People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast

Summary
In this episode, Andy welcomes Rebecca Hinds, organizational behavior researcher and author of Your Best Meeting Ever. Rebecca brings a behavioral science lens to one of the most persistent pain points in modern work: meetings that multiply, linger, and drain rather than deliver.
Andy and Rebecca explore the concept of meeting debt, and why reducing meeting volume often matters far more than optimizing agendas. They discuss why meetings have become status symbols and performance art, how a simple social contract makes it nearly impossible to decline an invite, and what meeting minimalism actually means (hint: it's not about ruthless efficiency). Rebecca shares practical ideas, like calendar cleanses, Return on Time Invested (ROTI) ratings, and unexpected guardrails, including the fascinating case of the 27-minute meeting. They also wrestle with AI's potential to either genuinely improve meeting culture or simply make expensive, inefficient meetings feel more productive.
If you're looking for a research-backed, practical guide to finally taking back your calendar, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"Why do we cling to this practice that has largely remained unchanged for decades and decades, and yet we know, we're highly aware that it's highly inefficient and dysfunctional."
"It's ironic and unfortunate that we now consider so many of these dysfunctional practices, so many of these tactics as business as usual."
"We tend to associate visibility with value and presence with productivity. A packed calendar is a very clear indication that you are busy, you're important, and you have high status within the organization."
"Meetings are the most important product in our entire organization, and yet also the least optimized."
"Meeting debt is so bad that it's not worth it to tinker at the edges and try to optimize the meetings that already exist because fundamentally, many of them should not exist in the first place."
"Return on Time Invested (ROTI) is a concept I learned from my colleague Elise Keith. It asks people to rate the effectiveness of a meeting on a scale of zero to five based on whether this meeting was well worth it in terms of the time invested."
"I don't mean efficiency for efficiency's sake, right? The goal isn't to make our meetings ruthlessly efficient at all costs."
"He was tasked with running these 30-minute meetings. He was seeing them drag on and on rather than make the meeting longer, he made them exactly 27 minutes, and that jolted people out of autopilot."
"What we're seeing in meetings overwhelmingly is people using AI to cognitively offload the work that they should be doing as humans."
"I continue to believe there's nothing that communicates your leadership more clearly than being able to run a good meeting, but also being able to steer a bad meeting back on track because people very quickly make the cognitive jump that if you can lead a meeting, if you can lead a meeting back on track, you can probably lead a team, you can probably lead a project, you can maybe lead a function."
"And the reverse is also true. If you can't lead a good meeting, it doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence in your ability to lead anything bigger."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:27 Start of Interview
01:36 Rebecca's Background and Journey
02:51 The Meeting Sabotage Manual
04:38 Meetings as Status Symbols and Performance Art
07:30 Meeting Debt: Why Reducing Volume Comes First
10:12 Calendar Cleanses: Wiping the Slate Clean
11:28 Guardrails Against Meeting Bloat
14:30 Better Meeting Metrics: Return on Time Invested
17:34 Meeting Minimalism: What It Really Means
18:43 Minimalism in Practice
21:30 AI and Meeting Culture
27:50 Changing Meeting Culture Without Full Authority
32:06 End of Interview
32:39 Andy Comments After the Interview
35:34 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Rebecca and her work at RebeccaHinds.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 503 with Evan Unger. Evan shares some helpful ideas on leading better decision-making meetings.
Episode 246 with Steven Rogelberg. Steven is a leading meeting researcher whose work also appears in Rebecca's book.
Episode 72 with Steven Rogelberg. An earlier conversation with this leading meeting researcher.
Episode 245 with Elise Keith. Elise shares some practical insights on how to make meetings more effective.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Meeting Culture, Meeting Debt, Meeting Facilitation, Return on Time Invested, Organizational Behavior, Leadership, Project Management, Behavioral Science, Meeting Minimalism, AI and Meetings, Team Productivity
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Brooklyn Nights by Tim Kulig
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Fashion Corporate by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Ashley Herd, HR and legal leader turned management coach, and author of The Manager Method. Ashley has led HR and legal teams at organizations like McKinsey and Yum Brands, and she brings a refreshingly real-talk approach to the challenges every manager faces, especially those quiet moments of self-doubt that come with growing responsibility.
In this conversation, you'll hear Ashley's take on why imposter feelings are so common among thoughtful leaders, and how her concept of the "career quilt" reframes even the most uncomfortable professional experiences. She introduces her simple but powerful Pause, Consider, Act framework, which is a practical tool for navigating tough management moments without reacting on instinct. You'll also hear how the language we use about people shapes the way we lead them, why delegation is harder than it looks, and how accountability can be reframed as a positive force on your team. Ashley even shares how Pause, Consider, Act has made her a better parent.
If you're looking for a grounded, practical guide to leading people well (without burning yourself out) this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"We all have our career quilts. And sometimes those are different, like different jobs, actual different experiences like that."
"I felt very much like the other at McKinsey."
"When you open up and show that you are real, you tend to gain the trust and respect that you're so afraid you'll lose if you do that."
"People don't care that you know the message. They want to hear the message for themselves."
"What would I want to have happen to me if I were in the other person's shoes?"
"A rolling stone gathers stress, not moss."
"Just thinking about the people that are doing a lot of the work, how you treat them and talk with and about them? That can shape a lot of the outcomes."
"Tasks can quietly become symbols of our value."
"When you treat your people well, they are a better parent, friend, relative."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Start of Interview
02:45 What's A Leadership Experience That Shaped You?
05:27 The Career Quilt Concept
07:47 Imposter Phenomenon in Leadership
11:45 Spotlight Effect and How We Worry About Being Watched
14:10 Introducing Pause, Consider, Act
15:05 What Pausing Actually Looks Like
21:30 Empathy Without Carrying Too Much
23:47 Rethinking Empathy
25:40 How Language Shapes How We Lead People
28:52 The Delegation Trap
30:33 What Ashley Still Struggles to Delegate
33:15 Reframing Accountability
38:10 Applying the Book Outside of Work
39:43 End of Interview
40:22 Andy Comments After the Interview
43:20 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Ashley and her work at ManagerMethod.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 468 with James Turk. It's a discussion about what to do during the first 45 days when you take on new responsibility.
Episode 467 with Sabina Nawaz. She was a coach to Microsoft leaders, such as Bill Gates, and she shares insights that, according to her, no one tells you about becoming a boss.
Episode 142 with Amy Cuddy. Amy is most famous for her TED Talk on power posing. But episode 142 is more about presence and how you can more confidently rise to the most daunting challenges. It's a nice follow-up to what Ashley talked about with the imposter phenomenon.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Level Up Your AI Skills
Join other listeners from around the world who are taking our AI Made Simple course to prepare for an AI-infused future.
Just go to ai.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com. Thanks!
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Leadership, Management, Imposter Phenomenon, Delegation, Accountability, Empathy, Team Culture, Communication, Self-Awareness, New Managers, Personal Growth, Psychological Safety
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Underground Shadows by MusicLFiles
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Amy Leneker, leadership coach, joy strategist, and author of Cheers to Monday. Amy's journey began with a burnout so severe that her doctor put her on medical leave. It took 10 words on a medical form to change everything: "What are your hobbies? What do you do for fun?" She couldn't answer it. That moment sent her on a mission to help leaders recognize stress earlier and respond to it far more intentionally.
In this conversation, Amy shares the stress stories many leaders carry without ever questioning them, and why those stories get quietly rewarded in so many organizations. You'll hear how the body whispers warnings long before burnout hits, why most common stress-relief advice actually makes things worse, and how Amy's three-step Un-Stressing Method gives leaders a clear, practical framework to move forward. She also shares a powerful real-world example of a team carrying 73 stressors that simply didn't need to be there—and what happened when they finally saw that.
If you're looking for a practical, empowering guide to break the cycle of stress and overwhelm in leadership, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"The story that I inherited, either intentionally or unintentionally, was you just work hard because that's the only choice you have."
"I think one of the biggest mistakes that I made was not recognizing how much choice I had."
"I couldn't remember the last time that I had real fun."
"Those unhealthy stress stories are rewarded."
"The majority of ways that we try to manage stress at work actually increase our stress."
"When I ignored the whispers, it got to the point where ignoring it was no longer an option.... If you ignore them long enough, then the body's going to scream."
"Talking about stress is stressful, but we've got to be able to see it if we're going to be able to do anything about it."
"Unclear expectations are resentments waiting to happen."
"People pleasing—it's not a healthy dynamic. It's not something that serves you or the people around you."
"Stress is contagious. There is no question about it."
"Yes, stress is wildly contagious, but so is joy."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:39 Start of Interview
01:52 Early Messages About Work and Stress
04:36 The 10 Words That Changed Everything
06:39 Postponing Joy
07:30 Stress Stories Leaders Believe
08:19 How the Body Signals Burnout Before the Brain Does
11:44 What's Broken About Typical Stress Advice
12:58 Walking Through the Un-Stressing Method
15:03 Why Sequence Matters: See, Sort, Solve
17:32 Solving Stress vs. Fixing It
18:44 The Un-Stressing Method in Action: A Team Story
21:58 The Danger of Unstated Priorities
22:42 People Pleasing as a Warning Sign
23:38 Breaking the Cycle of Stress as a Parent
24:41 End of Interview
25:11 Andy Comments After the Interview
28:16 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Amy and her work at AmyLeneker.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 448 with Marie-Helene Pelletier. It's a book on how to develop resilience when demands are piling up. It's a great follow-up to today's discussion.
