The secret ingredient for power skills – a pinch of neuroscience

Why describe neuroscience as the secret for power skills?

Some figures make you sit up, others stop you in your tracks.

At a current investment of $20 trillion per year on major projects, we are ‘flushing $13 trillion down the drain. 

Practitioners find people problems more challenging to resolve than technical problems – by a factor of 6 to 1: people issues, 84.8%, technical project issues 15.2%

These, from a new book, Gorilla in the Cockpit, made me do both.

Many project professionals and the professional bodies know things need improving, and we’ve seen significant changes in recent years. But there’s loads more we could do with a pinch of neuroscience to reduce the costs associated with people issues, and to make project delivery less stressful and more reliable at the same time. I explain how in this article.

Take PMI (Project Management Institute) for example. PMI updated its talent triangle which symbolizes the ‘ideal skill set for project managers’ in 2022. The new triangle includes ‘power’ skills, aka ‘soft’ or interpersonal skills.

 

The new triangle represents a huge shift when you remember that the project world has been focused on another triangle: the iron triangle of scope, time, and cost, for decades.

 

 

Why power skills not people skills? 

My preference is to talk about people skills. Why does PMI opt for a new label, power skills, instead? PMI explains the new label is necessary to reflect ‘the value they bring to project professionals, teams, and organizations’

By talking about power skills, PMI indirectly challenges the assumptions and prejudices that go with labels like ‘soft’, ‘interpersonal’ or ‘people’ skills. It’s an acknowledgement that the project profession has always and continues to undervalue the human aspects of project delivery.

I suspect it’s quite a clever move. I’ve always found the notion of ‘soft’ skills profoundly unhelpful. It’s very sticky, and is frequently used in a dismissive, pejorative way to cover everything to do with relating to and interacting with others.

And this is despite the fact there is nothing soft about them. Many project leaders find them incredibly difficult to master!

The cost of undervaluing the people aspects  

There’s a huge cost associated with undervaluing the people aspects of project delivery.

Let’s go back to Gorilla in the Cockpit. The book’s authors, Vip Vyas and Dr Thomas Zweifel, expand the headline statistics:

We know that a full 65% of all mega projects fail. Either they go over budget or time or both. Or they don’t meet their objectives. At the current investment of $20 trillion per year in major projects this would be like flashing $13 trillion down the drain.

They go on to highlight:

  • the crucial task of project delivery

Practitioners find turning around the people issues about six times more challenging than resolving technical problems. In other words, people, capability and culture issues dwarf technical project issues by a factor of 6 to 1: people issues, 84.8%, technical project issues 15.2%.

  • and the paradox

while people drive projects, the development of project professionals is heavily biased towards processes and systems.

Evidence like this proves we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand by continuing to pretend people skills are unimportant. It also begs the question ‘how can we best address this?’

How can we address the paradox?

With power skills, PMI has come up with an answer. However, I don’t think it’s the most effective one. I’ll explain why I say this in a moment. Let’s stay with the paradox for now.

Like Vyas and Zweifel, I’ve been aware of the paradox for many years. I could see the blind spot. But knowing how the human brain works, I didn’t want to be judgmental and join the numerous authors and researchers telling the project profession these failure rates are far too high.

Judgement typically falls on deaf ears. Besides, my training has taught me: people behave as they do for very good reasons – even if, at times, the reasons are hard for an outsider to fathom.

People behave as they do for very good reasons

When writing my book, Neuroscience for Project Success, I was very curious about the imbalance in professional training. Things fell into place when I considered other professions.

You wouldn’t ask a doctor to do a diagnosis without an understanding of physiology, or a linguist to do a translation without a basic grasp of grammar. But here we are, asking project professionals to deliver huge projects, with huge people impacts without a real understanding of why people behave as they do.

That was it, the Aha moment: – historically there hasn’t been a robust model for explaining why people behave as they do. (Maybe the idea of ‘soft’ skills comes from the lack of ‘hard’, first principles to grasp?)

Either way, this is no longer the case. Neuroscience research has forged ahead in recent years and a robust model now exists. We in the project profession need to sit up and pay attention.

Power skills provide an answer, but it’s not the most effective one

Power skills are brought to the fore in the 2021 report Narrowing the Talent Gap, from PMI and PwC. The connection between power skills and project success is explored in, Power Skills: Redefining Project Success, PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2023 report which lists fourteen power skills.

You’ve got to agree – fourteen skills is too many to get your head around quickly!

Don’t be disheartened, the same report simplifies the challenge by identifying the four ‘most critical power skills for fulfilling organizational objectives’: communication, problem-solving, collaborative leadership, and strategic thinking.

Other commentators have taken issue with the research methods used to develop the list of power skills. I don’t want to enter that debate. I’ve got a bigger fish to fry.

The fact that PMI has put power skills on its talent triangle in recognition of the need to address the paradox of project delivery is hugely significant. I just wish they had known to add the neuroscience as well!

Neuroscience – the secret for power skills

I describe neuroscience as the secret ingredient because it:

  • grounds the ‘soft’ world of people, capability, and culture in hard science, and
  • allows us to make more rapid progress in equipping project professionals with the vital, and missing skills to address 85% of the problems they encounter

Let’s start with a diagram from Neuroscience for Project Success. This explains why people behave as they do and illustrates how emotions and behaviors change as our Thinking brain goes offline.

We need our Thinking brains online if we want to collaborate, be creative, motivate others or learn really well. You can find a more detailed explanation of how this happens in this video.

The same video introduces a neuroscience framework to understand:

  • what takes our Thinking brain offline,
  • how to get our Thinking brain more online, and
  • how getting our Thinking brain more online links to emotional intelligence

Essentially, as you learn to get your Thinking Brain more online, you increase your emotional intelligence and start to build PMI’s four critical power skills in an integrated way.

You’ll also start to see progress on the other ten power skills.

The same neuroscience framework can help project professionals work out how to address many of the cultural issues that give them so much grief. For example, this second article shows how systemic stress drives poor performance.

I know I’m making a bold claim when I describe neuroscience as the secret ingredient. But I don’t think it’s outlandish. Just look at what experienced project professionals are saying.

Neuroscience makes it very easy to understand ‘why people behave as they do’ in a project context. It builds your emotional intelligence, improves the quality of your decision-making, and ensures a sense of clarity informs both.

Stephen Slessor, Managing Director – Galliford Try Environment

I think it is time to confess that what I once referred to as Psychobabble may be the keys to the Kingdom when it comes to understanding why people behave the way they do. This could change EVERYTHING … If I can be convinced, I know you can.“

Lee Lambert. Founder PMP

When a self-confessed cynic like Lee Lambert, who has grown up in the world of the iron triangle, talks about ‘the keys to the kingdom’, and says ‘this could change EVERYTHING’ – it should make you curious to find out more about the secret for power skills. Does it?

 

Photo by Dino Reichmuth on Unsplash