“It’s Your Fault…Conflict in Project Management”

“Project management is great – except for all those people.” “The problem I have with projects is ‘politics’/’difficult people’/’those other people’/'people changing their mind’/’not taking responsibility’ ”, and so forth. 

How often does this come out?  I hear it not only from early-career technical people, which is maybe expected, but also from mid-career professionals in management roles, including PMP’s.

Listening and getting to know them better, I generally find that a root cause of this attitude tends to be, in a word, “conflict”.

Today, most of these professionals understand that conflict is inevitable at work and that it can be hugely helpful, They know the TKI five-styles construct: Force, Accommodate, Confront, Collaborate, Avoid.  They know that they can adopt a different “style” of conflict in any given situation, and that the one they adopt can be usefully informed by TKI.

That said, among many early- and mid-career professionals, despite their knowledge and awareness of conflict styles, their  attitude towards conflict remains negative. 

Working with such colleagues over the years, I have found a range of practices to be helpful. Based on that experience, here is a mindset that I heartily recommend for early and mid-career project managers: if there is conflict in your project, “it is your fault”. Here, I am quoting the “top tip” set out in this 2021 video. The author and presenter , Mike Clayton, goes on to explain: “Your job as a project manager is not to be right.” “It is to get the job done”.

What a helpful mindset! If, in a project you are managing or responsible for, there is conflict, then “it is your fault” I have found that when professionals with an aversion to conflict really take on this mindset, it tends to inform and inspire their own practice, long term, for the benefit of themselves and for the benefit of all those “other people”, who had previously been so problematic.