Martial Arts in Project Management

Maybe you have been there: you’ve been writing this email for the last 20 minutes. Your emotions steam up, as you fume about what was written/said and maybe even worse it was in public or in front of your superior … but you are already coming up with decisive answers, bringing all the facts, explaining the chain of events, throwing out ripostes, proving your superiority and revealing the ultimate truth.

1. Karate

This is the moment you are doing things the karate way — you got hit, and you’re dreaming about fighting back, about delivering a fatal blow, and you’re targeting the vital spot deliberately, and you want to finish this combat with a single punch, you have all the power and all the trump cards, triumph awaits … and this moment is when you should actually stop what you’re doing immediately, before someone gets hurt. Count to 10 — or to 100 — if that’s what it takes. Not only because you might be overestimating your karate skills, but you should think twice before you transform professional communication into a fight.

After all, you don’t want to fight or even worse to kill your client — do you?

This is one of the examples when emotions can set you up in fighting mode, turning communication in something it should never be, and will always bring bad results. Unfortunately this happens a lot.

Other situations may also bring out martial art-like responses.

2. Kung-fu

Out of the blue, your inbox is hit with multiple emails, from multiple “requestors” all tagged ASAP. It happens — and coincidentally when you’re already fighting awful pile of tasks to do. Here’s where you are subject to kung-fu, a martial art honed to deliver blows punches twice as fast, and not always from obvious directions.

FIFO (first in — first out) is rarely your best friend here. Don’t rush in it, give yourself a minute. Prioritize your work, and start to answer in the way that is resolving things not postponing them. Probably some of the emails will be waiting in a queue till the next day or even longer, but this way you will be sure that most important ones get answered first.

The main objective here is to regain a stable position after the first fury of blows gets delivered. Look at all angles of attack, strike fast, deal with the major attacks first, and make sure that when you hit a target, it stays hit ;)

3. Judo

Judo is all about keeping the right distance, maintain yourself in a favourable stable position, and putting your opponent onto a shaky footing. Then when the right moment comes you can tackle your opponent effortlessly.

This is actually my favourite “technique” — and I think it should be bread and butter for any accomplished project manager. You always send contact reports. Your project’s documentation is complete & well-organised. You don’t have any loose ends left behind.

And then when a problem arises you have all the necessary information at your fingertips — you’re doing Judo.

Summary

Heated emotions never improve communication, and unfortunately there are many ways of communication which spark bad emotions. But you should handle all those situations like a trained martial artist:

• Keep the right distance
• Keep your stance in balance
• Be prepared
• Don’t unnecessarily provoke your opponent (because he is probably your partner from the dojo ☺)

But most important — as any serious martial artist, look for other not-combat options first, and save your fighting skills as a last resort

P.S. There are also more amusing but apt examples e.g. Capoeira — when you think that this is just a dance, and actually you’ve just got beaten. Aikido where you cannot deliver the message because your opponent is unreachable/not responding/not answering emails. FakeMMA — when the intention and imagination were all about the deadly effect (remember the karate example), but communication is done in such unskilled and often unprofessional way, that it brings the opposite results to the intention.