The Psychology Behind Positive Outcomes
👋 Welcome to The Influential Project Manager, a weekly newsletter covering the essentials of successful project leadership.
Today’s Overview:
As a project manager, you are responsible for leading your team to success. It is not just about scheduling and deadlines, but also about your mindset and habits. Your job is to bring a vision into reality. Learning ways to change your mindset can completely transform your career, relationships, and your entire life.
Effective project managers have a common denominator - a growth mindset. Project managers who adopt a growth mindset build a culture of continuous improvement and learning. They inspire their teams to push boundaries, innovate, and learn from their mistakes.
Through consistent practice of these seven mindset shifts, understanding the differences between fixed and growth mindsets, and committing to the process of change, you can rise from being a good project manager to becoming an exceptional leader - embodying what we call 'The Influential Project Manager.'
This Week’s Newsletter is Brought to You by Disperse.io!
Experience the future of construction with Disperse.io! We’re excited to introduce a groundbreaking construction tech solution that boosts productivity like never before. Disperse is a company I admire because they're committed to removing technological barriers, not creating them.
Meet their latest innovation, "Lookahead." This tool revolutionizes planning by eliminating the tedious tasks of data gathering and manual input.
With Lookahead, your weekly planning becomes a seamless workflow. Simply drag and drop pre-configured task sequences onto the dates and spaces where your subcontractors should be working. This intuitive approach accelerates your planning process by at least 4x and significantly reduces unnecessary communication.
Ready to transform your planning process? Book a call directly at https://www.disperse.io/products/lookahead. Mention that you discovered Lookahead via 'The Influential Project Manager Newsletter’ and enjoy a 10% discount on your first 3 months. Discover how Disperse's Lookahead can make your construction planning effortless and efficient.
The Psychology Behind Positive Outcomes
As a project manager, you are responsible for leading your team to success.
However, to achieve that success, you must first manage your time, energy, decisions, and reactions effectively. These are all important aspects of project management that can make or break your project. It is not just about scheduling and deadlines, but also about your mindset and habits.
It’s our attitudes, our assumptions, and our expectations — the stories we tell ourselves and believe. It's more powerful than we often give it credit for, and it acts as the cornerstone of our success and opportunities.
For the most part, every interaction, action, and thought will improve when you improve your mindset.
The Influential Project Manager perceives challenges as opportunities to learn, grow, and innovate. They maintain a positive attitude, even in the face of setbacks, and persist until the project's completion.
Your job is to bring a vision into reality. Learning ways to change your mindset can completely transform your career, relationships, and your entire life.
Today’s piece shares how the right mindset can shape your journey, influence outcomes, and transform challenges into stepping stones towards your desired outcomes.
What is a Mindset?
Your mindset is your set of beliefs, values and attitudes about yourself and the world around you. These beliefs shape how you experience the world.
Is life happening to you or is it happening for you?
Do you feel your life is within your control or destined to be a certain way?
Do you believe in personal growth or are you content to stay in your comfort zone?
When faced with adversity or failure, do you persevere and bounce back, or tend to give up easily?
Reflecting on these questions can provide insights into your current mindset and perspective.
The 7 Ways to Shift Your Thinking
If you control your thoughts, you control yourself. Your mindset is like a pair of glasses that colors how you see the world.
If you’re mindset is not serving you well, can you shift it?
Yes! You can definitely shift your mindset. In fact, the commonality among successful people is their ability to change their mindset when required.
Here are seven strategies to help you transition to a more successful way of thinking:
1. From Emotional Weakness to Emotional Control
Success isn't defined by the absence of adversity, but by our response to it. Successful project managers don't allow the external events to control their internal state or their outcomes.
They understand that although we can't control every situation, we can control our response to it.
One of my favorite frameworks to summarize this idea is:
While events are often out of our control, our responses are within our control, and they directly shape the outcomes.
This perspective places you firmly in charge of their emotions, mindset, and lives.
2. From a Closed Mindset to an Open Mindset
The world is much more complex than any of our narrow observation windows would allow us to believe. A large percentage of the information we accept without questioning often turns out to be completely incorrect or misguided.
Strive to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about yourself and your certainties.
You can either choose to (A) cling to the notion that your view is the absolute truth or (B) embrace a degree of humility about your views and open your mind to change.
Path B is to broaden and improve our view of reality by acquiring new and better information. We should all choose Path B.
3. From Negative Thinking to Positive Thinking
Positive thinking is the foundation of resilience. Studies show that positive thinking is associated with greater happiness, decreased anxiety and improved physical health – all of which can help you on the journey to achieve your goals.
Even in the face of challenges and setbacks, maintaining a positive mindset can inspire and motivate your team, building a productive and harmonious work environment.
The best part is that positivity breeds positivity; when you adopt a glass-half-full attitude, it will start to guide everything you do. The truth is success doesn’t automatically bring happiness — but a positive frame of mind will invite success into your life.
4. From Expectations to Appreciation
Shifting from expectations to appreciation can significantly reduce life's disappointments.
Rather than always expecting more - from the world, others, and ourselves - appreciating what we have allows us to be present in our lives and enjoy the process.
