I’m going to have a nervous breakdown one of these days… I’m a project manager with responsibility over a major internal company project that requires close interdepartmental collaboration. At any given time, multiple staff in different departments will be working on their own component of the project, and it’s my job to coordinate it all into a cohesive result.

Unfortunately, while this project is of importance to the company as a whole, everyone involved also has to balance their contributions to it with their own individual roles in department-specific projects, as well as juggling a whole host of personal or team initiatives, basic housekeeping, and client accounts.

Due to my inter-departmental function, I don’t specifically have any direct reports, but work with a range of different departmental and team leaders to manage the timelines of their staff who are part of the project. As you can imagine, it’s quite a complicated balancing act.

But, even though I am the leading specialist for the project, I am still quite new to the company, and this is the first time I’ve managed a project of this size. There is a lot of trust in me from my bosses to deliver, but there isn’t the same level of buy-in from the majority of the other staff assigned to work with me. In fact, there is actually some kickback at the perception that I’m imposing a lot of extra work, and some of the other managers resent that I’ve been given joint authority to manage their reportees.

So, I’m having problems negotiating and enforcing timelines, and this has knock-on effects on the entire process. And I actually spend most of my time putting out fires. I might have bitten off more than I can chew. How I can avoid choking?