successful project management - Commonwealth of Learning

judgment to decide whether you really have to repeat yourself or simplify the
message to accommodate them.
Tone
Tone conveys whether you are being friendly, angry, cheerful, patient, passionate,
etc. and can play an important part in establishing clarity and audibility. When things
are difficult at a particular stage of the project, as they are bound to be at times, I
have noted that the project manager who is weighed down by the pressure presents
the message with characteristic lack of enthusiasm. The tone of dejection and low
spiritedness becomes evident. Presentation is usually accompanied with loss of
patience for those who appear unnecessarily dull and slow to grasp simple
messages. This often borders on anger as the project manager feels peeved and out
of sorts. The misfortune is that like flu, this disposition contaminates team members,
and you end up with a meeting that is depressed. If the manager displays a tone
characterized with lack of enthusiasm, why should team members be enthusiastic?
Pace
Pace is concerned with how fast or slow the project manager speaks. Either way,
speech that is too fast or too slow does not achieve its goal. When you are too fast,
you lose some of the audience, and when you are too slow the same applies. The
good project manager will strive for a balance between the two, and ways to slow
down include:
• adding more pauses to give people time to think;
• varying your delivery pace so that sometimes you slow down, and at other
times speed up; and
• using less energy in actually speaking, so that words come out more
smoothly and less jerkily.
Among some of the ways to speed up speech are:
• put more energy into talking so that the words come out more strongly
• practise before you present; and
• learn to time yourself with a watch. This helps you improve speed.
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