I believe you should do a job or be involved in a business that you enjoy and be satisfied with. To do that you need to make choices and decisions that are  RELEVANT to your career, business, or dream goal. Anything is a project whether in your personal, professional or social life. Your personal characteristics and preferences, your business strategies are linked to your project and should work together for a better creativity, less stress to achieve your ultimate success.

What are your personal characteristics?

Your personal characteristics constitute your traits, attributes, dispositions and interests that you have in order to perform your important and complex roles. Being aware of who you are and what you like is very important to avoid things that stress you out and increase your creative ability. Your character plays a big role in leading a creative life, business or project to produce creative products and services. When you are aware of your personal characteristics, you will know when there is something that is blocking you from being creative.

As a leader, you cannot afford to have personal characteristics that will make a negative impact in your life in general and in your business or project in particular. Being unfriendly, arrogant, impulsive, argumentative, disloyal, and dishonest, stubborn, selfish, quick to blame etc are personality traits that will have a negative impact on your self-image, your business and also your project.

How best do you describe yourself?

You should be able to give a list of your personality traits. You can write down a list of 20 or more positive and negative traits. Then reduce that list to 10 traits that fit your personality and from the 10 traits choose 5 traits that describe you best and rank them from the very important to the less important. You can learn traits that you would like to have and improve those you think are negative in your roles.

A part of your personal characteristics, your personal preferences also play a big role in your life, your business and your project. They influence the aim of your actions.

They are your likes and dislikes and very crucial when you are making your choices and taking your decisions. They influence your job satisfaction, your lifestyle and your motivation. For example, they help you decide the type of features you would like to have in a product or service, the colour shade you want to use, the location you want to be, the size of your house, office, your workforce or the car you want to drive etc and they help you in your creative skills.

Colours that you see play a big role in whatever you want to achieve. They influence your mood, thoughts, and behaviour. In order to live your best life, you need to choose the best colours that complement your personality in your personal life, your business and your projects. Therefore, you should choose colours that make you shine and draw people to you not away from you. You can use them in your personal life, business and project.

Knowing your personal traits and preferences, your personal strategy and business strategy is crucial in project. And it is also crucial to know who you are and what you want to achieve for you to be satisfied. Many people are not satisfied with their jobs, businesses or the life they are living and projects continue to fail despite the criteria of a good project manager. You should be involved in project that you enjoy.

What is a project?

A project is a temporary effort that you make to produce a unique product, service, process, or any other result. It is unique because you want to deliver something different. It is not a routine job that you usually do. It is temporary because you are not going to work on the project for ever. You will work on it for a specific time set beforehand.

It can be about anything and can take place in any environment. Whether you are conducting you own project or your customers’ project, you need to have leadership qualities such as having the vision so that everyone that is involve in the project can see the big picture.

Possessing qualities such as the ability to inspire your team members, expect the best result, be supportive, have integrity, open communication, having ethical behaviour, problem solving, ability to influence and make the right choices and take

the right decisions. These are the characteristics of a good project manager and a leader and they are very important in your business and any project you undertake.

Why do projects exist?

The need for change is ever-increasing in the business environment and in people’s private and professional lives. Change happens because of the competitive business world and also the human need of wanting more out of life or you may need a project to find a solution to a challenge you are facing with because of a crisis in the global economy like with this current pandemic.

People are involved in projects to solve problems or to take advantage of an opportunity. And to do that you need to have a spirit of creativity and problem-solving. There are so many reasons why projects are needed. On a personal level, it could be that you want to brand yourself or to travel the world, to register yourself or your child into education, to build or decorate a house, or to write a book.

On a professional or business level it could be that you want to change your career path, learn a new skill, start a new business, expand your existing business, organise a virtual platform for your workforce, recruit talents, relocate your company, go global, launch a marketing campaign, innovate, or implement change. Or it could be an IT project, and so on. These endeavours can be organised and managed efficiently using project management principles to give your project the likelihood of success.

Unfortunately, many people conduct their projects other wise and they fail to achieve what they want. Amongst the reasons is the lack of clarity in defining goals and objectives. You cannot work hard on accomplishing something that you only have a vague idea or confusing information about it. You need to have a clear goal and communicate it clearly.

There is also the lack of proper planning, it is why you need to apply the project management principles so that you identify clearly all information that you need in your project such as the outcome you want to have at the end of the project, the steps you will take in order to produce it, estimate the cost, the time it will take, specify the quality preferences, identify how many people you will need in the project and the skills needed etc.

You have also a lack of perseverance due to your lack of courage in face of challenges leading to a de-motivated and dissatisfied team. Or it can be your lack of vision to show a clear direction where the project or business is heading. It can also be the lack of core values indicating how you and your team should behave with internal and external stakeholders. It can also be a lack of alignment because the project does not align with your personal or business strategy. Lack of clear communication is another reason, if there is no clear communication your team members be unsure about what to in case of change due to errors.

Your personal characteristics play a big role in your career, business, project and in your personal life. However, negative character traits have an impact on your self-image, your business reputation and your project performance. Moreover, your personal preferences also play a role by influencing your choices and decisions. As the world economy continues to suffer due to the pandemic with many businesses closing down and many people losing their jobs; this is a time to make the right choice and decision.

What is the solution to unemployment? You have two choices, start looking for another job or take the entrepreneurship road.  This is why you need to be you, know who you are, what you like and what you want to achieve. In order to be creative and produce quality products and services you need to be passionate about your job! Do you know how many people are not satisfied with their jobs or business status?

If you are in this category you are not alone. We will show you how to have clarity in your choices and decisions so that you choose projects that are relevant to your career, business, or dream goal. We will also show you how to start and deliver your project successfully and monetise it so that you move to the next level and live a happier, more successful, and healthier life.

Annie Ka Wenu Dip, BSc, MSc

Project Management Coach, Speaker and Author

Branding Strategist

Founder/CEO of Life Quality Improvement Coaching

Book series: https://lqic.co.uk/authoring/

Learn more: https://lqic.co.uk/my-courses/

Podcast: https://anchor.fm/annie-ka-wenu/episodes/EPISODE–1-HOW-TO-HAVE-CLARITY-IN-YOUR-CHOICES-AND-DECISIONS-ei0cnq