Coaching Tips for PMOs

The following tips were given to me while I was assessing Coaching, as a possible extension to my current skill set:

• Communication – coaching is a series of conversations with your client, so it makes sense to develop the skills to interact effectively.
• Be willing to learn – people who love success love to learn more about being effective. Your willingness to set an example with this inspires your clients.
• Be willing to unlearn – sometimes what we’ve done in the past isn’t going to work for us if we want to move forward, so our willingness to undo poor habits allows progress.
• Goal setting – not many people know how to do this effectively, and once it is learned, the client can really accelerate their results. And it starts with you setting and achieving some goals for you!
• Effective listening – the client’s friends and family want us to ‘be happy’, which can sometimes make it difficult to really listen to their challenge. By learning effective listening skills we give the client the space to explore their challenge in such a way that they can determine a way forward.
• Personal Effectiveness – a big part of why a client hires a coach is because they get insights and solutions that they wouldn’t have got by themselves – and that’s why it’s so important to learn how to be personally effective.

We can apply these to all walks of life and subject matter. Let’s take a look to see how we could apply these to PMO Implementation, Continuous Improvement and Management:

• Communication – This is very important, you need to effectively communicate to all your stakeholders (PM Community, Vendors/Suppliers, Senior Executives, Governance Boards, End Users, Industry bodies, etc.
• Be willing to learn – Learn from our own lessons, but also learn from others lessons and experiences. We should always be learning new ways of doing things, you wont always accept them or find that they work for you but it may just confirm you are doing things the best way for you right now. This is integral to continuous improvement.
• Be willing to unlearn – The same as before but putting aside the stuff we find detrimental or useless.
• Goal setting – PMO’s all have KPI’s but try to add some targets around learning and continuous improvement of staff and processes.
• Effective listening – We can use this in PMO’s during status meetings or gathering requirements or Risk and Issue workshops, listen to what is being said, but also what is not being said!
• Personal Effectiveness – Really understand your role and the responsibilities that go with it. Master these and do the bets you can, if we are effective in PMO’s the support and belief in them will follow. Also being efficient will help reduce costs.