People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast Podcast Por Andy Kaufman PMP PMI-ACP arte de portada

People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

De: Andy Kaufman PMP PMI-ACP
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Welcome to the People and Projects Podcast, where we provide interviews and insights to help you lead people and deliver projects. Since 2009, this show is brought to you by speaker, author, and executive coach Andy Kaufman. If you're looking for insights on project management, leadership, and how AI influences both of those, you've come to the right place! And if you hold a project management certification, you can even earn free PDUs for listening!(c) 2001-2025 Institute for Leadership Excellence & Development Inc. Economía Exito Profesional Gestión Gestión y Liderazgo
Episodios
  • PPP 504 | How Leaders Can Reduce Stress Without Lowering the Bar, with Amy Leneker

    PPP 504 | How Leaders Can Reduce Stress Without Lowering the Bar, with Amy Leneker
    Mar 31 2026
    Summary In this episode, Andy talks with Amy Leneker, leadership coach, joy strategist, and author of Cheers to Monday. Amy's journey began with a burnout so severe that her doctor put her on medical leave. It took 10 words on a medical form to change everything: "What are your hobbies? What do you do for fun?" She couldn't answer it. That moment sent her on a mission to help leaders recognize stress earlier and respond to it far more intentionally. In this conversation, Amy shares the stress stories many leaders carry without ever questioning them, and why those stories get quietly rewarded in so many organizations. You'll hear how the body whispers warnings long before burnout hits, why most common stress-relief advice actually makes things worse, and how Amy's three-step Un-Stressing Method gives leaders a clear, practical framework to move forward. She also shares a powerful real-world example of a team carrying 73 stressors that simply didn't need to be there—and what happened when they finally saw that. If you're looking for a practical, empowering guide to break the cycle of stress and overwhelm in leadership, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "The story that I inherited, either intentionally or unintentionally, was you just work hard because that's the only choice you have.""I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made was not recognizing how much choice I had.""I couldn't remember the last time that I had real fun.""Those unhealthy stress stories are rewarded.""The majority of ways that we try to manage stress at work actually increase our stress.""When I ignored the whispers, it got to the point where ignoring it was no longer an option.... If you ignore them long enough, then the body's going to scream.""Talking about stress is stressful, but we've got to be able to see it if we're going to be able to do anything about it.""Unclear expectations are resentments waiting to happen.""People pleasing—it's not a healthy dynamic. It's not something that serves you or the people around you.""Stress is contagious. There is no question about it.""Yes, stress is wildly contagious, but so is joy." Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:39 Start of Interview01:52 Early Messages About Work and Stress04:36 The 10 Words That Changed Everything06:39 Postponing Joy07:30 Stress Stories Leaders Believe08:19 How the Body Signals Burnout Before the Brain Does11:44 What's Broken About Typical Stress Advice12:58 Walking Through the Un-Stressing Method15:03 Why Sequence Matters: See, Sort, Solve17:32 Solving Stress vs. Fixing It18:44 The Un-Stressing Method in Action: A Team Story21:58 The Danger of Unstated Priorities22:42 People Pleasing as a Warning Sign23:38 Breaking the Cycle of Stress as a Parent24:41 End of Interview25:11 Andy Comments After the Interview28:16 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Amy and her work at AmyLeneker.com. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 448 with Marie-Helene Pelletier. It's a book on how to develop resilience when demands are piling up. It's a great follow-up to today's discussion.Episode 398 with Dr. Neha Sangwan, which is a book about learning to recognize wake up calls to help us avoid burnout.Episode 164 with stress researcher Derek Roger. Derek brings a unique perspective to the discussion about stress. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Pass the PMP Exam If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start. Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year! Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Talent Triangle: Power Skills Topics: Stress Management, Leadership, Burnout Prevention, Wellbeing, Resilience, Team Culture, People Pleasing, Priority Setting, Workplace Conflict, Joy, Self-Awareness, Communication The following music was used for this episode: Music: Tropical Vibe by WinnieTheMoog License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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    33 m
  • PPP 503 | How to Facilitate Meetings That Actually Lead to Decisions, with Evan Unger

