The document provides a partial course outline for a 2-day course on politics, projects, and project management. The course aims to increase understanding of political complexities in the workplace and teach influence tools and techniques to help complete work successfully. It covers topics like recognizing the value of politics, developing political skills, understanding power dynamics, and assessing one's own political competence.
Politics, Projects and Project Management sample slides
1. Politics, Projects and Project Management
For the complete Course Outline and if interested
in purchasing entire course with case studies
please email wilber.tuttleman@outlook.com
2. PARTIAL COURSE OUTLINE
Politics, Projects and Project Management
Course Overview
Duration – 2 days
The overall learning objective of this course is to increase our understanding of
political complexities by creating awareness of human behavior in the
workplace and organizations and use positive, ethical means to get work
completed. This course introduces highly valuable influence tools and
techniques that draw from research and empirical experience that is insightful
and practical that will assist in increasing success in Leading teams and
realizing work objectives.
3. What You Will Learn
• Why being talented, highly motivated, likeable, and hardworking is not
enough for work success
• Recognize the value & dynamics of politics and influence in the workplace
• Strategies for increasing your influencing skills
• Identify political behaviors of stakeholders and positively influence them
• Analyze the political context in your organization.
• The rationalization of self-interest vs. the work team and objectives
• The Leader role in creating work team identify.
• Successfully work with stakeholders with different values and beliefs.
• Identifying and reconciling opposing and hidden agendas.
• Increasing collaboration by determining behavior-attitude linkages.
• Identify sources of power and evaluate your own power and influence level
PARTIAL COURSE OUTLINE CON’D
4. PARTIAL COURSE OUTLINE CON’D
1 Introduction to Project Politics
• Understand what Politics are
• Recognize the Reality and Benefits of
Politics for Project Managers
• Illustrate Politics as a Required Competency
for Project Manager
• List the Causes of Politics in projects
• Analyze the Factors that Influence Project
Politics
• Discussion on Recent Research and how it
applies to Project Managers
1. Module 2 slides
2. Reading and discussion -
Corporate Politics
3. Group exercise – Causes of
Project Politics
4. Individual questionnaire –
Competing Interests
5. Case study – Competing
Interests
5. PARTIAL COURSE OUTLINE CON’D
2 Political Skills in Projects
• Political Stripes
• Positive Politics and Career Success
• Understanding what Influence you
have
• Recognize How Politics can Get Ones
Career Derailed
• List the Indicators of Losing
Influence
• The Positive Politics Model
• The Four Political Competencies for
Career Success
1. Module 3 slides
2. Exercise – what kind of political animal
are you?
3. Exercise – Positive Political Behaviours
4. Self-Assessment – Your Attitude at
Work
5. Exercise – How do you know if your
Career is being derailed?
6. Exercise – How do you know if you are
losing influence
7. Exercise – Who is Political Savvy?
8. Exercise – Assess Your Political
Competence
6. PARTIAL COURSE OUTLINE CON’D
3 Power and Organizational Politics
• The nature of power in organizations and ways to build
power
• The relationship between power and politics in
organizations
• Power, Influence and Dependence in Projects
• Power Dynamics
• Political Diagnoses - Who has the Power?
• Exploring Sources of Power - the bases of power and ways
of building power in organizations
• Positive and negative sources of power
• Attribution of Power
• Political strategies and political tactics
• Workplace political diagnosis
• Power and Getting Work Done in Projects
1. Module 4 slides
2. Exercise – Power Dimensions
3. Exercise – Facets of Power
4. Exercises – Who Has Power over Us
5. Exercise - Who do we have Power
over
6. Assessment – Project Sponsor Power
and Politics
7. Assessment – How Political is Your
Workplace?
8. Group activity – Types of power and
their impact and effectiveness
9. The Game of Politics
7. Politics, Projects and Project Management
SAMPLE SLIDES
Enclosed herein is a set of sample slides. To obtain the
complete Course Outline and if interested in
purchasing entire course with case studies please
email wilber.tuttleman@outlook.com
9. Module 2: Learning Objectives
• State what Politics are
• Recognize the Reality and Benefits of Politics for Project
Managers
• Illustrate Politics as a Required Competency for Project
Manager
• List the Causes of Politics in projects
• Analyze the Factors in Project Politics
• Assess recent Research of Politics in the Workplace with your
experience
10. Your Views – Politics in Projects
Lets Vote on and discuss the following questions:
1. Are politics in projects good? or bad? Why?
2. Politics in Projects should be avoided as much as possible
True/False?
3. Politics can help you in or cause problems in project depending on
how you leverage politics. True/False?
11. Exercise 1 : Your Experience
Individually, reflect on politics in projects and write
down:
1. Your definition of politics
2. Two (2) examples of politics in projects you have
seen, experienced and/or can think of
Be prepared to share results during the debrief.
12. Defining Politics in Projects
▪ The unwritten, informal ways of getting project work done that
appear to be accepted.
Work done includes : Activities, Deliverables, Decisions made and made
faster, Buy in faster, Problems solved faster
▪ Actions not officially sanctioned by an organization, but taken by
someone to get things done through:
o Power
o Relationships
o Influence
▪ Involves intentional acts of influence to enhance or protect the
self-interest of individuals or groups.
