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Lead With Essan PM Leadership Coach helping aspiring & current Project Managers lead with clarity, confidence & impact.

PM Templates: https://www.tldprojectcoaching.com/category/project-templates-frameworks

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08/10/2026

Interview question: “Tell me about a mistake you made.”

Don’t pretend you’ve never made one.

Explain what happened, your responsibility, how you addressed it and what you changed afterwards.

Choose a genuine example that demonstrates professional judgement. Explain the situation briefly, what you could have handled differently, how you corrected the issue and what you learned.

Avoid blaming colleagues or choosing a mistake with no meaningful lesson. Interviewers want to see that you can reflect, take responsibility and improve how you work.

Show accountability, not perfection.

Save this before your next interview and follow for more project management interview advice.

06/10/2026

A Project Management certificate shows that you understand the theory. Employers also want to know that you can deliver, so they look for four things:

1. Delivery flow: can you explain how work moves from start to finish?
2. Stakeholder confidence: can you explain a risk or delay clearly to someone senior?
3. Evidence of responsibility: what did you personally own?
4. Practical examples: do you have real situations ready to describe?

Compare “Supported the project” with “Managed the plan and reported weekly to the sponsor”. The second tells an employer far more.

If you do not have project experience yet, create it. Take ownership of one workstream or coordinate an internal initiative, and record what you did.

Save this before buying another course, and follow for practical project management career advice.

05/10/2026

A busy project is not necessarily a clear project.

Teams can attend meetings, update plans and complete tasks while still being unsure about the outcome, the current priority, who owns the next decision and which risk needs attention.

Before adding another meeting or tracker, ask: what needs to be clearer for this project to move forward?

Strong project management begins by reducing confusion. Clear outcomes, priorities, ownership and risk management help teams make decisions and deliver with confidence.

Which is hardest to clarify on your projects: priorities, ownership, decisions or risks? Tell me in the comments.

Save this post for your next project meeting, and follow for more practical project management and leadership tips. Find out more through the link in my bio.

05/10/2026

Why do the best Project Managers expect the plan to break.

"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every Project Manager has watched a carefully baselined Gantt chart unravel by week three.

That does not mean planning failed. It means planning did its job.

Effective project planning gives you three things:

1. Shared direction. A clear picture of the goal and success criteria, so the team can adapt without losing alignment.

2. Early risk visibility. Risks, dependencies and assumptions identified before they become issues.

3. Decision-making agility. The confidence to re-plan and change course quickly when reality shows up.

The plan is the starting point.

Adaptability is the real deliverable.

The strongest project leaders do not protect the plan. They protect the outcome and the value the project exists to deliver.

Save this for your next project planning session.

Follow for practical project management insight and adaptive leadership lessons.

02/10/2026

The best Project Managers make the team say: we did it ourselves.

"When the best leader's work is done, the people say: we did it ourselves."
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 17

Written ~2,500 years ago — and it still describes great project leadership better than most modern frameworks.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

• Set the goal, then trust the team to own the how.

• Give credit to the team — and take the blame when things go wrong.

• Step back from the problem-solving so your people grow.

Your team won't follow your project plan. They'll follow your example.

The proudest moment of project leadership? A team that says: we did it ourselves.

Save this as your project leadership reminder.

Follow for weekly Project Management tips and Leadership quotes for PMs.

What's a moment your team said "we did it ourselves"?


01/10/2026

Strong communication is not just about speaking clearly.

In project leadership, some of the most important information can sit between the lines.

A stakeholder may say they are “happy with the progress” — but their hesitation, questions, silence or change in engagement may tell you something different.

Effective project leaders learn to listen beyond the words.

Ask yourself:

→ What is being said?
→ What is not being said?
→ What has changed?
→ What might the stakeholder be reluctant to say directly?
→ What action does this require from me as a leader?

Active listening, stakeholder management and emotional intelligence are leadership skills — not soft skills.

The strongest project managers don’t just communicate information. They understand people, read the room and create the conditions for honest conversations.

Follow for practical insights on Project Management, Project Leadership, Stakeholder Management, Leadership Development and Career Growth.

30/09/2026

A strong CV can still be overlooked if the recruiter has to search for the experience they're looking for.

Before applying, compare your CV with the job description.

Look for repeated requirements around:

• delivery environment
• methodologies
• stakeholder level
• technical or commercial experience
• programme/project complexity
• specific tools or qualifications

Then make sure your genuinely relevant experience is easy to find.

Tailoring doesn't mean rewriting your CV from scratch. It means making the relevance obvious.

Save this for your next application — and share it with someone job hunting right now.

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30/09/2026

Influence without authority: the Project Manager’s superpower.

“The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." - Ken Blanchard

Sound familiar?

As a Project Manager, you don't own the people on your team. You can't approve their raises, promote them, or reassign them, yet you're expected to lead them to deliver.

That's where real project leadership lives

• Build trust in the small, consistent moments.

• Show the "why" behind the plan.

• Be the person who follows through on every promise.Influence is earned in the details — never demanded in the kickoff meeting.

Save this for your next stakeholder meeting, and follow for weekly Project Management tips that actually work on real projects.

What’s one way you've earned influence without authority?

28/09/2026

Project leadership starts with your own standards.

“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves." — Ray Kroc Project Management, leadership standards show up in the details:

- How you communicate.
- How you handle pressure.
• How you respond when something goes wrong.
- How consistently you follow through.
- How you hold yourself accountable before asking others to be accountable.

Your team notices what you tolerate - but they also notice what you model.

Save this post for your next team 1:1 , and follow for weekly Project Management tips and leadership development insights.

Which standard do you refuse to lower as a Project Manager?

24/09/2026

One of the earliest signs of project misalignment is surprisingly simple: ask different people what the priority is and listen to their answers.

If the answers are different, don’t assume people are just communicating badly. Find out why.

As a Project Manager, check:

* What are we actually trying to achieve?
* What is the priority right now — and has it changed?
* Which deliverables are critical to the outcome?
* What has been deprioritised?
* Who made the decision, and has it been communicated consistently?

Then test the understanding across the team. Don’t just send another project update and assume everyone is aligned.

Misalignment can quickly turn into competing priorities, duplicated work, delayed decisions and missed deadlines.

A strong PM doesn’t just communicate the priority. They check that people have understood it in the same way.

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