PM-Mastery

Navigating the Currents of Project Management: An Insightful Voyage with Project Management Leadership Coach Benjamin Chan, PMP, P.Eng, CMC, ASM

• Walt Sparling • Season 1 • Episode 54

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In This Episode:

Ever felt like you're treading water in the vast ocean of project management? Synchronize your strokes with the wisdom of Benjamin Chan, PMP, P.Eng, CMC, ASM, a project management leadership success coach hailing from Calgary, Alberta. Benjamin joins us to share his invaluable expertise on amplifying leadership abilities and harnessing the innate strengths of project managers. With an earnest approach, he addresses the steep learning curve faced by newcomers in the field and the crucial support systems needed to transform the traditional 'sink or swim' corporate mantra. Our enlightening talk traverses the transformative effects of in-project coaching, its ability to rescue floundering projects, and its profound impact on team morale and overall success rates.

The journey continues as Benjamin sheds light on everyday hurdles like people management, decisive action, and the art of conflict resolution. The frustration of ambiguous feedback meets its match with the clarity and actionable guidance Benjamin champions. 

Learn how to keep your skills razor-sharp amidst a packed schedule and capitalize on the intersection of emotional intelligence and artificial intelligence. As we wrap up our exploration, the conversation takes a personal turn, focusing on the connection between self-care and professional growth. Discover the extraordinary value of recognizing oneself as a pivotal asset to one's life and the corporate environment, ensuring you are equipped to tackle your next project with renewed vigor and insight.

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Intro/Outro:

Welcome to the PM Mastery Podcast. This podcast is all about helping you master your project management skills by sharing tips, tricks, tools and training to get you to the next level, while sharing the stories of other project managers on their journey in project management. And now here's your host, walt Sparling.

Walt Sparling:

Welcome everybody to the current edition of PM Mastery, and today I have with me Benjamin Chan. Welcome, benjamin.

Benjamin Chan:

Welcome. Thank you for having me on.

Walt Sparling:

Well, it's good to have you. We're going to talk a little bit about who you are, what you do, why you do it, the typical stuff, and, first off, so everybody gets to know a little bit who doesn't already know you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Benjamin Chan:

Sure, my name is Benjamin Chan. I live in Calgary, alberta, up north in Canada, and for who I am, I'd say I'm a Chinese-Canadian, I'm a husband, I'm a father of two, I got one dog and, like any Canadian, I love hockey. So right now it is during the playoff season, so it's definitely a lot of different teams to go and watch and enjoy. Yeah.

Walt Sparling:

We have the lightning here, boo, they've been kicking butt, yeah, all right, so what is it that you do?

Benjamin Chan:

So for me, I'm a project management leadership success coach. I also do project management consulting for various different clients, but primarily focusing on the coaching piece of it and what that is, and some people might not know because there's so many different coaches out there and some people might not know because there's so many different coaches out there. There's, you know, the PMP certification coach. There's career coaches helping people find their jobs and find PM transitions right.

Benjamin Chan:

For me, I'm focused on being able to help project managers excel, being able to go and help them go and meet their challenges and advance inside of their career by leveraging their own leadership skills, developing them, being able to find what's unique about them and being able to help them shine. And for me, it's really just myself and seeing how all of these I'd say how so many of these project managers really struggle even with a certification when they're coming out, say they're one to five years into their career and it's not necessarily an easy journey. Right, organizations sometimes expect them to be able to go and deliver off the bat and for me, I want to be able to help more of the project managers not necessarily go into the sink or swim mentality that they do have a life vest or a I don't know those buoys to be able to be thrown out there for them to be able to grab on, so that they can succeed as well.

Walt Sparling:

So that would be your, why You're trying to help people, not struggle so much and getting yeah.

Benjamin Chan:

I mean this. This really came out from my own experience. I've been involved in a lot of different rescue projects and for me it was interesting, because I'm not necessarily a subject matter expert.