5. From Fearful Thinking to Confident Thinking
Fear of failure can be a major roadblock for project managers, preventing them from reaching their full potential and leading their teams to success.
Confidence is the fuel that drives leadership and decision-making. It's not about knowing everything, but about trusting yourself to find or come up with the solutions needed.
To develop confidence, you need to take action, even if you might make mistakes. Growing involves taking risks and being open to failure. Keep in mind, if you're not moving forward, you're essentially failing already. So, you're better off taking a chance.
PS: It’s never as bad as you think it is:
6. Big Changes to Small Adjustments
To shift your mindset, stop looking at life as an all-or-nothing situation. Oftentimes changing your mindset happens in small increments.
Sometimes all it takes to change your mindset forever is the smallest, two-millimeter shift in the way you see the world.
7. A Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset
Effective project managers have a common denominator - a growth mindset:
Recognizing the signs of a fixed mindset in a project manager is crucial for growth. These indicators may include:
Only taking a well-trodden path
Following every process, irrespective of value
Not being able to deal with feedback
Being protective of their brand
Feeling threatened by others
A growth mindset, on the other hand, views setbacks as learning opportunities, resilience as a strength, and challenges as gateways to development.
Project managers who adopt a growth mindset build a culture of continuous improvement and learning. They inspire their teams to push boundaries, innovate, and learn from their mistakes.
On the other hand, a fixed mindset - which views obstacles as impassable barriers and is paralyzed by the fear of failure - can limit one's potential and hinder success.
The journey from a fixed to a growth mindset requires a shift in thinking, often through small yet significant adjustments. It's not about massive changes but about embracing these subtle shifts that can impact your professional life and personal growth.
Every journey begins with a single step. Through consistent practice of these seven mindset shifts, you can rise from being a good project manager to becoming an exceptional leader - embodying what we call 'The Influential Project Manager.'
How to Change Your Mind
"The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size." - Albert Einstein
What have you changed your mind on recently?
This simple question is often quite difficult to answer. We find it easy to acquire new ideas, but challenging to overwrite old ones that have been established as "truths" in our minds.
What would you do if you knew you could achieve success just by learning how to change your mindset?
There are 3 steps we can all take to change our minds in order to view our work more clearly and unlock new growth:
1. Recognize Perspective Blindness
Our understanding of the world is often limited by our unique viewpoint, a concept referred to as 'perspective blindness.'
Egocentric Bias says that we convince ourselves of the accuracy of our own personal perspective—that we view ourselves as unimpeachable—and therefore struggle to acknowledge any perspectives or data that may alter our understanding of the world.
Acknowledging this bias is the first step towards change. We must remember that the world is more complex than our individual viewpoints allow us to perceive.
2. Embrace ‘System 2’ Thinking
In his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow," Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes two types of thinking: System 1 and System 2 thinking.
System 1 operates quickly, making intuitive snap judgments.
System 2 allows for slower, more deliberate thought processes.
While System 1 is our natural state, leading to perspective blindness, System 2 thinking is what gives us a strategic, proactive, and resilient approach.
It requires being mindful of our biases, assumptions, mental models, emotions, stress, and energy levels - all elements that influence our decisions and habits.
3. Practice Empathy: “Seek to Understand”
Highly Effective Project Managers "Seek To Understand."
One of the most valuable skills in life is being able to see another person's perspective:
If you're going to someone's house, think about how it might feel to be the host.
If you're creating a product, spend as much time as possible thinking like the customer.
When discussing timelines with trade partners, think about their challenges, remembering the balancing act they perform with multiple projects.
If you're reviewing blueprints, think about the architect's vision that birthed them.
In customer interactions, imagine yourself as the end-user, considering their expectations and desires.
Recognize that this understanding requires deliberate effort, a shift from System 1 to System 2 thinking.
The more clearly you understand the viewpoint of your trade partner, designer, client, or coworker, the better positioned you are to find a solution.
By implementing these three strategies, you can start transform your mindset and unlock new avenues for growth.
Changing your mindset is not an overnight process, but with consistent practice, it will become an integral part of your professional and personal life.
Final Takeaways
In conclusion, ambitious construction management professionals should prioritize cultivating a growth mindset to unlock greater success in their careers and project outcomes.
By understanding the differences between fixed and growth mindsets, recognizing your own tendencies, and committing to the process of change, you can reap the benefits of consistent, compounding growth.
Until next week,
Kyle Nitchen
Thanks for reading! Want to work together?
📣 Want your product or service featured in this newsletter?
Sponsor 'The Influential Project Manager' and directly engage our dedicated community of 2,000+ construction pros. They trust our weekly insights to boost leadership and project success.
☎ 1-on-1 Coaching
Are you interested in diving deeper into a particular topic or strategy? Book time with me for a 1:1 coaching or strategy session.
🎙 Interviews
Occasionally I guest appear on podcast shows to discuss leadership, construction project management, and continuous improvement. If you have a show and interested in interviewing me, feel free to get in touch.
📧 Support this Newsletter
The Influential Project Manager articles will remain free, but if you find this work valuable, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber. As a paid subscriber, you’ll help support this work.
🎁 Refer Friends, Earn Rewards!
You're just 3 referrals away from unlocking my Construction Management, Lean, & IPD Resources ebook!