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Viewing Posts by Lynda Bourne
Dealing with Difficult People
| Your ability to contribute to a project team depends a lot on your ability to relate to people -- your team members, stakeholders, managers. While positive and supportive relationships can propel you to success, dysfunctional relationships can destroy you. If you mismanage a dysfunctional relationship with a difficult person, the fallout will affect your productivity and, quite possibly, the fate of your project. The first step is to identify whether you're in a toxic professional relationship. Here are some signs to look for in the other person; he/she:
To successfully manage difficult people, you need to set boundaries that encourage mutual respect and keep the focus on productivity. