Introduction

There is no denying that mere talk of a project manager brings about a vision of a stress bunny in a chaotic world.

Too many project managers believe it is normal to be stressed out by their projects and do not believe they can run their project(s) without stress.

When the person running the project is over stressed, that pillar of control starts to falter. Areas of the project follow suit and the very thing that the PM feared, starts happening. Project failures are still uncomfortably high and the number of PMs experiencing high levels of stress is still increasing.

When there are increasingly more articles providing advice on reducing stress in the workplace and specifically for project managers, why is the situation not getting better?

The Problem

Before exploring why things are not getting better, let’s go back to the problem itself.

Project Managers I have worked with, listened to, read from and generally been aligned with in recent years seem to have an expectance that they are going to be stressed by their project(s). They believe they can sustain the stressful day to day expectations throughout the entire project.

Even if the project is just about held together through to the final close, it is believed to be an expected feeling that breathing out now is fine as “we have delivered”. However, this is no way to run your working life. As a project manager you need to feel on top of things and that you are acting like an orchestra conductor, bringing in relevant sections of the team at the right time in a controlled manner to produce harmonious delivery.

Projects have a lot of moving parts and typically the key stakeholders want delivery as quickly as possible. This creates an expectation for the Project Manager to do a lot of activities at all times.

So, who can blame them for getting stressed under these conditions?

The various polls and studies are not just still showing uncomfortably high percentages of PMs experiencing too much stress in their projects, but this number is increasing. (https://www.apm.org.uk/news/more-project-managers-experiencing-stress-at-work-new-survey-by-apm-finds/) With the number of project managers ever on the increase, if everyone accepts this as the norm, this will mean even more people being stressed out by their work.

Project failures are still at high levels across the board for the same reasons they were failing 10 years ago. The written causes are now, however, including over stressed project managers.

At the outset of the project when the expectation is set for the PM to do all activities all of the time, the PM has no cards to politely stand firm, push back, re-negotiate or say “No”.  You do need to create some cards though at the early stage to give the senior stakeholders confidence you have this project and it is under control, even if it may be a new way of working for them.

Nearly 20 years ago I joined a company on a contract PM role to organise and deliver a wide scale project in a very short period of three months as part of a new framework the firm had won. I still remember my first all day progress meeting, that was held every Thursday (I know, I have other articles on reporting so I won’t get into this right now). The stakeholders went through every aspect of every delivery as a checklist. They had the expectation that the relatively small team would work on every single item all at the same time. That was the plan, and they were quite chuffed with their plan.

Needless to say, at the following week’s progress day I presented an actual plan that had all dependencies mapped and recorded, and all resources balanced etc, showing delivery within the three months but with the team allocated appropriately. It was the first time anyone had pushed back against this “everything all at once” approach. It became the default for all contracts within that framework.

This was proof that with the right ammunition, you can change the expectation on the PM from the start of the project.

The Symptoms

Before moving on to resolving the problem head on, let’s look at the typical things that stress Project Managers: This is not an exhaustive list, but you should be able to recognise most of the following:

• Constantly worrying about something being late or missed
• The final project go live deadline being missed
• Missing a key deadline coming up
• Not having the highlight report out by the expected date (and time)
• The Project Management Board not going well and the PM being criticised for it
• Being late for a meeting
• Being unprepared for a meeting
• Not wanting to go to a meeting
• One or more project resource not delivering what was expected and/or when it was expected
• The quality of someone’s work not being adequate
• Keeping the project plan up to date
• Keeping on top of the RAIDD
• How to start the project off on the right footing
• Over-spending the project budget
• Ensuring everyone in the project organisation is up to date on the latest position and activities
• Having missed something, or something being unexpectedly added that will cause delay and/or more spend
• An estimate being wildly inaccurate
• Project teams not bonding and working together
• Project team not having trust in you as the PM
• Hiding the true picture in the hope that you can resolve it before a key stakeholder finds out (please never ever do this)

The Resolution

As mentioned earlier, there are a growing number of resources for a Project Managers to seek help about alleviating the stress that comes with their role.

Susan Masden focuses her advice on the four ingredients that lead to wellbeing in general, namely Resilience, Positivity, Attention and Generosity in her article How to increase your wellbeing as a project manager. These are great practices to get into to enable a more rounded version of yourself as a Project Manager.