Benjamin Chan:

I'd say right, I don't necessarily have a specific industry I focus on, nor do I have a specific project type that I say. You know, I am an ERP software implementer or a game developer or a product deliverer. Right, I don't have that specific of industry or area of expertise. And so my management consulting experience has taken me across a lot of different industries and a lot of different projects, and so it sometimes came as a surprise to me where people would come to me and say, hey, we need you to go and rescue this project. It's not doing so. Well, we need someone to go and help out, and I'm more than happy to.

Benjamin Chan:

And what really, I guess, spurred my thinking was trying to understand exactly one why me, right, I don't have the subject matter expertise in that area, so what do I have that's allowed me to be successful? And two, for the project manager that I was essentially replacing, where was the support for them? And that really got me thinking of what if, rather than having me come in and just deliver the project from that point on to the end, what if we were able to go and provide a different channel of support for those project managers? That if there were challenges, if there were areas where it is starting to get to a dumpster fire. Right, rather than changing out the coach and changing out the project manager. What if there was a different way that we could help those project managers be able to go and succeed? Right, given them a little bit of a different path. And that's why I started doing my project leadership success coaching.

Benjamin Chan:

Because the organizations sometimes they look to that replacement of project manager too soon and the impact of that to the project and organization is you're probably getting at least three or more months of project burn, you lose institutional knowledge, and then you got to ramp down, you got to ramp back up the new person. There's no guarantee necessarily that that new person will do well either, and the team morale, all of the productivity that also starts to drop as well, right. So there's so many different things that need to be handled, and yet the project manager is a little bit of a nexus point there that can greatly improve if they're given the right support, and I just didn't see anyone in the market being able to go and provide that. So that's a little bit more of why I do what I do.

Walt Sparling:

I think it's interesting. You talk about replacing a PM versus coaching a PM. I think a good opportunity in my mind would be a coaching PM that is hired by a company to bring in and say listen, we're struggling with this project. The PM's got knowledge, but they're lacking in certain skill sets. We want you to come in and help rescue, but instead of taking over the project, we want you to work with this individual. Therefore, building more experience on that individual. You're still doing your part and when it's all done, they get a PM that knows more than when he started.

Benjamin Chan:

Absolutely. And hey, if anyone out there wants to go and do that, please, please, give me a call. But you're absolutely right. That portion of being able to go and have someone be able to provide that I'll say objective, safe area to ideate and find new solutions and develop their skills is something that's not really there anymore, like even with the PMOs. If a project manager is struggling and they go to the PMO and says I don't know what I'm doing, they're probably going to get rid of you fairly quickly.

Benjamin Chan:

It's not exactly a safe space to be able to go and do that, because they want to have the success of the project and they may then feel that the best way to have the project be successful is to go and replace the PM. And I just feel like that there's an opportunity for a different option, a different choice to be made where the project manager can also go and develop and grow, learn more skills, take on more complex projects. The project can hopefully then reach to a better level where it can be successful. Project can hopefully then reach to a better level where it can be successful.

Walt Sparling:

And so it's a win-win in everyone's book.

Walt Sparling:

I think it's.

Walt Sparling:

Another interesting thing I was thinking about is you know companies that are willing to bring in someone from the outside to rescue a project and, to your point, a lot of these companies aren't educating their own staff, their own PMs, they're not giving them the support they need, but they're bringing someone else to do that effort.

Walt Sparling:

The one thing I think is an advantage I've dealt with a lot of different size projects and complexity and when you work for someone for a long time whether it's in a company or even as in a consultant role for a long time, like project management as a service the client gets a little comfortable with you and they start having certain expectations. And then, when things don't work out, they're like well, obviously you guys don't know what you're doing. We've got to bring someone else in and, like you want to tell them it's not us, it's you. You know there's certain expectations that you have are unrealistic and I've heard this from multiple people but they'll bring in a consultant and then they'll just go oh, that's what we got to do. We've been telling them that same thing. Oh, but we'll listen to the consultant.

Walt Sparling:

I think there is an advantage to coming in from the outside like that.

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, and even if it's from a temporary perspective and I know organizations they love the done for you approach of I just don't want to worry about it anymore, just take it off my hands but it doesn't play well necessarily into the long term goal of the organization, right, the strategy of what they're trying to achieve. If you have stronger employees that can be able to go and do more, if you have it more as a done with you approach where you can help build up some of that skill and capability within the organization, that organization can probably go further, right, I mean it's great to be able to call, be called upon and have it done for you, but, man, it can be stressful and for the organization. Once that consultant leaves, you are back to finding another project manager.