    PPP 503 | How to Facilitate Meetings That Actually Lead to Decisions, with Evan Unger
    Mar 25 2026
    Summary In this episode, Andy sits down with Evan Unger, a consultant and trainer who has spent more than 30 years helping leaders facilitate collaborative decision making across projects, programs, and organizations around the world. Evan's work focuses on helping groups move forward when opinions differ, tension is present, and time is limited. This conversation is packed with immediately actionable ideas. Andy and Evan dig into why even experienced leaders struggle in high-stakes meetings, and how Evan's POPRA model (Purpose, Objectives, Process, Roles, Agreements) can transform the way you prepare and run them. They talk about how to manage the "HIPPO" (Highest Paid Person's Opinion) without suppressing the voices you most need to hear, a simple virtual technique called the simultaneous chat that can change the dynamic of any online meeting, and how to make sure your meetings actually land, with clear action items and time to close things out properly. Evan also shares his perspective on where AI fits in the future of facilitation, and some surprisingly personal advice about what he'd tell his younger self. If you're looking for practical, immediately usable tools to run better meetings and lead more collaborative decisions, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "On a scale of zero to a hundred percent, how effective are the meetings you attend? On average, and I can't tell you most of the time I get a number below 60% and often much lower.""My confusion as a leader, as a project manager, is immediately the confusion of the group because the group goes to where I'm at. And if I'm confused, welcome to what's about to happen in your meeting: Confusion, Chaos, Dysfunction.""The other extreme, and this is truly the art of leadership, is even though I have strong opinions as the project manager, I remain completely neutral, but I'm an expert in process, an expert in how I get other experts to come together, collaborate, make decisions, get 'em to buy in.""If I'm the HIPPO and I run the meeting as the expert, I will suppress conversation. People will not tell me what I need to know to make the decision, and I'm going to sub-optimize decisions, and I'm not going get people to buy in.""So the art of leadership is knowing how to start and work from the right side of the continuum where I'm an expert in the process of getting others to collaborate and asking questions to elicit their thinking.""If I'm not hearing from people as the facilitator of the collaborative conversation, that is a first sign that something's gone awry and I need to know how to hold space.""The meeting's purpose and objectives, that's the first tether, the first anchor. If that's not clear, there is no tool or technique that is going to save me.""Time is fuel. And we have limited fuel in the plane flight. When time is running out, we don't go knock on the cockpit and say to the pilot, fly faster.""People say to me, 'Evan, I've got Copilot now. I got these AIs doing all the monitoring and tracking'. It's like, yeah, great, but you can't trust what it said. You still have to come back and say, 'Do we all agree what we decided and where we go from here?'""The five points were: 1, learn Spanish and become fluent in Spanish. 2, become fluent in Mandarin. 3, make sure you get a hard sciences or engineering degree when you go to school. Do it. Take all the liberal arts courses you want, but have something that people actually want. 4, go do a 10-day silent meditation as soon as you get out of school. And 5, take a backpack when you get out of school. Travel the world for a year.... That list is now down to two points.""The plan is now to find something that can't be AI'd out of existence.""But really, the art of being a good coach, a good consultant, a good parent, a good manager is querying the people to help them figure out their own answer." Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:44 Start of Interview02:00 Evan's Background and Work03:13 Why Meetings Fail — The Plane Metaphor05:07 Preparing for High-Stakes Meetings: The POPRA Model07:48 Distinguishing Purpose from Objectives08:39 Facilitating Without Formal Authority11:43 Spotting Meeting Drift12:58 Balancing Dominant and Quiet Voices16:12 Face-to-Face Facilitation Techniques17:22 Handling Challenging Participants21:17 Ensuring Meetings Land: Follow-Up Habits23:59 AI and the Future of Facilitation32:25 Advice to Younger Self34:37 How These Skills Apply to Life36:03 End of Interview36:29 Andy Comments After the Interview41:22 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Evan and his work at terischwartzassociates.com. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 413 with Rich Malman and Jim Stewart. They talk about what they call meeting goblins and how to deal with them. It's a very project management-specific take on running better project meetings.Episode 246 with Steven Rogelberg. Steven is a meeting researcher, but a really practical guy, and ...
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    43 m
  • PPP 502 | When Process Is Not Enough: The Human Side of Project Leadership, with Brett Harned

