ABSTRACT
Your effectiveness as a project manager, not to mention your job satisfaction, is somewhat linked to your relationship with your boss, whether he or she is your project sponsor or some other senior project stakeholder. To make the best of this relationship, you need to understand your manager’s strengths, weaknesses, and predispositions in several areas, so that you can:
• Leverage the better qualities • Learn how to tiptoe around any deficiencies
No disrespect for the management chain and those who occupy its higher levels is intended or implied by this chapter; however, certain conditions can impact the project manager’s effectiveness that appear to spring directly from the personal attributes of senior managers, including sponsors, to whom we report and with whom we must interact. I do not want to get into a lot of the political or social byplay that typifies the modern workplace because I do not place much stock in those things myself. What I do want to address is how you can understand your boss to the degree that you do not get either one of you in too much hot water while doing your job as best you can.
