Patience is a virtue. However, many of us would find it hard to imagine seeing a super-patient project manager. A patient person can endure and maintain composure in times of challenging circumstances and annoyances that are a part of any project. These include the long wait of deliverables and dealing with people who display negative attitude, without any trace of anger. Patience is the ability to maintain one’s emotions even amidst the destructive criticism or attacks by negative people. The person who lacks patience displays anger which can result to improper actions that hurt other people.
In project management where the nature of the job involves rushing through deadlines, understanding instructions easily, efficiency at work, preparedness for uncertainties, it is important that project managers are patient. However, in some cases, a project manager with squeaky wheels can prove to be more effective than the very patient leader because some people need to be pushed harder through constant reminders and confrontations that demand fulfillment of commitments. In these scenarios, it can be said that impatience is a better way to get things done.
As with the patient project manager, he is also a human being and can feel anger. However, the patient leader knows when to get angry at the right person and at the right degree and right purpose. Most of all, he knows how to express his anger in the proper way. This draws a thin line between impatience and the diligence that is essential in a project manager to be able to fulfill his duties and achieve the goals of the team on time. Impatience and anger can be ways and means to achieve one’s objectives but there will be times that the kind of behavior brought about by these qualities can be the reason for fear or disrespect from others.
How Do We Learn Patience?
Patient people may seem weak to the outside world but inside them, they are actually strong people who have the ability to withstand the discomfort that they feel when something does not conform to what they expect. It is a difficult thing to control our emotions when we feel impatience but it can be learned the same way that we can program ourselves to ignore people, places and things that annoy us.
The first thing to remember is to believe in yourself that you can change because if you don’t, then you are in serious trouble. You need to learn to acknowledge impatience as a temporary thing and that with a little effort, you can stay away from it and become more patient.
People are human beings and even if they can fulfill their work commitments after the squeaky wheels manager starts yelling at them, they are actually feeling demoralized and fearful as well as stressed during those times.
To make you become a better manager, use the Nutcache project management app of course, but most of all practice patience and learn to understand where other people come from. Only by doing this can you demand their respect and when they do, you can count on them to become more productive.
