in a book, but Rich showed me something interesting
about the effect of back-to-back meetings.
Rich. On the brain.
Yeah, What was that?
I didn't. Get a chance to.
It's just the idea that we are going from meeting to meeting to
meeting. And it's the amount of stress in
the brain as measured by science.
Using Mr. I's and CAT scans, I can't remember which, but it was
it was science. If you look at the images of
someone who's gone from a meeting to a meeting to a
meeting to meeting, the stress level is much higher than simply
having a break. And although that isn't in the
book, what is in the book is we talk about the need to have a
break. I mean, I lecture.
I never lectured for more than an hour.
Unless I'm on a podcast and then I, I go for five hours.
I don't know what what happens on a podcast but but seriously,
I, I, I go for an hour. I watch the clock.
I tell my students, remind me we're stopping after an hour.
We're taking 10 minutes for biological reasons and just to
just to let the brain cool off. So yeah, that's that that that
science is there. We mention it, but we don't go
into that, into this idea of back-to-back meetings.
But I do, yeah, that's fascinating myself.
I'm going to look that up after we we hang up today.
But I think one of the things that I love just structurally
about your book is the way that you have kind of laid everything
out. You know, you go through kind of
the key takeaways first, but then you get into kind of the
nittygritty around whatever if you're telling a story around
the the particular. Topic or lesson that you're
trying to pass through to your audience.
But anything where a book feels like it is teaching you right in
a way that you can practically apply to whatever it is you're
doing. What type of meeting that you're
renting or any organization or industry.
I love when books do that, and yours does, and and I love that,
Jim, you did the research and you said there's no really not a
book like this out there. And I know for project managers,
we're hungry for that type of information, right?
Because typically as a PM, you don't often have somebody who's
going to mentor you on how to facilitate great meetings or
build great teams. And that just kind of comes
through time and experience. But just the way that you
thought through how to lay out the information in a way that
makes sense. I'm not surprised, Jim, that
your class, your Weight Watchers class, took it and they ran with
it. They literally took the book
from you. Yeah they were.
I just thought there's a breeze by you know yeah I don't want to
look at this but yeah it's it's interesting because part of the
what we're Rich and I are trying to do as part of the marketing
effort a little secret publishers do a certain amount
of marketing but it's a lot of the onus is on the author so be
it. I was in the contract.
We accept that we're trying to get the book into Barnes and
Noble bookstores and part of that was and they were formed to
fill out which in fact I just sent today is rich knows and it
says you know what's the comparison of the other.
So we had done this homework of the other books and I basically
said if we went up in your store we may be the only one and one
of the few there that actually tells people exactly how to run
a meeting. So we felt it was important to
position that that way and I don't know I I think when we
were writing it I don't think we ever really thought.
I thought I was adding to the nth 100th book about writing
meetings running meetings. There just aren't and certainly
not in the top 20 at Amazon, let's put it that way.
So we felt the nuts and bolts were important and even though
it's the it's a foundational thing, it's not sexy.
One woman came up to me and I think I was telling you and she
was just saying my condo meetings and she only like
trapped me for 5 minutes talking about her condo meeting and I
was like great, great, This is terrific.
And then some other one, I'm an AT project manager.
She's never know what you're going to run into there.
So yeah, I I think it's important that if we can get the
word interestingly, you know we get these sales figures, we're
not off the charts, but somebody bought 70 copies in Asia of the
Kindle book. I have no idea why.
It must have been for like their entire company thought.
That's great. It's it's a Weight Watchers
conference. Yeah, it must.
It must be. I should be doing the Weight
Watchers circuit, huh? Well, I mean, we need to dig in
there a little bit because I think I don't know if either of
you teach international students, but just thinking
about the way you've, right. So thinking about the layout of
the book, how it's written, it's, it's, it's, I think it is
something that is palatable globally, right?