13. The word politics comes from ancient Greece.
Its root is the word polis, the matters of the people.
Politics in Historical Context
14. Politics in Projects – Survey Results
▪ Survey results from 500 projects:
– 15% of the projects were cancelled,
postponed or delivered something that
was never used
– 25% of the projects failed to complete
– No technological issue was found
to explain the failure
▪ The reason for the failure: Politics
15. Discussion: Politics
Consider:
• Why do so many people who are highly capable at
their jobs, experience frustration, defeat, or
derailment at their jobs or career?
• Sometimes it’s not enough to be talented,
motivated, likeable, hard working, well-prepared,
technically competent, and fully informed…
16. ‘Before I served as a consultant to President Kennedy, I had believed that
the process of decision-making was largely intellectual and all one had to
do was walk into the President’s office and convince him of the
correctness of one’s view.
This perspective I soon realized is as dangerously immature
as it is widely held’.
- Henry A. Kissinger
The Reality of Politics
What does this mean to us in the context of projects?
17. Technical and/or analytical people tend to walk away frustrated, feeling
like they are not heard. These feelings occur because they are
unprepared to understand the political framework in which formal and
informal decision-making takes place.
Technical Perspective Political Perspectives
Objective, predictable,
standards, compliance,
efficiency
Subjective, emotional, power
irrationality, self-interest
Best solutions through analysis of
data
Best solutions not the focus or
driver of discussions
Leverage is failure based
(lessons learned)
Leverage power and influence
Informal and Formal Decision- making
Perspectives in Projects
18. Political Competency is Expected of PMs
▪ Politics, Power and Influence in projects are where Conflict
was 20 years ago – we all knew it was happening but not only
was there no competency development as part of ones
professional toolkit, worse yet was that few people talked
openly about it
• The job of project managers is to recognize the major
constituencies, to develop ties to their leadership, and to
manage conflict as productively as possible. Above all, they
need to build power bases – with stakeholders and within
themselves (ethical use of personal power) and use power to
get work done.
• PMs cannot get from or give every group everything it wants,
although they can try to create arenas for negotiating
differences and coming up with reasonable compromises.
19. Successful project managers know the importance of maintaining
strong political ties throughout their organizations as a method for
achieving project success. It is rare to find senior project managers
who are not conversant in and knowledgeable of the importance of
politics in effectively performing their jobs. Political behavior can either
be a project manager’s best friend or most remorseless foe. Whatever
decision one comes to regarding the use of politics in the quest for
project success, it cannot be ignored:
Use politics or risk being used by politics.
Politics – Avoid at Your own Risk
20. Two Types of Project Politics
Machiavellian
Necessary
Ethical
(Positive)
Unethical
(negative)
21. Positive & Negative Politics
▪ Lets discuss your examples from
Exercise 1and tabulate how many
are uses of politics as
▪ Ethical
▪ Considered honorable
▪ Conveys and/or commands respect from others
▪ Being open and honest
▪ Unethical
▪ personally hurtful
▪ harmful to others professionally or in the project
▪ goes against the company values
▪ Has lying to others involved
▪ would not want to be caught in the news
▪ Etc.
22. Exercise 3 : Group Exercise
List at least 6 cause of project politics? In other words, why do people
engage in politics in the project?
23. Political Skill in Projects is a Competency
Studies have shown a significant proportion of projects “fail” because of politics.
You must be influential to succeed and therefore competent at:
• Influencing managerial organizational resources to Gain access to resources; Obtain the
best resources;
• Overcome obstacles
• Mitigating conflict well
• Dealing with your boss gracefully and influencing upwards
• Selling your ideas
• Backroom deal making
• Adapting effectively to project curve balls
• Leading cross-functional teams
• Getting people to do things for you
• Obtain approval for expenditures beyond the budget
• Get items on and off agendas
• Get fast access to decision makers
• Navigating through organizational politics
• What else?
25. Module 3: Learning Objectives
• Assess Your Politics Stripes
• Understand Positive Politics
• Examine The Positive Politics Model
• Recognize How Politics can Get Ones
Career Derailed
• List the Indicators of Losing Influence
• Assess and Inventory Your 4 Political
and Influence Competencies
26. Discussion : Your Political Stripes
How would you characterize your political stripes in the
workplace in terms of :
1. Awareness of politics, and
2. Your own political behaviour
27. Exercise 4 : Career Derailment
In groups:
– Reflect on careers, (yours or others), that you have seen
derailed by politics
– List at least 8 characteristics or actions that could be
considered Career Limiting Moves (CLMs)
Be prepared to share results during the debrief.
28. Politics that Derail Careers
• Left blank to protect IP• left blank to protect IP
29. Exercise 5 : Indicators of Losing Influence
IN groups :
– Reflect on, and discuss, people you have known or seen
in your career who “lost influence”
– List at least 8 things you can notice at work and/or in
people that indicate that a person has lost influence
Be prepared to share results during the debrief.
31. Exercise 7 : Assess Your Political Competence
Individually:
– Read the assessment instructions
– Answer the assessment questions
– Score the assessment
Be prepared to share results during the debrief.
