Be a Project Motivator: Unlock the Secrets of Strengths-Based Project Management

How do project managers achieve spectacular results when they have no direct authority over their team members? Here's a foolproof process for engaging your team: one that begins with engaging yourself. Ruth Pearce knows project management from the inside out. She knows the best project managers use their influence to engage their teams--and with that engagement comes motivation and commitment to the projects and to each other. Read Be a Project Motivator and watch your project teams thrive." --Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The New One Minute Manager® and Servant Leadership in Action What you have in your hands is the first project management book to take the latest research on character strengths - and with sublime skill, wisdom, and experience - integrate strengths seamlessly for project managers. Said simply: Ruth gives us "the how" of human motivation. As a result, project managers and their clients will be soaring after they read this book. --Dr. Ryan M. Niemiec, author of Character Strengths Interventions and Mindfulness and Character Strengths, and education director of the global nonprofit, VIA Institute on Character. "Ruth is a master at connecting and engaging teams--and getting projects done. Every person who works on teams (and who doesn't?) needs to read this book." --Megan McDonough, co-founder and CEO, Wholebeing Institute Successful project managers must engage and motivate others to achieve complex goals. Ruth Pearce shows how behavior, language, and attitudes affect engagement and how leveraging character strengths can help improve relationships, increase innovation, and build higher-functioning teams. This focus on character strengths--such as bravery, curiosity, fairness, gratitude, and humor--can help project managers recognize and cultivate the things that are best in themselves and others. Many project managers do not have the authority to direct the activities of people on their teams--they can only influence them. The most influential people succeed by focusing less on themselves and their message and more on others. They pay attention, they are brave, they are vulnerable, they are curious, and they look for and acknowledge the things that are important about and to the other person. And they model the behavior that they want to see. This book tells you how. Pearce provides tools and frameworks for building a culture of appreciation, understanding character strengths, mapping leadership qualities, understanding learning styles, identifying team roles, and executing plans. She also explores the factors that contribute to conflict and tensions, as well as strategies for getting through difficult times. We see these tools and techniques in action through "Maggie," a project manager who is struggling to motivate her team. Each chapter concludes with reflective questions to make the ideas stick and with key strategies for success.