Interviewed by Software Development magazine
This month's People and Projects newsletter includes an interview with me. I was delighted to be asked to talk about coaching, management and team behaviour, and I hope that some of what I said resonates with other people's experiences.
One of the questions that I was asked that didn't appear in the final version of the interview was about being a father, and since I don't feel that I write enough about that aspect of myself I've posted it here.
How has becoming a father affected the way you think about project management? And how do your project management skills affect the way you think about parenting?
I don't think that the two are closely related. The focus of project management is achieving difficult goals through team work, whereas parenting is much more about giving children the confidence and skills that they need to comprehend and survive in the world. I would actually say that parenting and coaching have much more in common: both are about trying to develop individuals by passing on concepts and behaviours. (That said, my ability to juggle several different problems at work certainly increased when my children were small and I was juggling more often at home!) Some project managers are willing and able to take on a coaching role for themselves, among all the other roles their organisation expects of them, but in my experience that sort of manager is scarce.