Like people who do have that language barrier or have
challenges in reading English, like some of my international
students do, I give them a little bit more time to kind of
consume the information, but I think in the way that you put
the information out there. I'm not surprised that it's
selling globally. I'm not at all surprised thought
about that. Just Rich has a lot of analysis.
One thing I fight to do all the time is make sure there are no
Americanisms in the book. Even when I was at work recently
at my contract ended about a month ago, I was running
standard operating procedures or somebody else was running them
too. And I'd say take that out.
It's an Americanism. We're working with a French
audience, American audience. So we made sure there were no,
it's easy to write them. It's easy to say them and you'll
find this amusing. A little bit of a diversion.
My team of coaches was made-up of me, another American coach
and a French coach, young woman, and we'd be in meetings
together. I would be the scrum master and
he would say, let's blow that off.
So I typed to her and say blow something off means this, let's
run up the flagpole. Run up the flagpole means that
she'd always thank me because I was he shouldn't been using it.
But when he did or I explained this line to him, so I to her.
So I tried to make sure that no American is in fact I'm working
on it with a company that Rich knows we're we're on a board in
an organization and they're working in a simulation.
Every time I see an American is going to say, I recommend you
take this out. They can do what they want, but
I recommend that you not make it a sign that they don't
understand. But on the international student
front, I've had my fair share. But Rich, that's your meat and
potatoes. Like every day of the week.
Yes, actually. And you've been in my class, I
think we turned the laptop around so you could see the
diversity in the class, and that's a big deal.
Now we do talk about virtual meetings in the book, and one of
the things that I've noticed, and you've probably noticed,
especially as a podcaster. Is that in international That in
a virtual meeting, international people are a little more active
because they can use chat, Their accent isn't a problem, their
pronunciation and isn't a problem.
So it's amazing how much more active my international students
are on the online courses than they are.
And again, courses are meetings, so it's a perfect bit here.
So you should be aware that maybe you want to if you're
running a meeting and there are international participants
online. You know, encourage them to use
the chat as opposed to speaking up because they may be a little
uncomfortable, as Jim said, hearing American colloquialisms,
But also, you know, using expressions from their language
where they if they type it in, they have a chance to, by the
way, hit backspace a couple times and try again, whereas
when you speak the word, it's out there.
Yeah, exactly. And I I think that that's a
great way to kind of portray knowing your audience, which I
believe is one of the things that you you all cover in your
book as well. But I want to, you know, before
I let you both go, I want to go into a little bit of a sneak
peek of a section that I really appreciate because I think,
well, all of it really translates if you've ever been
in a meeting or run a meeting yourself.
But I do love the concept of Billy the Bully.
And and kind of the, the story surrounding that person who you
describe as the the person who derails everything, right.
You come into this meeting, you've got an agenda, you put it
all together, You have the purpose, you're ready, you've
got your goal. You want to leave the meeting
with XY&Z, but then you have Billy the Bully or somebody else
in there that is there and derails the meeting.
I think we've all been there. And I love the story around this
concept. So can you talk a little bit
about, I think you mentioned, Jim, that this was mentioned in
your previous book as well, but can you talk a little bit about
that and then kind of some of the key takeaways that you have
in the book around? Let me let me kick that off only
because I have the image behind me to do this.
So and then I'll turn it right over to Jim.
So you you see here Christina Carlson, our artist that we
hired to do this came up with this idea of showing it this
way. We've had the goblins.
Meeting goblins for a while in our last book, and we added
several in this book. But you see the shadows.
I don't know if you can see this.
There's those of you who are listening.
You should hear the shadows. The idea is that people have
people have alternate personalities.
Sometimes when they enter a meeting, they take on a
different personality. And if you don't believe me,
think about how people's personalities change when they
drive. Right.
If you're driving and someone cuts you off, you may use
language and gestures that you generally would not use if you
had bumped into someone walking on the street now.
Or just just pass someone on the street who might be walking too
fast. You wouldn't say all those nasty
things, right? Well, you see, the shadows
behind me are representing the that personality.
