Working with Your Project Sponsor: 5 Tips

Your relationship with your Project Sponsor is crucial to the success of your project - and to your success as a Project Manager. So, in this video, I look at 5 tips to help you get that relationship right.
Tip 1
What is the frame that your sponsor is thinking about?
1. me (themselves)
WAM: ‘What about me?’
2. us (their team)
WAU: ‘What about us?’
3. us (the organization)
WAO: ‘What about the organization?’
4. them (customers, clients, regulators, suppliers, or any other outsiders to your organization)
WAT: ‘What about them?’
Tip 2
Make Life Easy for Your sponsor
Always take responsibility. Nothing is more likely to annoy your boss than the feeling that you are trying to wriggle out of a problem.
Take the initiative where appropriate.
Most of all, accept any feedback that your boss gives you and thank them for it.
Tip 3
The Governance Deficit
Is your sponsor allocating enough time to your project?
If not: 8 approaches in our eBook
Tip 4
A four-step process for handling difficult sponsors
This is a general strategy
In our ebook, we also look at specific strategies for 6 types of difficult project sponsor
Step 1: Confidence and Competence
Step 2: Build Your Relationship a Little at a Time
Step 3: Acknowledge their Needs
Step 4: Recognition, Compliments, and Praise
Tip 5
How to handle a meddlesome sponsor who is too focused on minor details of your project
In our eBook, we look at ten ways a project sponsor can go rogue. This is the first of them.
This could be:
- a trust issue - they don’t yet trust you enough
- or a control issue - they want to be in control
One thing that works in both cases is to set up frequent checkpoint meetings where they can ask their questions of you - so you can deal with those questions and keep your sponsor away from the team (and therefore not distract them)
In our Kindle Exclusive eBook, Working with Your Project Sponsor, we cover five topics:
1. Do You Know What your Project Sponsor Wants?
2. How I Kept My Boss Happy Without Working Hard at It
3. Eight Approaches to Engage Your Project Sponsor
4. How to Handle a Difficult Project Sponsor
5. Rogue Project Sponsor: What to Do when Sponsorship goes Bad
Get Working with Your Project Sponsor: How to build a great working relationship with your Project Sponsor, for the good of your project
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[@Onlinepmcourses]

I'd argue that no single relationship is more important to your project than that between the Project Manager and their Sponsor, Client, or boss. How you work together can determine their level of satisfaction and your professional standing. Here are my top tips.

[@Onlinepmcourses]

🤝

[@mosesm.mwariri1487]

Excellent tips. I have applied these with great success.

[@Onlinepmcourses]

Thank you, Moses.

[@ITProjectManagers]

Hi Mike, great video. What do you suggest doing with a sponsor that does not have time for you and your projects?

[@Onlinepmcourses]

Great question, Dmitry. In fact, the absentee sponsor is the first of 7 types of difficult project sponsor I discuss in my article, 'How to Handle a Difficult Project Sponsor: [7 Different Types]' onlinepmcourses.com/difficult-project-sponsor-7-different-types There are five levers that can really work to build their commitment: Risk and responsibility, Duty and obligation, Benefits and advantages, Control and Power, or Reputation and kudos. Take a look at the article: onlinepmcourses.com/difficult-project-sponsor-7-different-types