Episode 436: The Power of Project Leadership (Free)

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Susanne Madsen, Author

Here is how I started episode 309 back in 2015 when we had Susanne Madsen (www.susannemadsen.com - LinkedIn Profile) on the program to present her book The Power of Project Leadership:

Susanne Madsen is back on the show today to talk about many of the leadership concepts she puts forward in her new book titled The Power of Project Leadership. And we have a lot of great tips for you -- all taken from the book.

Well… she’s back. The second edition is out. And this is what we read about the book on Amazon:

Projects and work environments are becoming increasingly complex, with more stakeholders, dispersed teams and an unprecedented rate of technological change. In order to adapt to this complexity and find new opportunities to innovate and build a high performing team, project managers must shift their mindset to one of project leadership. The Power of Project Leadership explains how to generate positive results for projects and clients while growing as a leader and empowering the team to fully contribute.

The book focuses on 7 keys to help you transform from project manager to project leader. And to help you along on that journey, we are going to open up her book and take a closer look at Key #5 Build Trust with Stakeholders and key #6 Use Powerful techniques.

And just like back in episode 309 we have a lot of great tips for you -- all taken from the book.

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Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Susanne Madsen: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, we talk about my book: “The Power of Project Leadership, the Second Edition”. And I’m going to give you lots of good tips on how to be a better project leader.

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. This is Episode 436 and I’m Cornelius Fichtner. Nice to see you.

Susanne Madsen is back on the show today to talk about many of the leadership concepts that she puts forward in her new book titled: “The Power of Project Leadership.” And we have a lot of great tips for you all taken from the book. That is how I started Episode #309 back in 2000 and something, which is when she was on the program to present her book “The Power of Project Leadership.” Well, she’s back! The second edition is out.

And here is what we read about the book on Amazon: “Projects and work environments are becoming increasingly complex with more stakeholders, dispersed teams and an unprecedented rate of technological change. In order to adapt to this complexity and find new opportunities to innovate and build a highperforming team, project managers must shift their mindset to one of project leadership. The Power of Project Leadership explains how to generate positive results for objects and clients while growing as a leader and empowering the team to fully contribute.”

The book focuses on seven keys to help you transform from project manager to project leader, and to help you along on that journey, we are going to open up the book. We are going to focus on two of these keys: #5, which is Build trust with stakeholders and Key #6, Use powerful techniques.

And just like back in Episode 309, we have a lot of tips for you coming from the book. Here we go!

Podcast

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello, Susanne! And welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™!

Susanne Madsen: Hello, Cornelius! It is good to see you this time.

Cornelius Fichtner: This is a first for us, indeed, indeed. So we are going to be talking about several aspects of your book: “The Power of Project Leadership” the second edition.

You and I talked about this back in Episode, wait I wrote it down somewhere, 309. That’s a long time ago. Why did you choose to update the book?

Susanne Madsen: You know since we’re on video, I thought, I’d just have ithere.

Cornelius Fichtner: Good, I was thinking about this earlier. It’s like: I wish I could hold it up. There you go!

Madsen: Yes. So this is what it looks like. You know the truth is, I wasn’t thinking about a second edition. I wasn’t sure what the criteria were for doing a second edition. So the publisher got in touch with me and asked me if I was interested and it made me think of course. It was first of all very flattering because it means the book has done quite well.

And four-and-a-half years have passed and in those four-and-a-half years, things have moved on. I have continued my work as an independent project leadership coach in all the corners of the world. And all that knowledge I thought: “Wow, what an opportunity to add that to the book.” Because of course the book is a bit more static. So being given the opportunity to update it, I thought, well, that’s too good to be true. You know you don’t have to start from scratch. So I definitely jumped at it.

Cornelius Fichtner: And if you have to choose just one thing, what would you say is your most important addition to the book?

Susanne Madsen: One thing! That’s a tough question because I’ve actually updated every part of the book. I think apart from one chapter, every single chapter has been turned around. I think there’s more focus on emotional intelligence, which is a broad topic. So within each of the chapters, there’s a little bit more about emotional intelligence with a few exceptions because there are also new techniques in there that I thought was so powerful, I had to include them.

Cornelius Fichtner: And of course let’s say I bought the first edition, is it worth my time to buying and reading the second edition?

Susanne Madsen: Well, I’m probably biased, right?

Cornelius Fichtner: Yes, of course.

Susanne Madsen: Twenty percent new content in the book. For those people who liked the first edition, I think they’ll like the second one even more because as an author when you have time and the opportunity to review it after a few years, for four-and-a-half years, it reads better and it’s probably, there are more nuggets in there.

But also you know a book, because this is 300 pages with not just text but also after each chapter, how you are going to integrate it and suggestions to exercises. So for people who read the first edition, they probably got I don’t know a few things from what they worked with. So when we reread a book, we get new things from it. So my suggestion is that we can always keep working with ourselves so go for it.

Cornelius Fichtner: Would you mind holding the book up again? Because it also has a subtitle: “Seven Keys to Help You Transform from Project Manager to Project Leader.” So how did you come up with those seven keys and why is it seven? Why not five or twelve?

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.