ADVISORY ARTICLE
By Yogi Schulz
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Delusional behaviours among project managers are more common than we care to admit. Project sponsors can easily become the political victims of this behaviour when projects fail unless they’re close enough to the project to recognize the signs and intervene.
Delusional behaviours are a pattern of persistent beliefs or behaviours that are disconnected from objective evidence and resistant to correction. When left unaddressed, such behaviour will materially damage project outcomes, team morale, and organizational credibility.
The incentives for project managers to engage in this ultimately self-destructive behaviour are particularly strong in complex, high-stakes environments such as information technology, construction, compliance, engineering, and large-scale business transformation projects.
Every project manager and their team are motivated to achieve milestones on time, demonstrate their capability, and frame events in a positive light. Unfortunately, that well-meaning desire can cause teams to:
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- Produce overly optimistic effort estimates for tasks.
- Underestimate the probability and impact of risks.
- Rely unquestioningly on vendor commitments.
- Fail to plan and conduct people change management work adequately.
Here’s how project sponsors can challenge and coach project managers to avoid embarrassment and improve project performance.
Optimism bias
One common form of delusional behaviour is chronic optimism bias. While optimism is often framed as a leadership virtue, some project managers cross the line into believing that schedules, budgets, or risks will somehow resolve themselves positively despite clear evidence to the contrary. Behaviours that are warning signs include:
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- Rejection of the team’s task effort estimates as excessive.
- Repeated dismissal of the contents of the risk register.
- A tendency to label dissenting views as negative or not team-oriented.
- Attempts to bully the project team.
Excessively optimistic behaviour often persists even after multiple missed milestones. The underlying delusion is the belief that confidence alone can override structural constraints such as resource limits, technical complexity, or external dependencies.
Project sponsors can intervene with their project managers by:
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How to cite this article: Schulz, Y. (2026). Project manager delusions embarrass project sponsors, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue II, February. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/pmwj161-Feb2026-Schulz-Project-manager-delusions-embarass-project-sponsors.pdf
About the Author
Yogi Schulz
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Yogi Schulz has over 40 years of Information Technology experience in various industries. Yogi works extensively in the petroleum industry to select and implement financial, production revenue accounting, land & contracts and geotechnical systems. He manages projects that arise from changes in business requirements, from the need to leverage technology opportunities and from mergers. His specialties include IT strategy, web strategy and systems project management.
Mr. Schulz regularly speaks to industry groups and writes a regular column for IT World Canada and Engineering.com. He has written for Microsoft.com and the Calgary Herald. His writing focuses on project management and IT developments of interest to management. Mr. Schulz served as a member of the Board of Directors of the PPDM Association for twenty years until 2015. Learn more at https://www.corvelle.com/. He can be contacted at yogischulz@corvelle.com
His new book, co-authored by Jocelyn Schulz Lapointe, is “A Project Sponsor’s Warp-Speed Guide: Improving Project Performance.”
To view other works by Yogi Schulz, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/yogi-schulz/
