Gems from a Recent Training Event

I usually take training every year to learn new things and maintain certification in my field of project management. One free training event is called PMXPO, which is hosted by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in March each year. It is multi-faceted, featuring a keynote speaker, breakout session classes, an exhibit hall where attendees can talk with sponsors and vendors, and live chats to interact with fellow attendees. PMI records the sessions and makes them available on demand for almost a year to anyone who registers for PMXPO.

I did not attend the live event this year but viewed some sessions afterwards. I particularly enjoyed two of them, getting some interesting career tips in one, and some insight on how diverse organizations improve performance.

Authors Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis discussed their book called “The Squiggly Career”. They wrote it for people like themselves whose careers have not been linear or confined to one industry. They’ve both tried multiple types of jobs and wanted to share what has helped them in their multi-directional careers. I thought their career formula could apply to anyone, and particularly appreciated two of their suggestions. The first was to figure out what matters most to you in your career, and to focus on the types of work that feed your core values. For example, Helen most values freedom, so she seeks work in which she can be self-directed and less constrained. They say that identifying your core values is not necessarily easy; it is not obvious to everyone. But knowing what is most important to you helps you to focus on the types of projects that you’d enjoy, or the roles that are most interesting to you. It is notable that so many people at Dana-Farber identify with the institute’s mission, which makes our work very satisfying and something we value.

Helen and Sarah also suggested identifying what they called your ”super-strengths”. They posit that everyone has one or two skills that they are great at. Those are the skills to try to use the most and grow. Your other skills just need to be good enough to not hinder your work. I’ve found that identifying your best strengths can also be challenging. Unless you are particularly good at self-reflection, the answers do not always come easily. Also, you may discount your best skills because they come so naturally to you and seem too easy to be valuable. It can be helpful to ask people you work with what they think you are best at. They may recognize your strengths better than you do.

The second session I liked was an interview with Laszlo Bock, who was Sr VP of People Operations at Google from 2006 to 2016. After leaving Google, he started a company called Humu, which seeks to help other companies better manage their organizations. His session was called “The Current State of Work” and he shared some thoughts about leadership. The answer to one question provided a perspective I had not heard before. He was asked if he helped other companies to see the benefits of diversity. He said that some companies, like his, believe diversity is the right thing to do. They don’t need to be convinced. But others have asked for help in understanding the benefits. So, he usually helps them by sharing a business case.

He said that when he was at Google, they researched whether greater diversity in an organization led to better performance. They spent months collecting data to study it. They found that the data said that diversity did not improve performance. They were shocked and disappointed. Why wouldn’t teams get measurable benefits from having more diversity of perspectives among their employees? The results did not seem to make sense.

So, they explored further. What they discovered was that the composition of the team, i.e., having diversity among the team members, was important, but not sufficient. The key was for all team members to feel a sense of belonging on the team, being valued as team members, and as a result feeling it was safe to share their perspectives. In other words, Laszlo said the team needs a high sense of inclusion and psychological safety. As a simplistic example, if you are the only woman on a team, you may be more hesitant to speak in some situations and thus the team will not get as much benefit from your perspective. If the team leader and other team members change their approach, they may be able to help to draw out all team members in discussions. Coaches worked with members of one team. They suggested that the more reserved team members try to speak up in the first ten minutes of a meeting to break the ice and make it easier to keep contributing for the rest of the meeting. They coached other team members to try to notice if someone in the meeting is quiet and ask that person for their thoughts. If the team can get better with these types of behaviors, they can raise participation among all team members and improve performance. Laszlo Bock said that if there is high inclusion and psychological safety, diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams by 20%. That is quite a statistic! So those were my favorite takeaways from this year’s PMXPO. I am looking forward to next year’s event.