"I’m Over Budget?!”: Mastering Difficult Conversations

Let’s face it - every project isn’t perfect. You make the perfect project plan, you execute with excitement, and before you know it you have 20% of the budget remaining with only 50% of the work complete. At first thought, you may want to ignore the overage and cross your fingers that somehow everything will be just fine. You may also want to try and cut some corners internally to stay off the clients radar. While transparency is a major component of project management, especially in agile and lean methodologies, it’s not always the easiest. As project managers, fear can take control of our decisions to communicate effectively with our clients. Fear clouds our ability to be forthcoming with issues as they arise, focus on moving forward with viable solutions, and ultimately negatively impacts respect and relationships.

In this session we will learn about:

• Identifying fear and overcoming it
• Having empathy
• Creating and maintaining healthy transparency
• Formulating the right approach to communication (solutions driven approach)
• Gaining client respect as a professional consultant before, during, and after difficult conversations

In addition to the presentation, the session will facilitate an open discussion so we can share our experiences and learn from one another.

This session is ideal for beginner project managers.