Carmen Campos in her article, The Ultimate Guide to Managing Stress as a Project Manager, provides additional tips to help you manage yourself and your projects with as much ease as possible. The tips are all on the lines of general traits you should have or practices to try and you definitely should try these out.

Maya Kirianova in her article, The art of stress-free Project Management, the title alone caught my eye as this is right up my street. Not just managing stress but getting rid of it altogether. Maya starts by looking at where PM’s stresses come from and dives into the effect poor practices can have on your stress levels. She also includes some very useful short examples to help with recognition.

Dave Waller’s short APM article Project Management can be stressful – don’t forget to look out for yourself, brings into the equation how to spot the signs and then nipping it in the bud early.

Every source I read provides more and more advice on how to manage the stress by looking at yourself and how by improving your PM practices you can do this.

So much to read and try and so much benefit can come from them.

However, I would like to add a missing link here. It is the most common theme when faced with a problem but unthinkably the one that is most overlooked. Root cause analysis.

If you only ever manage the symptoms, you are only masking the problem, and it will continue to fester. You have to identify the root cause or causes of the problem(s) and directly address those.

For the problem of PM’s stress, if you look back to the list I provided on what stresses Project Managers, they are all scenarios that a PM can and will worry about. However, you need to look into this a bit further and ask yourself, why does this cause me stress?

Some of these scenarios are very likely to occur throughout the lifetime of a project. So, you can improve your PM practices to get better at being a PM, but you will be masking the underlying cause of the stress.

When it comes down to it, and you have to be really honest with yourself here, the thing that causes you stress is knowing that if something is missed or the project starts going sideways, at some point you will have to explain to someone or a group why the expected progress has not been achieved.

Stress is a very personal problem and so a personal solution is required. But don’t stop at yourself, you have to extend this to the people you will have to explain yourself to. Build up the relationship with those people. Bring these people along on the project with you.

You can’t go empty handed to them though, so how do you start? Actually, it’s not that difficult once you get into it and be really honest.

Step 1 – write down all the scenarios that you think are causing you stress or could cause you stress on your project should they occur. This very act of writing them down actually helps enormously. It is like an offload out of your mind and onto paper (or more likely, screen) and with it brings some order to the chaos.

Step 2 – Decide what your action of address is for each one and write that down. You will need to decide whether you are going to resolve it, minimise its impact on your stress levels if it occurs or just simply accept it. OK, the last of these doesn’t seem to be helpful, but wait for step 3.  Bear in mind that you are addressing how the scenario might stress you rather than addressing the scenario itself.

Step 3 – Take this list to one or two of the senior stakeholders and get their agreement to the action of address for each.

For those you believe you can resolve, you will likely get no push back. Remember, you are resolving the scenario to not impact your stress levels, which may not be resolving the scenario from occurring. Very distinct difference.

For those you believe you can minimise, this is where the discussion with the senior stakeholder is beneficial. They may have other ideas about what can be done should this scenario occur. For example, in the scenario of the highlight report being late, they may agree to having just some of the information rather than the full report. Therefore, you can prioritise this information when you start the report. Whatever is agreed, write that down.

Finally, for those you cannot see how you can resolve it or even minimise, the very fact that you have brought this up with a senior stakeholder has made them aware of this. They will want these scenarios to not impact your wellbeing, therefore if you do have to explain to them why progress hasn’t been as expected because of this scenario, they will likely not be hard on you.

To make the whole process above more formal, I would typically write each one as a risk, because you’ve probably recognised that having identified the root causes, addressing them is exactly how you address identified risks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, yes, trying stress management practices on yourself always helps. Keep reading advice that others have probably come up with from their own experiences, as what helped them is very likely to help you. Give these improvements a focused boost though by identifying everything that could result in your stress levels going up, build open relationships with the senior stakeholders and agree with them the courses of action in each case.

Further, having done this for yourself, you might like to repeat this with other individuals within your project team, because what might cause them stress is having to explain to you why they haven’t progressed as expected.

One last bonus, bonus, you might want to consider repeating this up the chain for your key stakeholders to find out what causes their stress about your project.  It’s a bold move but can be a great engagement approach.

So, give it a go.  Make changes and improvements now as they will benefit you (and your stress levels), your project organisation, the project itself and will set you all up for a happy project experience.