Soft Skills

In this podcast episode, Ricardo emphasizes the increasing relevance of artificial intelligence (AI) across various professions, particularly in project management. He recommends several free online AI courses, including those by PMI, Google, Linkedin, and Microsoft, highlighting their differences and merits.

A new Podcast is on the air and this week Ricardo discusses how our work and personal relationships tend to feed back into our perspective and set of implications. In the last Newsletter he published, Ricardo spoke about an event that was introduced to me by a great friend, Burning Man. Ricardo went to Burning Man this month looking for something “out of the box”.

To help us cope with anxiety, Ricardo discusses a technique he learned from Nick Trenton's book "Stop Overthinking": the 5,4,3,2,1 method. Every day brings new challenges, and it's easy to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of panic and worry about the potential dangers to our work and projects. The method is based on counting down from five to one; at each stage, we focus on a different sense in order to locate ourselves in the here and now.

In this episode, Ricardo talks about trust as a critical component to getting things done. He mentions that trust is not just a nice and politically correct word. Citing an HBR article, Ricardo says that trust increases productivity by 50%, engagement by 76%, and energy at work by 106%. Ricardo also shares three tips for developing trust among your teams:safety, consistency, and honesty. Listen to the episode to learn more.

This episode concludes the 2022 podcast series as Ricardo looks back on the year's events. Ricardo says that 2022 was, in some ways, a different year. Maybe because we recently emerged from the lockdown situation caused by Covid, society stayed in something like a "limbo" state. In particular, he emphasizes three noteworthy aspects of the year 2022: The first is about unpredictability:

This week Ricardo shares a personal experience where he can see project management happening naturally as part of life. He made lunch at the weekend to celebrate a friend's birthday. Without even realizing it, Ricardo prepared the list of ingredients and made a mental plan of what resources he would need, how long each item would last in the oven, etc. Important to note that lunch was not for two people. It was for more than 20 people.

In this episode, Ricardo reflects on five aspects that could explain why some intellectually gifted professionals have such a hard time working in teams. He discusses aspects related to confidence, education, ego, EQ, and IQ, among others, and their impact on a “smart” person’s desire and effectiveness to work together.

In this episode, Ricardo talks about three skills he believes are critical to be successful in these current times.

In this episode, Ricardo presents the highlights of the TED Global 2017 conference in Arusha, Tanzania. He comments on some of the presentations whose content included everything from discussions about art and religion to aspects of artificial intelligence in reducing the cost of diagnosing cancer in poor communities.

In this episode, Ricardo returns to the subject of the last episode and explains what it is to actually have relevant experience as a project manager, as opposed to simply having years of service.

In this episode, Ricardo talks about the skills of great project managers: having a track record, a history of challenges, failures, and successes throughout his/her career and having a great ability to communicate. He ends up answering the controversial question that always arises: is it a mandatory condition for the project success that the manager holds the technical knowledge, the expertise, about the product to be developed?

On this episode, Ricardo talks about the attention we must have with how we communicate because the characteristics of personality, culture and values of the receiver can dramatically change the meaning of the original message.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about ego, vanity and jealousy in the project environment. He gives tips on how we can deal with these personal characteristics that may directly or indirectly affect the project.

In this podcast, Ricardo throws the question: is improvisation during a project always something negative? He cites scenarios where improvisation can be good and how we can take advantage of that.