Global Resource Management

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Communications Management   Talent Management  

One of the most important deliverables of any project is a strengthened project team. While the specific group of individuals may be split up at the end of the project, each person should have better skills, greater experience and more confidence as a result of their work on the project. They should also be better able to work in and contribute to teams in the future.

That doesn’t happen by chance--it takes leadership and commitment from the project manager to ensure that developing the team and its members is a project priority. That can be hard enough if everyone is located in the same location, but how do you ensure success when the project is global in scope? In this article, I would like to explore different aspects of team and individual development and leadership--and some of the specific challenges that are introduced in a global project.

Trust
Before ever you can help develop team members, you have to develop an environment of mutual trust and respect. That’s not an easy process, and it can take time--a large part of team development is about learning to trust colleagues. When that trust is between team and manager, it can become more complicated as not everyone will view the PM as being “on the same side” as the team. When the situation is further complicated by geographic separation, it can seem almost impossible.

Project …

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