Psychological Contract: The contract you do not need to sign

In this episode, Ricardo talks about a kind of invisible contract that governs people's relations within organizations and that can have a significant impact on the project's success or failure.

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Episode transcript

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five Minutes BM podcast today. I lacked to discuss the Psychological Contract and why a one to discuss this, because this is one of the most critical areas of the project manager work. Most of the time, we think that our relationship with our team members, when we are managing a team, it's people it's regulated buy a piece of paper called Contract. And in the contract you say, I'll pay you X amount of money.

You have this annual leave, you have this, or you have that this benefit, and this, this are the written things, but when people join your project, join your organization. Or when you joined a new one, a project, there is not a contract that is not signing. And that is written with invisible. Ink is the Psychological Contract the Psychological Contract is a set of expectations that you have about the company, about the people, about the organization, and it's the same from the organization.

So you have a Psychological for example, if you decide to work for Apple, or if you decide to work for Google, or if you decide to work for this, for example, this most desired companies to work on with its not necessarily money because the salaries most of the time, or pretty much in the same, but the, what are you looking for? You were looking at exactly for this Psychological Contract to part of a winning team or to be part of a flexible team, to be, you know, it's its to fulfill one of your needs and this regulate your relationship.

And this will be a key driver for you to support or for you to resist a change. It's very, very important winder send this point. For example, if someone is working up to 10 o'clock every single day, every single day, every single day and leave this person does not have the amount of work to justify this. And you know, you need to understand what part of the psychological contract does she or he is trying to fulfill by staying.

You need just one to stand the underlying conditions. Maybe this person, he is a loan on that city, on that country and is looking to fulfill their personal life with the work. Or maybe that person thinks that this is the only way of being perceived as in the work environment or that person is working up to 10 because everybody works up to 10 in this person does not want to be different. It's very, very important to understand this in my own experience, when I receive the offer from the UN, Oh, of course the offer was written or you have done in this benefit than this road, this responsibilities, but there was a huge in probably a much more relevant Contract that, that was just Franny was the Psychological Contract eight.

What is their for me in my family, for my family on doing this movie, what is their, for me in my wellbeing, in my fulfillment as a human, as a professional, and this is a key the driver to motivate me to do the work. If you do not understand it's in most of the product managers, they do like to talk about this. Do you know why? Because they know engineers, we are engineers and we are technicians. And the people it's sometimes morning to talk about people and to handle people.

But when you know, we need to understand that there is only one way to be successful. We, in our process, he is to manage people where there is no machine that can do that. And if you did not manage well go home because your project will fail. I promise you your project we'll fail. So think about that. We try to understand what does the Psychological Contract even when you go for a date, sorry for using a complete different, for example, you date, there is a Psychological Contract on that dinner in a set of expectations.

If it's not fulfilled, the first date will be also in the last month. So you need to understand business like an order side's of human behavior. I think about that because at the end, what we want, he said project success and to get our projects done on time, on budget and with everything we need to meant. Well, people, I hope you enjoy this podcast. See you next week with another five minutes PM.

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Psychological Contract: The contract you do not need to sign

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