Hello Reader,

When I’m mentoring project managers, one of the key things I hear time and time again is that they want to be given more responsibility and have greater influence over the work.

Project managers often struggle from not having budget and resource responsibility. If you don’t control these elements of the project, you don’t really have the option to take many decisions about how the work unfolds.

You can’t do anything to address risk either because people don’t take your recommendations seriously. You struggle to influence the outcomes of negotiations, or your suggestions aren’t taken on board – although if someone else suggests the exact same thing, their words are lapped up and lauded like they’ve spoken some perfect truth.

This is the curse of not being credible at work.

But where does credibility come from? And how do you get it?

First, build competence

You can’t be seen as credible unless you know your craft.

You need to have the technical and social competences to be able to manage projects before anyone will consider you credible and influential.

There are several project management competence models available from different professional bodies (there are a few I recommend referenced here). To be honest, it doesn’t really matter which one you use as a personal reference.

People judging you in the workplace aren’t going to be mentally comparing you against those standards. They will simply assess whether you get the work done in a professional way and give them the outcomes they are expecting.

Beyond building competence I have a few more tips that will help people see you as credible at work. Here’s what else you can do.

If you’re having any challenges at work, I have a few mentoring slots available over the next month, so if you think talking it through would help, book a call here.

Have a great week!

Elizabeth

P.S. Check out these other items of note this week:

• All you need to know about building a project scorecard.
• Need to earn Power Skills PDUs to maintain your certification? I have the guide for you!
• Get all of the templates you need for dealing with Stakeholders in this bundle.