By nature the people who are drawn to project management are those who like to be in charge. They’re usually control freaks that have to take charge of every little detail of the project. They love to micromanage and tend to demoralize their team members with their controlling behaviors. They’re also not very good listeners and tend to jump to conclusions.

I think I’m one of them sometimes … please beware of the control freaks and the clueless.

What makes us clueless?

Good project managers and “cluefull” rather than clueless by H. Frank Cervone examines the behavioral mistakes that project leaders make that makes them seem clueless. Number one on the list is being a control freak — not listening, jumping to conclusions, micromanaging every single aspect of the project, etc… you get the point.

The first time I read the section I thought, oh man I can definitely think of some people like that … the second time made me wonder, am I like that too?

As I mentioned before, by nature many people are drawn to project management because they like to be in charge. I like to be in charge and I’m drawn to project management, does that make me a control freak? What I really want to do is ask my team members, but I’m afraid they would lie to me just to be nice (I work with some really, really, really nice people).

What I need to do is start paying attention to what I’m doing, how I’m doing things and how are my team members reacting to my decisions and directions that I give them. I also need to start recognizing team members who are effective and utilizing their talents instead of trying to control everything that’s going on.