We're not saying people are bad. We're not saying Billy the Bully
is always a bully. But Billy the Bully's
personality comes out in meetings.
So Jim, oh Billy the Bully. So we have a variety of them and
not all. It's just a clarification for
the for the group. We have people who are
interrupters and people who talk too much and people who bully
and people who sidetrack. You believe the bully is a
different animal. It doesn't necessarily mean
he's, I'm beating people up. Although he can come across as
aggressive or he or she can come across as aggressive,
increasingly it can be women too.
So I mean that happens in the business world, if not other
worlds. And So what is Billy the bully,
the kind of person who might try to intimidate it of the people
and whatnot. So the first thing I say is,
I'll remind again, you're largely in charge and you don't
aren't trying to be liked. So I go in with that mentality.
My goal isn't to be like necessarily if Billy is
intimidating people or making them feel uncomfortable and
threatened. And I was talking about what I
might do, and I'd ask Chris to talk about it too, is try to
address this. If not in the group situation,
one of the things is you don't want to humiliate or embarrass
somebody in front of everybody. So it may be a situation where
you're running a meeting. First thing is, if you're
running a meeting and you're only 10 minutes in and it's a
major problem, don't be. Don't say I better wait another
hour. Stop the meeting.
We're going to take a break right now.
Other people wonder if Billy, can I talk to you a little bit?
Other people are privately. Other people are feeling
uncomfortable with your behavior.
What's the issue here? Try to understand the person
where they're coming from. Sometimes it's just like Rich
said, it comes out in a meeting that generally speaking, once
again, all these types of say, I know that I tend to XY&Z now.
I'm not talking about the senior guy or gal here.
The person who. That's tougher.
You go to some of your 3 levels above you and say you may still
want to say that, but you have to couch it differently.
But the person is maybe peer level and maybe even slightly
above you. What's going on here?
Can we address this behavior? You know what's maybe they say
they don't like some particular person.
They don't want to be there, so address it.
Number one. Try to also listen to them, all
of them involved. Listen to the person.
Hear what they say. Sometimes the negative person,
the bully, the talker has something to say.
What are you trying to say, Billy?
Well, you know what? If we send the subversible down
to the Titanic, it's not going to exist anymore.
Oh, have you been trying to say that in my own way?
Yes. So.
And at the end of the day, don't be afraid to report any of these
people to disappear. They really aren't going to like
you. Rich and I have done it before.
But if the person is consistently going to give them
a chance, and if not, they probably know.
I've seen it over and over again.
You go to the boss and says, oh, that's Billy B and Billy, I'll
deal with it. It's a serious issue, so do not
put up with it. It's very, very disruptive.
Rich. Anything to add there on that?
So sometimes Billy just wants the stage, right?
Right. And he's going on and on.
And it could be a combination of some of the other personalities,
these personalities, of course, that we made-up.
But real people are a melange. There we go again, Jim, of all
different personalities. So one of the things that that
someone who's that talkative or directive really wants, it's
just the chance to be in charge, right.
And they want the stage, find out what they want the stage
about and say, look, this is fantastic, We love this energy
that you have. This is something and we'd like
to have a separate meeting or separate conference where this
is the main topic you do that you're almost pulling the,
you're pulling the the energy out of them for this.
Speeches that they're giving at your meeting because oh I'm
going to have a chance. I'm going to have the stage
right. And so if you if, if that's it's
again, it's getting to the root of what's causing that shadow
behavior And if you can get to that root by by having a
one-on-one offline with them and as Jim said you know it's going
to be a little uncomfortable. But guess what, As Jim, I don't
think you said it this time. When you, when you make Billy
like you, you've made. All the other meeting attendees
like you less, so if you're if you're all about being liked,
you actually have a net loss in likedness when you're paying too
much attention to to Billy and and Notice.
That that attention can be offline.
Notice that for this past X amount of time you don't say
anything about game charts or anything.
