Adversity is a fact of life. We never quite know when it will come but we know that eventually it will. As project managers, we can monitor risks but there may also come a risk situation where we need to plough through with all the ingenuity, skills, and determination that we have.
Take a moment to think about adversity or about a specific situation where you faced adversity. You are likely to experience, again, some strong emotions. Adversity produces emotions inside us such as fear, pride, determination, anger, surprise, sadness.
The key to understand here is that we can alter our emotional state to the positive depending on how we react to the adversity. We can take on a positive attitude that will help us to navigate the difficulties of the situation and come out all right on the other side.
When we allow ourselves to think that “adversity is adventure”, we can communicate a very positive outlook and enable ourselves to cope and lead the way through the adversity. And we cannot lead others through the adversity until we have gained control or ourselves and our own emotions.
If we communicate, through our words and actions, to our team that “adversity is adventure”, it releases a whole bunch of positive energy. By taking and sharing this attitude, we can get our team to join, think creatively, and come up with solutions to the problem. We can also get our team to implement the solutions with positive expectations and enthusiasm.
Communicating with stakeholders under adversity is equally as daunting but can be handled with a positive attitude. Thinking of adversity as adventure, stakeholders can sense our positivity and will have much greater confidence in us. In fact, they will be glad we are shouldering the challenge, and will probably offer to help in any way they can.
What adversity are you facing right now? Does it change you attitude to think of “adversity as adventure”?
This post is part of the series: PM Guideposts
A series of four articles on PM guideposts or short little phrases that are power packed with wisdom to keep you and your team focused and on track. These are meant to be practiced in the middle of the day, middle of the week, or middle of the project.
