Gary Monti, PMP #14
Founder, Center for Managing Change
3:30PM
U.S. Bank Conference Theater
PDUs:
1.0
When Pressure Rises, Don’t Let Urgency Become the Leader
Projects rarely become troubled because people suddenly stop caring or forget how to manage a schedule. More often, rising pressure gradually changes the way leaders and teams think, communicate, and make decisions.
Urgency begins to drive the project. Fear narrows attention. People become reactive, suppress uncomfortable information, rush toward premature solutions, or cling to plans that no longer fit the situation. What appears to be decisive leadership may actually be a loss of resilience.
This session explores how project leaders can build resilience deliberately rather than waiting for adversity to test it. Participants will examine the difference between productive urgency and urgency that has become the de facto leader of the project. They will learn how complexity, stakeholder pressure, uncertainty, and emotional reactivity can distort judgment—and how to interrupt that pattern before it becomes embedded in the project culture.
Drawing upon more than four decades of experience in project management, change leadership, course development, and the recovery of troubled projects, Gary Monti will introduce a practical framework for resilient leadership under pressure. The framework emphasizes maintaining situational awareness, separating facts from fear-driven assumptions, creating enough psychological space for responsible judgment, and identifying the next responsible step when a complete solution is not yet visible.
The central message is simple: resilience is not toughness, denial, or merely bouncing back. Resilience by design means creating leadership habits, decision practices, and team conditions that allow people to remain honest, adaptive, and effective while the pressure is still rising.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Recognize when legitimate urgency has begun to replace thoughtful project leadership.
2. Identify common pressure responses—such as narrowed thinking, premature certainty, avoidance of bad news, blame, and reactive decision-making—that weaken project resilience.
3. Distinguish between complicated project problems that benefit from established expertise and complex situations that require experimentation, learning, and adaptation.
4. Apply a practical pause-and-assess process to separate observable facts assumptions, risks, stakeholder pressures, and emotional reactions.
5. Use the concept of the “next responsible step” to move a team forward when uncertainty makes a complete solution impossible.
6. Identify leadership and team practices that build resilience before a project enters crisis.
Intended audience
Project managers, program managers, PMO leaders, change leaders, functional managers, consultants, and executives responsible for leading projects or organizational change under conditions of pressure, ambiguity, stakeholder conflict, or complexity
Speaker Bio
Gary Monti, PMP #14, is the founder of the Center for Managing Change and has more than 40 years of experience in project management, organizational change, leadership development, and the assessment and recovery of troubled projects. He has taught more than 3,000 professionals in seven countries and has designed and delivered courses in project management, change management, scheduling, cost control, risk, stakeholder leadership, and complex project environments. Gary’s work focuses on what happens when pressure, uncertainty, organizational politics, and human behavior intersect. He helps leaders move beyond rigid plans and reactive urgency toward clearer judgment, responsible action, and adaptive leadership. His professional background includes work with organizations across technology, banking, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and other complex operating environments. He is also certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Majors Psychological Type instruments, and Hogan assessments