Several years ago, I was working on a complex project which had multiple contracted project managers overseeing various aspects (construction, logistics, technology, etc.).  There was one Project Manager in particular who did not seem to have the same sense of urgency as I (and, more importantly, the client) did about certain hurdles and setbacks we were running up against.  The VP for my client, who was overseeing the project as a whole, expressed to me some frustration with this other Project Manager, and I shared what I felt was an interesting revelation with her.

I said that I thought one of the hardest jobs in the world must be that of a funeral director.  Think about it – day in and day out, you see families in a deep emotional crisis, which may be the most important and distressing event of their lives.  But to you, it’s "just another day at the office".  At some point, it’s got to be very easy to become callous to the emotional turmoil.

But if you want to be good at what you do, you can’t allow yourself to become callous, and you definitely can’t allow your customer – the grieving family, to feel that you are callous.  You have to work through the emotions with that family and, to some degree, experience that loss with them.  And then you do it again with another family the next day.  And again.  It must be exhausting.

This particular Project Manager, I explained, was not grieving our loss.  He was not sympathetic to my client’s pain.  To him, this was just another project – one of many he would work on – and he was not personally affected by the problems we were encountering.  If it didn’t go perfectly, he did not have to live with the results – he would be moving on to another project soon enough.  His callousness was showing big time.

Recently, I shared this story with a friend of mine who has been in the funeral business for years.  I asked him about the challenge of working with grieving families day in and day out without growing callous.  He confirmed that it was definitely a temptation, but he gave me some of the keys to maintaining the right attitude and giving every family what they need in a funeral:

Pay attention to the details. When you are putting together a funeral, you often have a very short time (a couple of days) to arrange a somewhat complex service involving a lot of people and moving parts.  And you only get one shot at it.  If one cousin’s name is misspelled in the obituary, you could ruin the day for some already very distressed people.  So, you learn to check and double check and make sure to get it right.  The same goes for project management and consulting.  It may be one of many similar projects for you, but it could be the only one for your client.  Treat it as if you only get one shot to get it right.

Avoid placating. Statements like “I know how you feel” ring hollow for a person grieving a loss.  Even if you have been through a similar experience, you are not that person and you are not in their shoes.  So you simply say “I’m sorry” and leave it at that.  Don’t give them a bunch of empty words.  The key is to care about their feelings, not to pretend to share them.  Be sensitive, not phony.  As a consultant or Project Manager, you have to avoid the temptation to tell people what you think they want to hear or will make them feel good.

Focus on the objective, but don’t ignore the emotion involved. Again, due to the short timeframe, you have a lot of details to work out and decisions to facilitate.  But you can’t look at a grieving person and say “quit crying and make a decision already”.  You have to guide hurting people through the process of making decisions and achieving the goals by working through their grief, not casting it aside.  As a project manager, you are trying to achieve an objective, but you can’t ignore the human factor.  There are people involved and possibly jobs at stake.  While I’m not a fan of political games or power struggles, you can’t totally discount the affect of these events on your project.  If you study and understand them, you can use them to your advantage and incorporate them into the success of your project instead of ignoring or fighting against them.

Now, I realized that it is somewhat morbid to compare project management to directing a funeral, and probably insensitive and inappropriate to compare a technology project or problem to the loss of a life.  But I think that anyone in a service business, be it consulting or otherwise, can learn a lot from the funeral industry, and the necessary approach to customer service and sensitivity found there.  In order to really serve your client, you have to respect their pain, not deny or belittle it.  You have to walk through the experience with them as though you have a real stake in it.  You have to find the balance between being an objective third party and a callous, unaffected vendor.  You have to care – and show it.

I work with technology, but I am in the people business.  I don’t solve technology problems – I solve problems for people, which may involve technology.  Whatever business you are in, you need to adopt that same attitude if you want to be truly successful.