Strategic Project Management Made Simple, 2nd Edition

10Managing Your Inner Game

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself!

—Leonardo da Vinci

You may have the perfect plan, but your ability to deliver it relies heavily on your ability to direct, lead, and inspire. These skills are not rooted in your technical skills, but in your mindset and “heart-set”—your inner game, if you will.

During every project journey, there will be people and events that trigger negative emotions in you. How you handle yourself in those situations can make the difference between a harmonious project and one that frustrates everyone involved.

What strategies are available to remain calm, centered, and productive, regardless of the noise around us? How can you more easily step into higher performance states? How can you leverage the internal mental and emotional assets you already have in order to handle any personal and interpersonal challenges you may face?

This chapter explores these topics and offers strategies that will not only make you a better project leader, but a better human being.

Leverage Your Internal Operating System

Here is a proposition you can test for yourself: To better manage projects, you need to better manage other people. To better manage other people, you need to better manage yourself. To better manage yourself, you need to better manage your Internal Operating System, or your IOS.

The human mind has been compared to a highly sophisticated computer, but it does not come with a manual. Using a vastly ...