Junior project managers say yes to everything. Senior project managers make the cost of the yes visible and get promoted for it. In this video, I break down the one skill that separates PMs who get steamrolled from PMs executives actually trust: pushing back without ever refusing.
After 8+ years running IT projects in rooms full of VPs, directors, and executive sponsors, I have watched the same pattern over and over. The PMs who protect their projects are not the most confident or the most senior. They are the ones who surface the tradeoff, put the decision back in the executive’s hands, and let the business choose with full information.
In this video, I cover:
- The trap: why saying yes without showing the cost backfires every time
- The principle senior PMs operate on: make the cost of the yes visible
- Technique 1: “Yes, and the tradeoff is”
- Technique 2: “What would you have me deprioritize?”
- Technique 3: “Let me come back with three options”
- Technique 4: escalation as a favor, the advanced move that builds executive trust
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