Episode 398 with Dr. Neha Sangwan, which is a book about learning to recognize wake up calls to help us avoid burnout.
Episode 164 with stress researcher Derek Roger. Derek brings a unique perspective to the discussion about stress.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Stress Management, Leadership, Burnout Prevention, Wellbeing, Resilience, Team Culture, People Pleasing, Priority Setting, Workplace Conflict, Joy, Self-Awareness, Communication
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Tropical Vibe by WinnieTheMoog
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Summer Morning Full Version by MusicLFiles
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy sits down with Evan Unger, a consultant and trainer who has spent more than 30 years helping leaders facilitate collaborative decision making across projects, programs, and organizations around the world. Evan's work focuses on helping groups move forward when opinions differ, tension is present, and time is limited. This conversation is packed with immediately actionable ideas.
Andy and Evan dig into why even experienced leaders struggle in high-stakes meetings, and how Evan's POPRA model (Purpose, Objectives, Process, Roles, Agreements) can transform the way you prepare and run them. They talk about how to manage the "HIPPO" (Highest Paid Person's Opinion) without suppressing the voices you most need to hear, a simple virtual technique called the simultaneous chat that can change the dynamic of any online meeting, and how to make sure your meetings actually land, with clear action items and time to close things out properly. Evan also shares his perspective on where AI fits in the future of facilitation, and some surprisingly personal advice about what he'd tell his younger self.
If you're looking for practical, immediately usable tools to run better meetings and lead more collaborative decisions, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"On a scale of zero to a hundred percent, how effective are the meetings you attend? On average, and I can't tell you most of the time I get a number below 60% and often much lower."
"My confusion as a leader, as a project manager, is immediately the confusion of the group because the group goes to where I'm at. And if I'm confused, welcome to what's about to happen in your meeting: Confusion, Chaos, Dysfunction."
"The other extreme, and this is truly the art of leadership, is even though I have strong opinions as the project manager, I remain completely neutral, but I'm an expert in process, an expert in how I get other experts to come together, collaborate, make decisions, get 'em to buy in."
"If I'm the HIPPO and I run the meeting as the expert, I will suppress conversation. People will not tell me what I need to know to make the decision, and I'm going to sub-optimize decisions, and I'm not going get people to buy in."
"So the art of leadership is knowing how to start and work from the right side of the continuum where I'm an expert in the process of getting others to collaborate and asking questions to elicit their thinking."
"If I'm not hearing from people as the facilitator of the collaborative conversation, that is a first sign that something's gone awry and I need to know how to hold space."
"The meeting's purpose and objectives, that's the first tether, the first anchor. If that's not clear, there is no tool or technique that is going to save me."
"Time is fuel. And we have limited fuel in the plane flight. When time is running out, we don't go knock on the cockpit and say to the pilot, fly faster."
"People say to me, 'Evan, I've got Copilot now. I got these AIs doing all the monitoring and tracking'. It's like, yeah, great, but you can't trust what it said. You still have to come back and say, 'Do we all agree what we decided and where we go from here?'"
"The five points were: 1, learn Spanish and become fluent in Spanish. 2, become fluent in Mandarin. 3, make sure you get a hard sciences or engineering degree when you go to school. Do it. Take all the liberal arts courses you want, but have something that people actually want. 4, go do a 10-day silent meditation as soon as you get out of school. And 5, take a backpack when you get out of school. Travel the world for a year.... That list is now down to two points."
"The plan is now to find something that can't be AI'd out of existence."
"But really, the art of being a good coach, a good consultant, a good parent, a good manager is querying the people to help them figure out their own answer."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:44 Start of Interview
02:00 Evan's Background and Work
03:13 Why Meetings Fail — The Plane Metaphor
05:07 Preparing for High-Stakes Meetings: The POPRA Model
07:48 Distinguishing Purpose from Objectives
08:39 Facilitating Without Formal Authority
11:43 Spotting Meeting Drift
12:58 Balancing Dominant and Quiet Voices
16:12 Face-to-Face Facilitation Techniques
17:22 Handling Challenging Participants
21:17 Ensuring Meetings Land: Follow-Up Habits
23:59 AI and the Future of Facilitation
32:25 Advice to Younger Self
34:37 How These Skills Apply to Life
36:03 End of Interview
36:29 Andy Comments After the Interview
41:22 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Evan and his work at terischwartzassociates.com. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 413 with Rich Malman and Jim Stewart. They talk about what they call meeting goblins and how to deal with them. It's a very project management-specific take on running better project meetings.
Episode 246 with Steven Rogelberg. Steven is a meeting researcher, but a really practical guy, and he shares great ideas about running more effective meetings.
Episode 72 with Steven Rogelberg. An earlier conversation with Steven that is still packed with practical ideas on making meetings work.