Walt Sparling:

And you're just adding, as we talked about earlier, it's adding cost and burn to the schedule, which is cost, but at the additional consulting costs.

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, exactly.

Walt Sparling:

So that's like going in with a company to save. But your other aspect was where you were going is helping PMs learn and grow, which is awesome, because if they're not getting support within their own company, this is an outlet for them to go and say, hey, help me, what am I doing? How can I get better?

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, yeah, and it's both as a proactive and as a reactive approach, right? No-transcript. Have someone else from our organization be able to go mentor One. That mentor is probably super busy with their own projects, right? They're handling probably more complex projects that are higher priority and at the same time, there's always the I'd say the problem with advice. Right, that you're going to give out advice and the other person's going to look at it and go. Well, it doesn't quite apply in my situation because of reason X, y and Z. Right, because every project is a little bit different, there's different variables around it and coaching is really centered on more of an introspective look of what could we work with in your situation to get you?

Walt Sparling:

moving forward. I kind of look at coaching and mentoring as completely different. Like coaching is you're really in my mind in our industry as a leader I was, you know. I had a team and I coached some, I mentored some. I did both for some, but to me they're different. Coaching is in, mine is okay, these are skillsets you need to work on. This is how you can go about doing that. These are the tools you use. This is how the best way to use them, or at least in my, my experience you can adjust. And then mentoring is more like kind of bigger picture, long-term, how you know what. What are you struggling with, like on a philosophical basis, not necessarily skill set, like maybe some communication issues which could be skill set, but it's also personality driven, I I just think. And mentorship is more like leading by example, where coaching is actually teaching.

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, it'd be a combination of the two. I'd say, in terms of my style of coaching, it's more aligned to what is provided through the ICF, the International Coaching Federation, where it is a lot more of asking questions to go and develop the resiliency and developing their own answers right or helping them reach certain conclusions so that they can move forward. But and this is where I think sometimes that coaching aspect it does need to have a little bit more flexibility, information or a little bit more explanation so that people can understand how does it actually work right? And that's why, with my clients, I always say you know what, we're not going to dive straight into it. I'll give you one free one so that you can understand how it actually works.

Benjamin Chan:

Because if you are coached and you don't want to be coached, that is a very difficult relationship to manage and I've been in one of those before. Only it was flipped, I was being coached and I had no idea I was being coached. I just thought this is a ridiculous experience, and so it can be frustrating if you're not a willing participant.

Walt Sparling:

So in your like, let's just say you're participant. So in your like, let's just say you're when you're helping PMs. Do you find that there are specific items that you see as more of a struggle for PMs?

Benjamin Chan:

I think a lot of it is. They reach into problems that they've never encountered before. Right, and typically they have to do with people management, right, whether it's with their stakeholders or their sponsor, executive sponsors, whatever it might be and it then becomes a bit of a combination of sometimes it's decision-making, communication, right, being able to go and exercise conflict management as well as issue resolution. How are you supposed to go and speak to be able to get people to see your side of the view? Right, combined with storytelling. So there's usually a multitude of different things as well as just being able to take a different perspective on the problem that they're facing. What I find for a lot of project managers is they get a lot of feedback backwards of saying what's wrong, but then they're not really told what they could do to make it better, and that creates a bit of a roadblock from the perspective that they just don't know what to do with that information. Yeah, I can see that. What to do with that information? Right?

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, I can see that I didn't enjoy that meeting.

Benjamin Chan:

It's like, okay, well, what didn't you enjoy? It's like I just didn't like it. Okay, Well, where do I go from here? Right.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, that was all wrong. Well, what about this? No things Right, and then you're going through the checklist of what's wrong rather than what could I be doing. That's right.

Benjamin Chan:

We tried this.

Walt Sparling:

We tried this. We tried this, yeah, yeah, okay. So who, what? Why now, as a coach? And you mentioned a coaching organization, so it's that, I assume, set standards for coaching. How do you keep up with your skill sets, whether it be just in project management industry or in the coaching aspect?

