Why to write a book about passion, persistence, and patience? Because it has been my motto over the years, because I believe in that, and I felt the need to share my experiences about it with the project management community. Over the years, I have managed different projects and without being conscious of it, I was contagious to many people through my passion, persistence, and patience, working on the project management business, contributing as a professional association volunteer, and delivering public talks worldwide.
The behavior and reactions you have in your job, at home, and with your colleagues and friends has an impact on the lives of the people around you. You, as a project manager, need to be enthusiastic, persistent, and develop patience in order to get good project results. In fact, if you want to make a positive impact on your projects, you need to be enthusiastic with all your project stakeholders. That way people will feel better valued and loved by you. Without enthusiasm, there cannot be good project performance. If you are a project manager, you need to be enthusiastic with your team because if not you will demotivate them. No matter what your professional or personal goals are in life, or what you want to accomplish, you can achieve them faster, you can be more effective, and the contribution you make can last longer if you learn how to become an enthusiastic person, getting across enthusiasm.
Your Passion
I have observed that passion is very curious. Even though we can affect almost everyone around us, our level of influence is not the same with everyone. For example, when you have a team meeting with your team members and present an idea to them or suggest, do they all respond in the same way? Of course, not. One person may think all your ideas are inspiring. Another may view everything you say with skepticism. You can identify which one you have to influence over. On the other hand, the skeptic who resisted your idea may be more accepting to it if it were presented by an executive.
If you pay attention to people’s responses to yourself and others, you can see that people respond to one another according to their level of enthusiasm. I consider passion like a specific application of influence. Passion does not come to us instantaneously; it grows by stages.
We are influenced by what we see. Several times I had the opportunity to share with an audience of more than hundred people my experiences as a Project Management Institute (PMI) volunteer, and I spoke with all my energy for one hour. I never get tired when I am enjoying what I do, and I love speaking on public. Many of the attendees approached me after my speech and gave me their business card to keep in touch with me. Some of them said, “you made my day.” I was touched. It has not been the first time that happened to me. We are able to generate positive emotions on people not because we are great, just because we really believe and do what we preach. I always encourage people at professional congresses to participate and present their experiences in front of others. I always tell people about my experience presenting my first paper on project management in an international congress and how the reaction of the attendees encouraged me to continue presenting again and again and again.
Enthusiastic people give value to other people. I don’t know what kind of enthusiasm for the profession you have today when you are reading this book. Your actions may touch the lives of hundreds of people, or perhaps your enthusiasm may be infective for two or three team members or colleagues. The number of people is not what is most important. The key point is to remember that your level of influence is not static. I want to help you become a project manager of high enthusiasm. You can have an incredibly positive impact on the lives of others. You can give a lot of value to them.
I don’t know exactly what your dream is in life or what kind of legacy you want to leave. But if you want to make an impact and develop a passion for your profession, insist again and again if you believe your aimed objective is achievable and apply your patience to achieve it. You can do it because you are excellent. I mean if you believe you will be able to exceed your project stakeholder’s expectations.
I found several definitions of passion from different authors: the first one was the state of being acted upon or affected by something external, especially something alien to something alien to one’s nature or one’s customary behavior. Another definition is a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything. My definition of passion is the feeling of positive desire to achieve your aims.
Persistence may be defined as the willingness to keep going even when the odds are bad and our enthusiasm has waned; or the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition. My definition is never giving up when you believe you can achieve your goals.
The definition of patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious; or the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. My definition of patience is to deal with life without losing your temper and with positive attitude.
I need to say that all three concepts play in concert and I applied it during my life and professional career. They worked and are still working for me. Try it and you will learn something.
Book Structure
This book integrates different pieces to develop and sustain passion, persistence and patience as a project manager.
Outline
Each chapter highlights thoughts and real stories about a particular subject linked to my 3Ps (passion, persistence, and patience). Here is an outline of what is covered:
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: This chapter introduces the concepts of passion, persistence, and patience and how they have been part of my skill set as a project practitioner over the years managing projects in organizations. At the end of this chapter, an assessment tool is provided.
• Chapter 2: Explains how to develop passion, persistence, and patience for personal, project, and organizational success, sharing real stories and case studies. An action plan preparation is explained by the end of this chapter.
• Chapter 3: How to sustain and maintain passion, persistence, and patience is clearly explained in this chapter. Through exercises and real stories, the reader will be able to sustain those skills for achieving successful projects.
• Chapter 4: This chapter give you clues, suggestions, and ideas about how to be contagious and infect people positively being more enthusiastic, having more persistence, and developing more patience. An assessment tool is included in this chapter.
• Chapter 5: How to learn something from anybody else is the focus of this chapter. Learning from peers, colleagues, bosses, and customers. This chapter explains the concept of learning from anybody every day.
• Chapter 6: This chapter is focused on how to get your relationships growing up because the development of your three Ps (passion, persistence, and patience). An assessment tool is also provided in this chapter.
• Chapter 7: Develop your professional career, working on your professional vision. Planning for your professional career success is the purpose of this chapter.
• Chapter 8: Use your courage and assess it. Go beyond your comfort zone and development of your courage are explained in this chapter.
• Chapter 9: This chapter is focused on taking action, reviewing your plan, and just doing it. In this chapter, some “never give up” best practices are told.
• Chapter 10: Summary and conclusions and preparing an “action plan.”
Through the whole book, I’ll be emphasizing the importance of being positive and developing a positive attitude when trying to develop your 3Ps skills as a project manager. All the best practices and ideas shared in this book are based on my particular experience and on my interaction with other project professionals worldwide. Only I am responsible of the content of this book.
You will be familiar with the iron triangle, also known as a triple constrains for a project. I want to define my motivation triangle for project success. The sides of my triangle are: Passion, Persistence, and Patience. These are three basic skills to be developed in order to be motivated and motivate your project team members and stakeholders. It takes time and practice, but you can do it because you need to be excellent as a project practitioner. Did you enjoy your reading so far? I hope so. If your answer is positive, please move forward to Chapter 1. If not, please close the book and try it again tomorrow because I need great professionals like you are who are able to give me feedback about the use of 3Ps.