Management Presentations are Unscheduled Interviews for Career Growth

Many project managers in a strong project environment must do presentations before management or clients providing management level status updates about their project or program. As the performance review time comes and project managers want promotion accompanied by increased compensation, how much they have used their projects as catalytic vehicles to promote their personal brand is often not understood by many project managers. Little do many realize the type and structure of presentations in the first place in engaging with the stakeholders and use these presentations to their strategic advantage to build their own individual personal brand.

For instance, when the performance review time comes, why should they be considered for a promotion? Granted their ability to deliver projects on budget, on scope, and on time (called often by OBOSOT) is critical. But, despite the best efforts of a project manager to proactively identify risks and have risk response strategies to address these risks, the external environmental factors may adversely impact the project contributing to schedule slips, cost overruns, customer dissatisfaction, or project terminations. The project manager's ability to engage with the stakeholders managing their expectations proactively and communicating these results with the subsequent impacts on the projects positions the stakeholders to represent their interests to their management. The management presentations that project managers deliver are a critical component to this stakeholder engagement that emphasizes one's personal brand.

The presentations in general fall under three categories, namely informative, persuasive, or explanatory. I call them the "Communication PIE."

1. The informative presentations often summarize status updates of a project and review reports and variance analysis to project team members, project sponsor, and some senior members of management depending upon the project visibility. 
2. The explanatory presentations involve workshop or training style presentations where stakeholders or team members across the functions are trained to understand the processes, tools, policies, procedures, etc. The goal is on what they should know, how they should respond, where they should access more details, and who they should escalate when issues arise that are outside of the workshop or training. The goal is building team morale, addressing change management, training on tools and technologies, understanding processes, etc. 
3. The persuasive presentations focus on lobbying for a solution and presenting a strategy providing substantial reasons on the reasons, risks (threats/opportunities), impacts or benefits if fail to act in a reasonable time. The audience in this presentation is often the senior management including the sponsor involved in the decision making.

This persuasive meeting, for instance, is a moment for management to know more about your critical thinking and leadership skills. These presentations, in my humble opinion, are unscheduled interviews for the project managers where the management takes copious notes on how well you presented the solution and how thorough your analysis was. It is these presentations that come vividly to the senior management's mind with their mind voice reinforcing your need for a promotion. 

So, don't take these management meetings less seriously. These unscheduled interviews should be followed through on how you did, where you could improve, and have action plans to ensure that you are addressing these that your management sees. Maximize the opportunities, therefore, using your strengths in these meetings and eliminate the threats of stalled career growth by addressing any of your weaknesses. 

How well do you think you can utilize these management meetings productively next time? Share your thoughts by responding to this thread.