One challenging thing to deal with as a facilitator is the “difficult” participant.

Sometimes tricky behaviours will emerge during a training session and often when participants don’t feel safe, valued or heard. Much of this behaviour is amusing and tolerable providing it doesn’t impinge on other’s learning. We’ve got the prisoner, the latecomer, the sleeper (although, sleeping I don’t mind; it’s the snoring that might annoy), the know-it-all, the side conversations, the bored, the confused, the domineering, the challenger, and the otherwise preoccupied – the text messenger. In some thirty years of training I’ve met them all.

It is not uncommon to find at least one participant in a workshop who is not fully or positively engaged. When confronted with such behaviour, we might step back and objectively assess what might be the root cause of their behaviour. For example, why would someone … Read More »

In a rush to get projects done, one of the most often overlooked, but critical, tasks of a project manager (PM) is conducting the project close-out step. The project close-out, closing, closure, termination or finish phase is the fourth and last phase in the project life cycle. In this phase, we formally close our project, and evaluate and report its overall performance.

Once the project product(s) has been produced and accepted by our sponsor and customer, our PM responsibilities continue to ensure that the project is properly closed down. A stakeholder acceptance meeting, as the name implies, is when our project team meets with other key stakeholders to review the project product and ensure that it is acceptable.

But sometimes projects take on a never-ending characteristic. They go into limbo land and are never allowed to close often because … Read More »