Gathering a Team, Charting a New Course: My First Proposal PM Journey

Not long ago, I took on something I had never done before.

Proposal PM.

I had experienced parts of proactive proposal work in the past, but this was my first time taking responsibility for an entire proposal and leading the people, the schedule, and the final deliverables.

Just then, an important opportunity came up in the area I was responsible for. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had been thinking that I wanted to challenge myself at least once. So I said, carefully,

“If you are willing to allow it, I know it will be my first time, but I would like to take on the role of proposal PM for this project.”

Once I had said it, the weight of it settled on me.

Entrusting an important proposal to someone with no prior experience could not have been an easy decision. My team leader must have had doubts. Still, in the end, he gave me the opportunity.

Perhaps it was his way of telling me to grow beyond where I was.

The thought that I could still take on a new role in my late forties. The thought that someone still believed in my potential.

I was grateful for that trust, but it also felt heavy.

I began by building the proposal team.

I asked multiple departments for support, searched for the people we needed, and persuaded them one by one to join the effort. While I was rushing around gathering people, the proposal seemed to begin before I even realized it.

But I had overlooked something important.

The kick-off meeting.

At first, I did not understand why it mattered so much. I assumed that once the right people were gathered, each person would naturally know what to do. I thought that if I explained their roles and asked for the necessary materials, the proposal would somehow come together on its own.

It was only two weeks into the process that I finally understood.

A kick-off meeting is not merely a place to share schedules and assignments.

It is the moment when people who have gathered for different reasons are told why they are there. It is where the team agrees on who will do what, by when, and what kind of outcome must be produced.

More than anything, it is the time to establish the standards for how we are going to work together.

Being in the same room does not mean that everyone is working with the same level of commitment.

Some people replaced actual work with talk. Some watched what others were doing more closely than they attended to their own responsibilities. Some seemed to hope only that the scheduled working hours would pass without incident.

Others, however, tried to do more than what had been assigned to them. They moved first because they were afraid the work might fall behind. When they noticed a gap, they quietly filled it without being asked.

The proposal PM had to bring all those different intentions together and move them in one direction.

I had to work backward from the bid deadline and map out the schedule in detail, from drafting and review to revision, design, and final submission. I had to keep checking that each person completed their assigned work within the required timeframe.

I had to prevent confusion over responsibilities and connect different outputs so they would not conflict with one another. I also had to communicate constantly with our partners. When the schedule slipped, I had to find out why and work out another way forward.

I also had to manage the quality of the proposal itself.

Were the sentences moving in the right direction?

Did the document contain the story the client wanted to hear?

Were our strengths coming through clearly?

Collecting materials alone did not make a proposal. The work written by different people had to be connected into a single voice.

But even more difficult than the proposal itself were the people.

I had to make sure that the hardest-working people were not carrying too much. I had to assign roles to those who were not moving. Even when something needed to be pointed out sharply, I had to choose my words carefully enough to keep the relationship from breaking down.

At times, I had to explain things as though I were soothing a grown adult. At other times, I had to ask again about something I already knew, pretending not to know, simply to move the work forward. There were also moments when I had to swallow my feelings so that conflict with one person would not disturb the entire team.

Through that process, I saw many different faces.

There were people who quietly offered help because they felt concerned for someone taking on the role for the first time.

There were seniors and juniors who gave up their time and energy because they genuinely wanted the proposal to succeed.

There were people who saw an inexperienced proposal PM and chose to prioritize their own convenience.

And there were people who seemed content to let time pass, without caring too much whether things turned out well or badly.

When work becomes difficult, people reveal themselves more clearly.

Through this proposal, I may be learning more about people than I am about how to write a proposal.

What I am most grateful for is the fact that there are still people who worry about my health and remain with me until the end.

There was someone who made sure I ate when they saw me arriving early in the morning and still holding onto the proposal late at night. There was someone who stayed behind even after finishing their own work to review another person’s material. There was someone who told me it would be all right when I felt anxious because this was my first time as proposal PM.

