to important segments of my career
PERSONAL STORY
By Alan Stretton, PhD (Hon)
New Zealand
INTRODUCTION
This article is a retrospective exploration of how a couple of my innate personal traits – which I have described as “hidden” because I had been previously quite unaware of them – were uncovered, and how they contributed to some of the most important segments of my career, namely. those primarily concerned with helping other people.
A personal perspective on individuals’ innate traits, and my “hidden” traits
By innate personal traits I mean attributes which are inherent in, and particular to, the individual, and are normally exercised as naturally as breathing – often so naturally that the individual may be quite unaware of possessing these particular traits.
At a personal level, I will be discussing two of my own innate traits which actively contributed to my career – but which were “hidden” to me, in the sense that I had been quite unaware of having them until they were unexpectedly revealed, by two accidents of personal history. Both of these newly discovered traits enhanced the effectiveness of my career contributions, and one of them influenced the direction of my later career very substantially. Both were also closely associated with helping-other-people segments of my career, as now briefly discussed.
Helping-other-people as my most prominent career contribution
In Stretton 2022l, I commented on some questions asked by Pells 2021 about individuals’ career contributions and legacies. Pells 2021 asked the following questions.
….what will our legacies be? Individually and as a profession? What differences, what contributions will we make over our careers? These seem more important questions as I get older. Do we all need to accomplish great things? Do we need to become successful or famous? Does helping others matter? Does sharing knowledge and wisdom count?
In my comments on these questions, I identified a key personal recognition as follows.,
With the wisdom of hindsight, helping others is what my professional career has been largely about.
If I were pressed on the question of overall career success, I would have to assess mine in terms of how effective my contributions to helping other people have actually been.
I don’t have anything like sufficient data to make a validated assessment, but at least some of these contributions have been acknowledged by others as being successful, and I will focus on these in the following discussions.
Helping-other-people career segments and relevant “hidden” innate traits inputs
I will discuss the relevant helping-other-people segments of my career, and the emergence of, and inputs from, my “hidden” innate traits, under the following headings.
More…
To read entire paper, click here
How to cite this work: Stretton, A. (2026). Some personal reflections on contributions of certain “hidden” innate traits to important segments of my career, story, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue VII, July. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/pmwj166-Jul2026-Stretton-Hidden-innate-traits.pdf
About the Author
Alan Stretton, PhD
Life Fellow, AIPM (Australia)
Auckland, New Zealand
Alan Stretton is one of the pioneers of modern project management. In 2006 he retired from a position as Adjunct Professor of Project Management in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, which he joined in 1988 to develop and deliver a Master of Project Management program. Prior to joining UTS, Mr. Stretton worked in the building and construction industries in Australia, New Zealand and the USA for some 38 years, which included the project management of construction, R&D, introduction of information and control systems, internal management education programs and organizational change projects. Alan has degrees in Civil Engineering (BE, Tasmania) and Mathematics (MA, Oxford), and an honorary PhD in strategy, programme and project management (ESC, Lille, France). Alan was Chairman of the Standards (PMBOK) Committee of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) from late 1989 to early 1992. He held a similar position with the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) and was elected a Life Fellow of AIPM in 1996. He was a member of the Core Working Group in the development of the Australian National Competency Standards for Project Management.
He has published 280+ professional articles and papers. Alan can be contacted at alanailene@bigpond.com .
To see more works by Alan Stretton, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at http://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/alan-stretton/.
