The Project Manager with dirty hands
From the Project Management in Real Life Blog
by Drake Settsu
Sharing my Project Management adventures and some tips.
I like to keep my articles brief and to the point.
Project Management is an Art, Science, and Discipline.
Just keep it simple and have fun!
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We need Project Managers that leads by example and jumps in to help any project team member when they are in need of help. I do not like the term "Servant Leader", it sounds like it came out of the 1700's.
Project Managers need to get their hands dirty too. Don't just direct and watch the action sipping your cup of coffee. Involvement with your team to make adjustments to keep the project moving is important. Be there for your team. If there is a task you can do, then do it.
A good example of a Project Manager getting their hands dirty was a Data Center inventory project that I was involved in. I was the Systems Administrator assigned to inventory every piece of hardware / software in the Data Center. The Project Manager got on his hands and knees in the Data Center to help me take inventory and create the Data Center floor plan.
I have gotten my hands thirty on many of my own projects looking underneath the Data Center tile floor to plan hardware projects.
Just get your hands dirty. It's a rewarding experience when you can help out. There is soap and water to clean your dirty hands when you are done.
Leadership with no borders sounds better than Servant Leadership.
Posted on: June 25, 2018 07:53 AM |
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Comments (16)
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Al Taylor
I.T. Contractor| Independent
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
good discussion.......but...I think most of the PMs on this forum already exhibit this behaviour
Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Cheikh FAYE
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Expert, CEO and owner| Eurêka Technologies
Dakar, Senegal
Thank you so much Drake for sharing. We strongly believe that the degree of engagement of the project manager in any given project is limitless. The project manager must neither be a simple coordinator as he seems to become nor an expert in multiple domains but someone who has a point of view to intervene from top to down.
Anish Abraham
Privacy Program Manager| University of Washington
Auburn, Wa, United States
Good one, Drake and thanks for sharing.
Drew Craig
Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard
Philadelphia, Pa, United States
Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Thats very right “Lead by Example”.
Hey what's wrong with sipping coffee? ;-)
Actually I don't mind the term "servant leadership". It's a well suited term for the leadership roles in Agile and many non-Agile projects. But I agree about getting the hands dirty. Thanks Drake.
Drake thank you for your participation, from my point of view this "hands dirty" approach is very dangerous, it's easy to fall into micromanagement, do the teams work or as I saw recently in some IT job posts... -looking for a PM "hands on" the system- if you are working in the weeds you can't see the forest! :)
Thanks for your feedback Mayte.
The point I'm making is not to micromanage the team. A PM needs to jump in and help when the situation calls for it to help out the team.
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