    PPP 502 | When Process Is Not Enough: The Human Side of Project Leadership, with Brett Harned
    Mar 17 2026
    Summary In this episode, Andy talks with Brett Harned, founder of the Digital PM Community and the Digital PM Summit, and author of Project Management for Humans: Helping People Get Things Done. Brett has spent years coaching project leaders and helping organizations rethink what project management really is. His core conviction: the human side of the work is not a nice-to-have. It is the work. In this conversation, you'll hear how Brett fell into project management and what early experiences shaped his perspective on people and projects. You'll learn the patterns he sees repeated across teams and industries, practical habits for when projects feel messy or start to drift, and why he believes project management is a leadership role that most organizations still undervalue. Brett also shares his candid take on AI, what it can and cannot do for project leaders, and what advice he would give his younger self. If you lead projects or teams, whether or not you have a PM title, this episode is for you! Sound Bites "Often with PMs, it's finding or receiving or feeling the permission to lead like a human instead of like a machine or a robot.""Projects fail because conversations didn't happen or they happened way too late.""Project management is a leadership role and too often organizations don't see it as a leadership role the way that they should.""Project managers are quietly carrying emotional labor that no one really acknowledges.""You can't earn trust by being invisible.""The role has become less about task tracking and more about judgment, good communication and trust building.""If you call people on your team resources, they have every right to call you overhead.""Slowing conversations down before speeding up the work is like the biggest thing.""Drift isn't usually about effort. It's about misaligned understanding.""AI is not going to replace a really good leader.""AI is great at admin. It's terrible at the leadership stuff. It can't read the room, it can't navigate tension, it can't earn trust.""Say the thing now. Saying something early is almost always safer than saying it too late.""The job of a project manager isn't to absorb chaos. It's to make it a conversation.""Caring about people and building relationships is a skill, and it's a skill that's necessary for this career." Chapters 00:00 Introduction01:52 Start of Interview01:57 How Brett Describes What He Does03:29 When the People Side Became Clear06:52 Patterns Across Teams and Organizations10:32 How Expectations of the PM Role Have Changed12:28 The Impact of Remote and Hybrid Work15:26 Practices for When Projects Feel Messy18:20 How to Name What Is Happening Out Loud21:30 A Question for When Projects Start to Drift23:43 How AI Will and Won't Change the PM Role25:50 Practical Ways Brett Uses AI30:21 Advice to Younger Brett33:40 How PM Skills Show Up Outside of Work35:58 The PM Squad and Same Team Partners38:01 End of Interview38:22 Andy Comments After the Interview41:30 Outtakes Learn More You can learn more about Brett and his work at SameTeamPartners.com and BrettHarned.com. For more learning on this topic, check out: Episode 336 with Clint Padgett. During the interview with Brett, Andy mentioned the weakness of using only percent complete or status colors. That's something Clint and Andy talked about in episode 336.Episode 99 with Mike Roberto. The topic of conflict came up several times in this discussion. In episode 99, Mike and Andy talk about managing the tension between conflict and consensus. It's a discussion worth hearing, especially if you grew up thinking conflict is mostly a negative.Episode 500 with Steve Brown, former Google DeepMind futurist. Andy and Steve talk about AI and the future of work, and it's a discussion highly recommended for anyone leading projects today. Chat with PMeLa You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her. Pass the PMP Exam If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start. Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year! Join Us for LEAD52 I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! ...
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    44 m
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