Benjamin Chan:

Well, one is following amazing content creators like yourself, as well as from other people, just trying to understand a lot of the different trends in news, right? Pmi has a lot of great newsletters and learning modules inside of there. They're obviously stepping up their game inside of AI and so being able to keep up with those pieces. Podcasts for me at least, for audiobooks and I'll say, more around critical thinking type of podcasts, right? So the one I love listening to is no Stupid Questions. It's one from Angela Duckworth, from Freakonomics. Those ones just always kind of get me thinking about things. And how do things apply into the project management world? And just connecting with other people right, understanding what are they struggling with, engaging with them and asking them the questions of what are your problems. That's kind of how I've kept up with it for the most part, but I'd say it's getting harder and harder because there's just so much information out there.

Walt Sparling:

Oh, it's like information overload.

Benjamin Chan:

Oh, I know.

Walt Sparling:

I mean, we're both involved in a couple of communities on LinkedIn that are phenomenal. I mean, some of these people, I felt like I met them at one point, interviewed many of them, and now I feel like they're like neighbors or friends. You know, it's like we've been interacting for years now and it's like, wow, that was great content they just put out. Or wow, you know, I never thought about that. Or oh, that's, that's great stuff. And I mean there's some phenomenal ones out there and the lives that we've done, not not only myself, but, uh, jeremiah and john connelly. There's so much, so much data out there, so much to share and learn.

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, and I almost feel I don't know, like I'm always a little a step behind right Cause everyone seems to be reading up on things. I'm like, oh my gosh, how do I, how do I get this tool, how do I use this technique, how do I go and apply it? And you know there's only so much you can do by yourself. And then there's also a lot of restrictions from the client perspective. Right, you can't, you can't just throw AI into a project with your, with your clients, if there's a lot of confidentiality pieces involved, security, whatever it might be, and so a lot of it just kind of it's left up to the imagination, I almost want to say, to figure out how's this all work. But for me it's, you know, a lot of self practice, trying to go and use that within my own business and the projects that I'm doing, and then even working with some of the client teams to kind of experiment hey, does this work for you or not? And developing them as well. Hey, does this work for you or not?

Walt Sparling:

And developing them as well. Yeah, I I've, I don't know. I've been doing project management for for a few years and I just transitioned from one account to another. I work for the same, uh, overarching, or the same employer overall, but we do project management as a service and seven years on that account I moved over to another one, completely different industry, uh, but I'm I've only been there two weeks and I'm I'm in a transition phase which ends tomorrow. Now I'll be full-time next week, but I was, I attended a meeting today and they're like so what do you think? What did you learn today? And I'm like that, it's all the same. The same issues that I just left. Yeah, you guys have to. You know, it's just, it's all the same. The same issues that I just left. Yeah, you guys have too. You know, it's just, it's a different, I don't know different thing, but it's the same.

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, yeah, it's a bit of a different green on. You know, whatever side of the pasture you're on, the problems always seem to be the same. But I think where I I don't know I always worry about is what if there's a different way to solve it? Or what if there's a better way to go and solve it? Right, with all of these new tools, ai and things coming out even the pieces around soft skills, around around EQ, right Of, am I thinking about it the wrong way? Am I managing my team in a way that could be better?

Benjamin Chan:

I don't know right, and you know it's easy to default of. I'll just do what I've always been done, but then does that actually make performance better? So I think those kind of questions in my head always, always something that I need to go and balance, along with all of the content and all of the information out there, that man, I feel like I need AI. I just need the matrix, I just need something to plug into the back of my head and just download, dump, and then every few weeks I go and get a new upload. I don't know.

Walt Sparling:

I think the one thing that the struggle I've seen a lot is, like you mentioned quite a few points there about learning and doing and taking a different approach to things and what I've. I had a good interview recently with Isaiah Sanchez. We talked about AI a lot and we also talked about project resources and one of the struggles I see is I know phenomenal pms that are struggling and their projects are falling behind and and it's because they have too much on their plate, but it's the expectation and they they were all bright-eyed and, you know, bushy-tailed, you know, two years ago and now they're just like moping and it's like they're still delivering and they're still delivering pretty good work, but yeah at the end of the day, they're done, they're fried, they're, they're going to bed or they're going on on the patio.

