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This Interview with Dave Cornelius was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.

5 Saturdays (https://www.5saturdays.org) is a program created to support non-profits and other organizations with outreach initiatives into the local community. It teaches life-skills to high school students using project management approaches from the Agile movement.

The program emerged from curriculum created by Dr. Dave Cornelius while partnering with Holman Community Development Corporation in Los Angeles to introduce technology as a profession to urban high school students.

The program achieved success, as students were able to explore career-focused areas such as information technology (IT) and grasp life skills that included: creative and critical thinking, effective communications, Agility using Scrum and Kanban, and root cause analysis using "5 Whys".

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This Interview with Kristy Tan Neckowicz and Dev Ramcharan was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.

In their presentation, Kristy Tan Neckowicz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristytanpmp) and Dev Ramcharan reviewed harnessing leadership skills necessary to advance your PM career and shine in your role, how to hone your interpersonal and communications skills to manage teams and stakeholders and discussed ways to realize the critical importance of coaching and mentoring in your career, to demonstrate value to your organization.

And in our interview we open the presentation slides and review the following parts: Why you should care about interpersonal skills, behavior styles and motivators, emotional intelligence, the emotional wake, organizational culture and politics, and we close with the all important look at conflict management and coaching.

Please visit https://yourtalentatwork.com to learn more about Kristy and https://www.linkedin.com/in/dev-ramcharan-pmp-csm-cctc-7506771 for Dev.

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This Interview with Joseph Flahiff, was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.

During the conference, Joseph handed out hundreds of buttons that read "Agile is not a Noun". Instead, he says during the interview, Agile is a state of being. And that was one of the reasons why he wrote his new book Being Agile in a Waterfall World: A practical Guide for Complex Organizations.

In the interview we focus a lot on the "Mental Shifts" section from the book. You will learn about Command & Control, Competitive Advantages, Optimized Systems and also Why Agility is important.

Joseph closes the interview by giving us his top 3 tips on how to more forward in being Agile. For those who want more in-depth information, why don't you participate in one of Joseph's upcoming classes with the same title as the book: Being Agile in a Waterfall World: A practical Guide for Complex Organizations.. (We are a compensated affiliate and receive a commission if you click and register for the class.)

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This Interview with Frank Saladis, PMP, PMI Fellow, was recorded at the PMI Global Congress 2014 in Phoenix, Arizona.

In his congress paper, Frank describes Positive Leadership in Project Management as follows:

Despite the effort placed on planning, coordinating, and integrating the many components of a project, the project manager’s typical day is filled with challenge, Each day includes an unending stream of email, deadline issues, some frustrating events (and people), conflicting view points from stakeholders, and demands for changes at very inopportune times. We can also find within a typical day in the life of a project, some successes and victories (and maybe an occasional thank-you or other form of recognition. At the end of the day it is sometimes difficult to remember what actually happened and what was accomplished. The activities and accomplishments of the day are often blurred by the thoughts associated with the preparations and steps that must be taken to prepare for and begin another set of adventures just waiting for their chance to occur at the start of the next morning.

Dealing with this intense mode of operation on a regular basis places a very heavy demand on the abilities of a project manager and there is a real need to find some way to balance the competing elements that go along with the job. This balance extends to one’s personal and family life also. The question then becomes “How can we (as project managers) find that balance?” In the book, First Things First by Roger A. Merrill and Stephen Covey, a suggestion is offered: “Know the direction in which you intend to go and your goals on a personal and professional level.” In other words, a clear sense of direction should be defined for your personal life as well as your chosen profession. To a practicing project manager, that advice should sound very familiar. In fact, it is essential for project success, and something many of our guests on our leadership podcasts have spoken about. Without direction and a set of objectives, how will we ever know where we are going? How can we lead a team if we don’t have goals to guide ourselves and our team? There is no question that goals and purpose must be defined upfront, refined, and then communicated with high level of energy and enthusiasm. Without this clarity and sense of purpose, we cannot effectively lead our team, our organization, or our own lives. This is where positive leadership becomes a critical factor.