It is because of those people that I am still able to endure this work.

Even so, I often ask myself,

“Am I growing through this?

Or am I simply burdening the people around me with the mistakes of an inexperienced PM?”

People often say that pain leads to growth. But this experience feels less like a clear, recognizable pain and more like a continuous state of confusion.

Before I can determine what is going well and what is going wrong, another problem appears. The moment I resolve one issue, another is already waiting.

So several times a day, I stop and ask whether I am doing this properly.

Was there something I should have noticed earlier?

Did I place too much work on someone?

Did my delay in making a decision make the situation more complicated?

Because I want to do well, I arrive earlier than anyone else.

I do not want the person staying late to write the proposal to be left alone, so I remain with them. I try to look after one more person, and whenever I notice something missing, I look for what I can do myself.

But I have my own difficulties.

It is no longer easy for me to be firm.

I do not know whether it is because I am older now, or because I no longer want to create unnecessary conflict. There are times when I know that someone has crossed a line, yet I still cannot bring myself to speak harshly.

I worry that strongly restraining one person might shake the entire team’s atmosphere. I fear that if the conflict grows, people will become more absorbed in emotion than in the work itself.

So I hesitate.

When I should speak, I think one more time. When I should point something out, I refine the wording.

And in the meantime, some people interpret my hesitation as room to take further liberties.

Perhaps becoming a leader is not about becoming someone who makes decisions well, but someone who is willing to bear the consequences of those decisions.

To bring together people who all carry different intentions, and somehow guide them in one direction.

To comfort those who are struggling, wait for those who are slow, move those who have stopped, and at the same time make sure that those who are already running do not become exhausted.

If that is what leadership means, then leadership is an extraordinarily difficult position.

At one time, I wanted to become a formal manager.

I wanted to use my experience and ideas to create meaningful work with others. I believed that if I took on broader responsibility, I might be able to change more.

But as I go through this experience, another thought sometimes occurs to me.

Perhaps I am not suited to being a manager.

Perhaps a quieter life suits me better than a life spent leading an organization and managing people. Perhaps I am better suited to simply carrying out the work entrusted to me, steadily and without drawing too much attention.

When I turn fifty, I sometimes imagine letting go of some of my ambition.

Instead of continuing to run in order to prove something, I imagine living more leisurely, doing the things I enjoy.

A life in which I do not try to stand at the center of the world, but simply live as an ordinary person.

In the past, I might have thought of that as giving up.

Now, I am no longer sure.

Living an ordinary life does not necessarily mean retreating. Rising to a higher position is not the only form of growth.

For now, though, I intend to keep going until this proposal is finished.

Not because I am already good at it, but because I am still learning.

I do not want to decide through this experience alone whether I am someone who can become a leader. I do not want the confusion of my first attempt to close off all future possibilities.

I am not yet a good PM.

I am someone who is becoming a PM for the first time.

I hope that I can learn from every mistake, look again at everything I missed, and speak a little more clearly next time in the moments when I hesitated today.

Perhaps growth is not the sudden moment when a person becomes capable.

Perhaps it is simply knowing today what I did not know yesterday, and being able to say tomorrow, with a little more calm, what I could not say today.

And perhaps it is refusing to give up on people, even in the middle of confusion.

If that is enough, then perhaps I am still growing, little by little.

In my late forties, I am learning yet another role for the first time.

I am not skilled at it. I still waver. At times, the challenge I chose feels heavier than I expected.

And yet, somewhere inside me, there is still a desire to take on something new.

There are still people who believe in me and offer me opportunities. There are still people beside me who stay and endure the late nights with me.

So I do not want to define this as the story of a failed leader.

It is the story of someone who is learning, later than he expected, just how difficult it is to gather people and lead different hearts in one direction.

And perhaps this is simply another story of growth,

newly added to the still-loading life of a man in his late forties.