Episode 245 with Elise Keith. Elise is a meeting researcher who shares so many practical ideas on how to make meetings more effective—ideas Andy still calls back to years later.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Meeting Facilitation, Collaborative Leadership, Decision Making, HIPPO Effect, Virtual Meetings, Meeting Preparation, Time Management, AI, Project Management, Change Management, Communication, Facilitation Tools
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Ignotus by Agnese Valmaggia
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Fashion Corporate by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Summary
In this episode, Andy talks with Brett Harned, founder of the Digital PM Community and the Digital PM Summit, and author of Project Management for Humans: Helping People Get Things Done. Brett has spent years coaching project leaders and helping organizations rethink what project management really is. His core conviction: the human side of the work is not a nice-to-have. It is the work.
In this conversation, you'll hear how Brett fell into project management and what early experiences shaped his perspective on people and projects. You'll learn the patterns he sees repeated across teams and industries, practical habits for when projects feel messy or start to drift, and why he believes project management is a leadership role that most organizations still undervalue. Brett also shares his candid take on AI, what it can and cannot do for project leaders, and what advice he would give his younger self.
If you lead projects or teams, whether or not you have a PM title, this episode is for you!
Sound Bites
"Often with PMs, it's finding or receiving or feeling the permission to lead like a human instead of like a machine or a robot."
"Projects fail because conversations didn't happen or they happened way too late."
"Project management is a leadership role and too often organizations don't see it as a leadership role the way that they should."
"Project managers are quietly carrying emotional labor that no one really acknowledges."
"You can't earn trust by being invisible."
"The role has become less about task tracking and more about judgment, good communication and trust building."
"If you call people on your team resources, they have every right to call you overhead."
"Slowing conversations down before speeding up the work is like the biggest thing."
"Drift isn't usually about effort. It's about misaligned understanding."
"AI is not going to replace a really good leader."
"AI is great at admin. It's terrible at the leadership stuff. It can't read the room, it can't navigate tension, it can't earn trust."
"Say the thing now. Saying something early is almost always safer than saying it too late."
"The job of a project manager isn't to absorb chaos. It's to make it a conversation."
"Caring about people and building relationships is a skill, and it's a skill that's necessary for this career."
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:52 Start of Interview
01:57 How Brett Describes What He Does
03:29 When the People Side Became Clear
06:52 Patterns Across Teams and Organizations
10:32 How Expectations of the PM Role Have Changed
12:28 The Impact of Remote and Hybrid Work
15:26 Practices for When Projects Feel Messy
18:20 How to Name What Is Happening Out Loud
21:30 A Question for When Projects Start to Drift
23:43 How AI Will and Won't Change the PM Role
25:50 Practical Ways Brett Uses AI
30:21 Advice to Younger Brett
33:40 How PM Skills Show Up Outside of Work
35:58 The PM Squad and Same Team Partners
38:01 End of Interview
38:22 Andy Comments After the Interview
41:30 Outtakes
Learn More
You can learn more about Brett and his work at SameTeamPartners.com and BrettHarned.com.
For more learning on this topic, check out:
Episode 336 with Clint Padgett. During the interview with Brett, Andy mentioned the weakness of using only percent complete or status colors. That's something Clint and Andy talked about in episode 336.
Episode 99 with Mike Roberto. The topic of conflict came up several times in this discussion. In episode 99, Mike and Andy talk about managing the tension between conflict and consensus. It's a discussion worth hearing, especially if you grew up thinking conflict is mostly a negative.
Episode 500 with Steve Brown, former Google DeepMind futurist. Andy and Steve talk about AI and the future of work, and it's a discussion highly recommended for anyone leading projects today.
Chat with PMeLa
You can chat directly with PMeLa—the podcast's AI persona—to get episode recommendations and answers to your project management and leadership questions. Visit PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/PMeLa to chat with her.
Pass the PMP Exam
If you or someone you know is thinking about getting PMP certified, we've put together a helpful guide called The 5 Best Resources to Help You Pass the PMP Exam on Your First Try. We've helped thousands of people earn their certification, and we'd love to help you too. It's totally free, and it's a great way to get a head start.
Just go to 5BestResources.PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com to grab your copy. I'd love to help you get your PMP this year!
Join Us for LEAD52
I know you want to be a more confident leader–that's why you listen to this podcast. LEAD52 is a global community of people like you who are committed to transforming their ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning, delivered right to your inbox, taking less than 5 minutes a week. And it's all for free. Learn more and sign up at GetLEAD52.com. Thanks!
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!
Talent Triangle: Power Skills
Topics: Project Management, Leadership, Team Dynamics, Communication, Emotional Labor, Human-Centered Leadership, Conflict Management, AI, Future of Work, Stakeholder Management, Psychological Safety, Remote Work, Project Recovery
The following music was used for this episode:
Music: Echo by Alexander Nakarada
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Music: Synthiemania by Frank Schroeter
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license