The 5 Ingredients for Getting the Best From Your Team
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy,
Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Conrado Morlan, Peter Tarhanidis, Mario Trentim, Jen Skrabak, David Wakeman, Wanda Curlee, Christian Bisson, Ramiro Rodrigues, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, Sree Rao, Yasmina Khelifi, Marat Oyvetsky, Lenka Pincot, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, cyndee miller
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By Marian Haus, PMP
What’s the most important asset of your project? Your budget? A great project management tool? Your expertise and skills? They’re all valuable, yet the most important asset is your project team!
Projects are done by people, so success depends heavily on them. Imagine you have budget constraints; if you have talented and motivated people, they’ll find a way to move ahead.
Imagine you have an ancient project management tool; if you have the most reliable people, you might skip tracking the standard deviation of your project tasks’ duration estimates.
Imagine you’re relatively new to project management; if you have great team members, they’ll move the project ahead and drag you along till you get up to speed.
Now imagine you have an unmotivated, disorganized or poorly skilled project team. Regardless of how good the other project assets are, your job as project manager will be difficult and it’s likely your project will fail.
Sometimes as project managers, we neglect our most priceless asset—the project team. We focus too much on a project’s deliverables, the timeline, or making the end customer or sponsor happy.
Don’t get distracted. By treating your project team like any other asset of the project, you will be acting as a project administrator. By focusing on the quality, happiness and development of your project team, you will be acting like a project leader.
Here are five key ingredients for being a successful project leader and getting the best from your project team:
1) Motivation: Motivate and inspire the team by listening, mentoring, coaching, guiding and putting emphasis on people’s values. Establish a common set of values or a team credo.
2) Focus: Being busy with detailed project activities, team members might not see the forest for the trees—they might forget why the project is being done in the first place. Explain the focus by describing the end goal (the “what”). Articulate the benefits (the “why”) of achieving the project outcome.
3) Empowerment: Make your team members feel responsible for their work and accountable for the project success. It’s not just your project; it’s theirs too. Instead of assigning or delegating tasks, foster proactiveness and independence.
4) Skills Development: The daily project work should offer your team the chance to gain experience and develop expertise. Skills development during a project is a byproduct that is often neglected.
5) Appreciation: Throughout the project, take the time to appreciate and celebrate achievements. This will motivate the team and boost optimism and self-confidence, which will ultimately drive increased performance.
The ability to mix these ingredients into your team mark the difference between being a project manager and a project leader. A project manager will focus on the activities to be done and will assign them to people. A project leader will focus on the team and empower and motivate its members to achieve the project goals.
Are you a project administrator or project leader? How do you get the best from your team?
Posted
by
Marian Haus
on: July 09, 2015 04:46 PM |
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Comments (8)
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Simone Pozzi
Senior Management Consultant and Project Manager| BIP (Business Integration Partners)
San Lazzaro Di Savena, Bologna, Italy
I completely agree with you Marian. A project leader can reach higher results and can improve faster the skills of the team.
John Reiling
Seeking new opportunities | AcroVision Business Systems, Inc.
Mendham, Nj, United States
In all honesty, I am an administrator, or even doer, more often than I like to admit. However, I find that improves when I commit myself to incorporate activities in my daily schedule that are focused on building relationships, and evaluate myself briefly at the end of the day on what I did. In the end, I think it is a skill to be cultivated and made a part of you.
Simone Pozzi
Senior Management Consultant and Project Manager| BIP (Business Integration Partners)
San Lazzaro Di Savena, Bologna, Italy
Hello John, in my opinion to be a leader is very difficult if you are ambitious. I'm glad to hear that you try to improve every day your relationships skills. I am sure your team will be stronger and committed on your future scopes. Good luck-
As rightly stated by you, the team misses to see the "forest for the trees" and team member is more concerned in the performance within their subject expertise and at times do something more than necessary or create issues for other discipline due to over emphasis of their subject expertise leading cascading impact on all subject experts scope.
As a project leader, one should be focused on benefits or product/service/result and keep the reminding that result matters and that is what ensures business value. So the sponsor, PMO should clearly define the success criteria and how this be measured in order to set the direction as well as boundary conditions.
Kevin Coleman
Subject Matter Expert, Author, Speaker and Strategic Advisor| - Insights
Pa, United States
Many we refer to RIP team members. No not rest in peace BUT RETIRED IN PLACE! They are just waiting for their retirement. One individual started about 6 years before they were eligible for retirement.
John Reiling
Seeking new opportunities | AcroVision Business Systems, Inc.
Mendham, Nj, United States
I read a very inspiring post on the topic of leadership clarity on LinkedIn. Fits well with this topic. Thought I'd share. See https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-lead-leadership-brilliance-same-sramana-mitra
 | Nkyriak |
I find it underwhelming that #4 that you listed is the most often overlooked. Project managers drive successful futures for the organizations where they work. Organizations OWE it to their PMs to provide them with ongoing training. Furthermore, even possibly be responsible for 'footing the bill' for project managers to maintain their PMP credentials. Doing so will aid in better success rates as well as employee retention. (source - https://goo.gl/Hp9lUq)
Judy Brennan, IOM
PMI Chapter Development Specialist (Supporting Chapters in Regions 4 & 6)| PMI Global Headquarters , Newtown Square, PA, USA
Newtown Square, Pa, United States
Providng sincere and specific acknowlegement of contributions of team members is critical to sucess.
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