Walt Sparling:

It's like they're just done. They don't have the opportunity to continue to learn, because what I have found is the people that continue to research and learn are the ones that tend to be more successful, because they are always coming up with new ideas and learning from others. Working in a box and just doing it the same way you've always done it doesn't tend to work out for most. I'm not saying all, but it'd be nice to see the PMs have a little more time and energy to pursue learning new stuff.

Benjamin Chan:

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean. For me, what I love to do in my podcast, the Organized Chaos Cafe, is bring together people that hear different voices, different perspectives and really just hearing about different industries and how that can cross-pollinate. Part of that is from my management consulting experience, where it's just a ton of different industries and how that can cross pollinate. Part of that is from my management consulting experience, where it's just a ton of different industries right, and I'm like, okay, why don't I bring in a barbecue pit master in to talk about what they do and how does project management fit or not fit with that? Why don't I bring in someone from the film industry? What do they do right in terms of directors and producers and all of the schedules and budget that they still have to manage? And yet I don't see project manager anywhere on the credits title. So what are the things that we could learn or share between those industries to improve how we go and do things right? So's where I I love to have those type of conversations so what about?

Walt Sparling:

what about challenge? I mean, we talk about what a lot of pms deal with. On challenges, what about you as an individual? What, what kind of challenges do you deal with?

Benjamin Chan:

Well, we'll take it from two different aspects. One challenge, I guess, from a business perspective, is having people understand the type of service that I'm offering, because, again, there's not a lot of people that provide the type of coaching service that I do provide, and so it takes a bit for people to get their head wrapped around.

Benjamin Chan:

It's like oh so you're not doing my project for me. I'm like, no, oh, so you're just going to help out the existing project manager, but they suck. It's like, no, no, they don't suck. We, we can make them better. Right, and getting getting them to understand how these type of coaching experience can help enhance project management. So, a lot of it, I think the struggle, is education From just a professional perspective of doing consulting. Challenges, I would say, are just all the things that we always deal with from PMs, right, communication, stakeholders, and then that leads into budget and schedule, all those types of things. So there's, there's that, and personally for me, I want to say staying physically healthy is the challenge. Being able to find time to be able to take care of myself and you know, over the past two years I've had, you know, I've had a ruptured Achilles tendon, I've dislocated my knee and stuff, playing sports and whatnot, and so being able to keep up the mobility and strength and all those type of things to do the things that I love.

Walt Sparling:

Yeah, I'm really trying to focus on that uh, yeah, I, I'm really trying to focus on that. That's a great focus. Um, I'm kind of going through the same thing. It's like you gotta keep yourself sharp and the older you get the harder it is, it is.

Benjamin Chan:

I know I have to take like collagen supplements and all this kind of stuff, but you and me, you know it's it's interesting, cause, um, one of uh, I think it was one of the podcasts or books that I was reading around just that, you have to remember to protect the asset and whether it's you in your life or you in your business, you are the asset and you need to spend your time to go and protect it. Whether it's sleep, whether it's eating, whether it's exercise, whatever it might be, protect the asset.

Walt Sparling:

Great insight. Okay, challenges Tools. I remember reading your responses and I loved your response on tools. I get a lot of different and a lot of people talk about software. Some people talk about items that they use. Yours was interesting.

Benjamin Chan:

Questions. My favorite tool is using questions as my tool. I'm actually making rounds through some of the PMI conferences and chapters right now doing and chapters right now doing more discussions about it, but it's really the powerful use of tool, of questions as a tool right, to be able to understand, to be able to go and discover, to be able to have that spark of curiosity to motivate your team right. And yeah, I just feel like that if we don't start from that place of curiosity to be able to understand, then that's where things start to go and break down right.

