ABSTRACT
Robert Heller If you have developed your influencing skills to become a project manager of influence, finally you must ride your horse. I mean you need to put in practice all the influence skills you have developed so far, take action, and face the potential and real issues you may find as a project manager. You need to answer the question: Are you well prepared to influence or not? Now you need to be effective and efficient influencing the different project stakeholders. Are you ready to do it? Unless you try it you will not know it. Test it and see what happens. Gaining good influence skills is not an overnight process; it takes time, effort, and patience. And for sure you will fail at the beginning; nobody is perfect. Along my career I made many mistakes when trying to influence my team members, executives, peers, and colleagues. I faced many difficult situations having the need to influence people in the projects I managed in my whole professional life. I guess I was not prepared enough and I failed. But my attitude was always to learn from my mistakes, and I made many mistakes in my project manager life. Ride your horse and observe if your horse is under control, that is use your influence skills and verify if you are being successful. Perhaps you need to tune up your influence skills. Learn from it and take action again, and again, and again. If you still fail, try it again because it is not the end. Be persistent!
