{"id":4304,"date":"2023-03-30T11:43:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T11:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resourceguruapp.com\/blog\/?p=4304"},"modified":"2025-01-14T09:58:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T09:58:46","slug":"happy-people-great-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resourceguruapp.com\/blog\/project-management\/happy-people-great-work","title":{"rendered":"Happy people make for great work\u2014A story by Steph Dix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Director, Data Governance at American Express, and experienced PMP, Ordonna Sargeant, talked about what happens when you don\u2019t have clearly defined team roles<\/a> and why collaboration is the key to success<\/a> in project management.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week, Operations Director at DDB Sydney, Steph Dix, shares her (all-too-familiar) story about work-life balance<\/a> and how exactly her mantra, “happy people make for great work,” came to be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can read all the stories in our latest eBook, Confessions of a Project Manager.\u00a0Download your free copy here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I remember the first time I cried in my career.<\/p>\n

It was during my early days of working in publishing at a fast-paced, weekly magazine house in London. It was the mid-2010s and my first proper client-facing job.<\/p>\n

I remember dealing with an especially tricky client\u2014who looking back now I realize was as junior, and likely as stressed, as me\u2014back and forthing on a certain product\u2019s prevalence on a double-page spread.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but the unique combination of dealing with paying clients, a vivacious editorial team, and an equally vivacious commercial team who would (and could) sell literally anything would eventually create my greatest skill.<\/p>\n

I became someone who could find compromise where most would assume impossible.<\/p>\n

What made me cry then, was not a person, but a situation.<\/p>\n

I was sat with my art director, a brilliant, wildly talented woman, who understandably let out her frustration at the document we all knew too well: \u201cInsertClientHere_DoubleSpread_Final_v17.\u201d She was wearily staring at her screen for a solution we hadn\u2019t already tried\u2014when out of nowhere, tears started rolling down my face.<\/p>\n

She stared at me in shock. I felt like I stared back at her in shock. She leaped up and put her arms around me (which obviously made it worse) and I instantly felt embarrassed and laughed it off.<\/p>\n

Until that day I had always thought showing emotion at work was equal to showing weakness. But those tears, that rip in the fabric of our day-to-day, caused me and my team to step back and look at the wider picture of what was happening from a process, and people perspective.<\/p>\n

It was like a jolt woke us all up, and gave us a moment of \u201cwhy the f*ck are we crying over a double-page spread?\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t about where the product was on the page anymore, it was how we got to killing ourselves over it in the first place.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In this article \ud83d\udcd6<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n