^{Originally published in PMI's Project Landscape Magazine, Vol 2, 2008}

In the austere office of this telecom subsidiary, my black composition book perched on my lap, I glanced over the shoulder of the red-faced Director of Operations into the blue mist of the Tennessee Mountains. Visible in the picture window were the gorgeous colors of fall trees, yet at the moment, there was nowhere I wouldn't rather be.

I had flown into Lexington KY the previous day and held a disturbing meeting with a key customer of that region whose complaints were much the same as the TN Director's. Fortunately for me in KY, the customer was undergoing a managerial change, offering me an opportunity for a fresh start absent the history of disappointment and broken promises. After a long day of meetings the outgoing Project Manager and I drove the 200 miles to our next destination for the upcoming Chattanooga meeting.

We arrived late in the evening, checked into our hotel rooms and spent the next few hours on painfully slow dial-up modem catching up on email accumulated during our travels. By midnight I was still wired and unable to settle in. Nervous in my new assignment, I had been forewarned that this customer meeting would be challenging, politically correct term for difficult.

The Tennessee Director of Operations was poised for this moment, fully prepared to blast me out of his revolving door as the successor PM candidate, as he had already done with my predecessor. His experience with our company to that point had been in his words, a compilation of missed internal deadlines due to delivery and installation delays on our company's part. He was further outraged by damages suffered to the interior of their telecom shelters due to our equipment inside which shifted during transport to site.

His immediate requirement from this meeting was an ultimatum for me to arrange a face to face visit and personal apology by our Vice President of Key Accounts. This request, according to him, had been ignored for six months.

Our company was facing its own internal changes and a new Vice President had just been installed into this volatile customer account. There were larger issues on her agenda than this Director's complaints. I was going to have to battle this one on my own.

Part of my training objectives that year included completing a Communications and Effective Leadership course which I had just finished prior to this assignment. It provided classic tools and techniques which helped keep me on track in this situation.

Maintaining good eye contact, nodding in acknowledgement throughout his dialogue, mirroring his posture, taking extensive notes and waiting for him to let off steam before reacting or asking questions, these tactics were key to the director's change in demeanor toward me. It could never have been mistaken for receptiveness, but his attitude softened somewhat as I reiterated each of his issues, proposed a definite timeline for correction of these perceived "broken promises" and "lies", and assured him that I would make it my first priority to turn this situation around.

Fortunately, this rocky relationship ended well. Mainly I attribute this to the repair of broken communication lines within my own project team. The Site Installation Manager, whose initial response had been outrage at the proposed delivery schedule on a holiday, diligently worked with me to meet the short lead time once he understood the reasons.

I was amazed by the work ethic of the installation teams who, leaving family and loved ones behind, traveled to remote sites, in mountainous regions, battled uncooperative weather, insects and hunger. Often they would arrive at site to find locked gates or neighboring hill people with shotguns protesting their trespass, all in a day's work. The Resource Manager whose resources were stretched to the limit allocated his crews on short notice. Our outsourced transport vendor met unrealistic schedules, at times driving all night to facilitate predawn deliveries. The Project Coordinators ensured that missing parts and pieces of equipment arrived quickly even though they were missing from the original drop shipment list. Through the efforts of our whole team we made it come together.

I'm thankful to my counterpart in the customer organization, their formidable Project Manager who could inspire burly construction crews to quake in her presence, for her willingness to give me a chance in the shadow of her previous disappointment. She helped me to succeed through communication and open dialogue. We agreed that our mutual success was the only acceptable outcome to the situation and made a vow to do whatever it took to make that a reality.

We ended our six-month project having completed the installation of nearly 300 radio base station sites in the three state area. My Vice President ultimately made the site visit that had been requested by the Chattanooga customer to his great delight.

I learned valuable lessons from this experience: expect the unexpected, develop rapport with the customer's team players and respect the needs of my own team by providing them adequate info in a timely fashion. In essence, communication was the key ingredient to our combined success.

Peggy holds an Advanced Masters Certificate in Project Management from GW University School of Business, and a BA from UTD. She is semi-retired after 13 years with a hi-tech global telecom company and works from her home as a freelance writer.