This is a soft skill as an Arthur.
Rich and I aren't psychologist so we're don't we're not trained
in that I I work with a woman who has clinical depression but
I coach her on project manager. The few times that you came to
me and sort of tried dragging that area said I'm unqualified
to do that. You need to talk to whoever you
talk to about that. I've never experienced it with
her. She's great but I'm unqualified
to do that. So Rich and I and anybody
running me can only go so far. It is not my job to analyze
Billy to change him to coach him or anything just to recognize
that behavior. But there really is a lot of I
think you would agree and that there's a lot of psychology
involved in whether it's running meetings running teams.
People are funny animals. You know and and although we
aren't psychologists we've drawn from books that have and and
researchers who have studied the psychology of meetings.
So there's one book in particular, the the the The
Strange Science of Meetings. Something like that by Can't
remember the author now Rogelberg.
I can't remember Steven
Rogelberg, I believe, and we've drawn a lot from from their
research. So although we're not
psychologists, as Jim said, there's psychology here and it
does require you to to at least learn some of those basics.
And, and it's a great example, there aren't.
There aren't, except maybe in our appendix.
I think in our appendix there's a network diagram right here.
See. Yes, there are some fancy charts
in there. So but that's that's more in the
appendix to help people with the terminology.
But this is a power skills book. PMI would call it a power skills
book and I think it's an amazing power to have to be able to
facilitate meetings, and you should.
We think you should build your skills in facilitating meetings
because you will be called on to facilitate them, like it or not.
Thank thank you both for giving us a glimpse into the contents
of your book. I mean, obviously we didn't want
to give all of the secrets away on this podcast, but we did
share a little bit of a glimpse as to what you can expect, and I
am. So excited for our audience to
pick this book up and and get that practical knowledge that
you're both sharing as part of what we can do to be great
project managers but really project leaders, right.
So thank you both for your time today and your insights and as
as things go, you know time flies when you're having fun.
So I could easily speak to you and we could do a 5 hour podcast
as Rich had originally requested us to do, but as As for today, I
think. I think that will do it for for
all of us in this installment of the Everyday PM podcast.
So let's start with you, Rich. Is there anything that you want
to promote right now outside of the book?
If folks want to continue the conversation with you, where can
they find you online? All of that good stuff?
I'm going to keep it simple. There are things I'd like to
promote but I don't want to take away from the book here.
Certainly connect with me on LinkedIn.
Just you'll find me. I don't think there's that many
rich balls. Mins There are a couple, but I'm
the only one that's partnered to Jim on these books.
We do have a website called project meetings dot US kind of
the dot is meant to be read as our project meetings are us and
so that that has has resources and templates that go along with
the book. I'd like to thank Tim
Clappenborg and Cam Judge of the publishers of BEP for taking us
on, and they seem to be happy with us so far.
And. That's it.
Sign up for classes at Boston University and I have 0 to
promote. So yeah, thanks for having us.
That's pretty much it. I guess I would leave a rather
than promotion. One piece of advice is be
largely in charge. Either you run the meeting or
the meeting runs you. That's great.
I love that. Well, thank you so much both of
you for your time today. I appreciate you joining this
meeting, our meeting on the Everyday PM Podcast.
Folks, pick up this book. Great meetings, build great
teams. It's going to be a game changer
for you, I do think just because of everything that we've
discussed in this podcast episode.
So that will do it for this installment of the Everyday PM
Podcast. You can also continue the
conversation with me. You can find me on LinkedIn and
Campia. Go to the YouTube channel to
watch the visual awesome visual version of this podcast there
youtube.com/andcampia. And if you want to find the
Everyday PM, just search for it on any of your podcasting
platforms. It's there.
The Everyday PM is there for you.
And we look forward to hearing your feedback on this particular
episode as well. So that will do it for both of
us. Or all of us, all three of us.
And we hope to catch you on the next episode.
And until next time, take care.