I’ve just come back from a great conference in Los Angeles. I took part once again in the Ask The Experts area for PMI and I’ve had one of the most inspirational and thought provoking conferences yet!

Ask the Experts is a forum provided by PMI and Projectmanagement.com where attendees to the conference can sign up to 20 minute slots for advice, career advice, project support or simply to gain information and a different perspective on what they’re doing. The days were packed! and there were a lot of drop in’s which also made us think on our feet! We had people from every career, every walk of life and from every stage of their career which really made it interesting! I find it one of the most valuable parts of the conference and I really appreciate the PMI investing in this!

I loved seeing and meeting other Project Managers and sharing advice and insights. The people that I saw spoke about a wide variety of topics including:

– How to become a PMP

– How to maintain their credential

– How to set up a PMP

– Career advice (changing careers)

– Career advice (transitioning to different industries)

– How to run effective workshops (including risk workshops)

– How to share knowledge within teams

– How to work with international and virtual teams

– How to work with a difficult team/ boss

Each session was 20 minutes but if I could, I’d try to spend more time if needed. Being able to have some individual coaching sessions has enabled me to help and support lots of people over the course of 3 days.

As part of my role as an Expert, I needed to write some blogs about what I was up to, what was going on and trying to bring the conference to those who couldn’t be there in person.

• Day 1: https://buff.ly/2RYTRob 
• Day 2: https://buff.ly/2S1LeJs 
• Day 3: https://buff.ly/2EB2h22 
• Round up: https://buff.ly/2EtWNq6 

One of the lasting things from the conference for me has been the focus and thought about how I handle change within my projects and what I can do to make it better and more efficient for my daily life. One great aspect of this conference is being able to share knowledge with other PMs so I used this opportunity to ask how they would approach certain situations or handle difficulties within the Project environment.

Since I returned from the USA and been back to work, I’ve really jumped on some of the finer aspects of Leadership that I’ve learnt at the conference. You can read all about it in the blogs I’ve highlighted above but in summary they are:

• Change is part of our daily life as Project Managers and we need to live that change and be the change that we want to see in our projects
• Resistance is human nature and we can use this to our advantage when talking about our projects
• There’s no such thing as “Too much communication”
• We need to “find the links” in how we can make change palatable to our stakeholders.

Most of all, I’ve found that I really want to keep on this momentum and find some more connections and how I can further develop as a Project Manager.

What tools do you use for change management? What works for you?