Focusing on the Team: Four Tips

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Communications Management   Talent Management  

With all the things on a project manager’s to-do list, it can be difficult to remember that your primary focus should be on the team that you are leading. That team might be the project management office or it might be the resources assigned directly to the project. The project or program manager must remember not to get caught up in managing schedules, risks, issues and all the other trappings of project management in place of overseeing the team.

Some serious time and commitment must be made to focusing on the team of people you are responsible for. Here are four tips to keep in mind.

Know the Team
Knowing the team means knowing more than what their names are and which role they fill on the project. You should make an effort to get out of your office and be friendly with the folks in the cubicles. Learning about your coworkers means actually going to lunch sometimes instead of just eating at your desk while updating the schedule and reading process documents.

Do you know about what they do outside the office or what motivates them to work on this particular project? Do you know how they work together as a team and how they function under pressure? A project manager (or any manager for that matter) should be able to answer these questions and more about the team the work with. The more you know your team, the better you will be at motivating them and …

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