Benjamin Chan:

Whether it's human relationships, whether it's things with your team, communication, eq, all those type of things, if we're not willing to ask the questions not only of others but of ourselves, to be more self-aware of ourselves, of like, should I have done that or what could I have done better? Right, asking those inquisitive questions of ourselves, those are the things that are going to drive our performance right. Even if you want to go use AI, it's not going to matter if you don't know what to ask AI, right, even if you have all of these tools that people want to go and say you know, whether it's a cloud tool of ClickUp or Wrike or whatever it might be. Again, if you don't ask the right question for yourself of what do you need it for and how do you want to perform, it's going to be useless to you, so it's just ai prompting, but it's out in the real world exactly, I mean I can think of a couple tool questions that I probably use a lot, the biggest one being why, yes, why not?

Walt Sparling:

what, if have you? Yeah, yeah, that's a great tool, yeah so questions.

Benjamin Chan:

That's my favorite tool to use in my job all right.

Walt Sparling:

So one of my favorite questions is did you know? Do you have a? Did you know for us?

Benjamin Chan:

I know I do have one. Did you know I jumped off of macau tower during a typhoon three and I am afraid of heights I have seen that tower and I've seen photos.

Walt Sparling:

No, thank you it is intimidating.

Benjamin Chan:

My wife is not even as afraid of heights as I am. Like I, I get the jitters, and I was. I have a penchant for jumping off the deep end into ideas and trying to go and see what happens. This is one of them. I was like I don't know when I'm gonna be back here again if I don't do it. And this opportunity is here. I I feel like I'm gonna to miss out, so I'm just going to go ahead and and do the bungee jump. Now I did do it great.

Benjamin Chan:

But even the after effects whenever I I would even think about it like I could feel my legs wobble all over again. I could feel that whole sensation and that was like for days. Like we went back from macau over into hong kong and I remember just walking through the hong kong streets would be shopping or something like that, and a brief memory of the macau tower jump would pop into my head and I would just be like, okay, I gotta sit down. So, yeah, I got plenty more crazy things I'm going to be doing this year. I don't know if I'm ready to go and share them yet, but I'll share. One is I am going to go and try and do a quick stand up comedy routine at an open mic this year. So that's one.

Walt Sparling:

Well, kudos to you. I have a friend of mine who's just, who's been doing that for a couple of months now and he had his first actual stage show about a month ago. Now he's going, gangbusters, he's. He's going all over the place.

Benjamin Chan:

That's good. I don't know if I'll be as successful, but I figured again intrusive thoughts.

Walt Sparling:

I'm like should I do it? I'll just go ahead and do it. We'll see how it goes well.

Benjamin Chan:

You don't know until you try exactly exactly oh, that's exciting. Well, if it's filmed, you'll have to share oh, I don't know if I want to film it only from the perspective of um I. I think my pastor will be there. I'm not sure if my wife will be there, but I'm just trying not to get canceled, excommunicated, divorced or homeless. So, that's a yeah, yeah. That's what I'm trying not to go and do, and so, uh, I'm not sure if the internet would be ready for that.

Walt Sparling:

I'm not sure if the internet would be ready for that. So, in order to get ahold of you for someone, whether it be a company or an individual, that's interested in your coaching, or or save the project right, you know, project rescue, yeah. How is the best way for people to get ahold of you?

Benjamin Chan:

So people can get ahold of me on. Linkedin is the best place right now. Look up PM coach Ben, because that's going to be my moniker. Or look up my name, Benjamin Chan. It'll be myself. I have a blue background and everything like that. That's the best place to get hold of me. Yeah, and that's where I put up a lot of different content on project leadership topics as well. As you know, different thinkings, ways of thinking for various different mindset items and project management, and I love having conversations. So if you want to, you can find me there.

Walt Sparling:

Awesome. Well, in the show notes I will share your LinkedIn link and if you have anything specific like any side links or other things you want to share, send them over to me and I'll add them in there as well. I'll send a. I'll share a link on the Macau tower Cause I did look that up so pretty scary and I appreciate you coming on and I hope in the future we can maybe dive into a project rescue and you can tell us a little bit about how that works.

Benjamin Chan:

Absolutely. I'd be more than happy to Thanks so much, Walt.

Walt Sparling:

All right, thank you and for everyone else, we'll see you on the next episode of PM Mastery.

Intro/Outro:

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