People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast · Andy Kaufman, PMP, PMI-ACP

PPP 489 | Blindspots That Derail Project Managers and How To See Them, with author Marty Dubin

·39 min·3 clips

Marty Dubin recounts how a leader's unexplained tears revealed she was driven by her deceased mother's unfulfilled ambitions.

Andy starts with a humbling premise. The hardest leadership work is often managing ourselves, because over-control, conflict avoidance, and overwork can hide in plain sight. Marty keeps the conversation practical. He is not telling leaders to toss out their strengths. He is saying the same trait can work 90 of the time and still cause trouble when it gets overused. That lands. The episode spends real time with compliments and complaints, where the same behavior can feel generous to one person and limiting to another. Decisiveness is the easiest one to spot. A leader can decide too quickly once the answer feels obvious and the next decision is already lined up. Niceness is trickier. Andy notes that being seen as a nice guy can also mean getting stepped on or taken advantage of, depending on the moment. Marty knows that one personally. He talks about a contract dispute from his company, where his instinct was to sit down, talk it through, and assume a reasonable conversation would solve it. The customer did not play along. That story gives the idea some weight. Being accommodating can look mature until the situation needs more challenge. The psychology stays close to behavior. Marty references personality patterns, including accommodating and contentious styles, without turning the episode into a clinical lecture. The leadership point is simple enough to sting: blind spots usually show up in ordinary interactions before they become bigger problems. Andy listens, reflects, and reframes throughout. Near the end, Marty even notices that Andy tends to offer prompts and reflections more than direct questions. It fits the episode. Leadership comes off less like mastering other people and more like catching the moment when your reliable moves have quietly stopped helping.

As heard by us

A plainspoken reset on how leadership strengths can turn into blind spots.

Andy and Martin Dubin keep the focus where it belongs: on the ways leadership strengths can quietly turn into problems. Over-control, conflict avoidance, and overwork all get treated as different faces of the same habit pushed too far, which keeps the discussion grounded and…

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Why you'd press play

When your best leadership habit has started working against you.

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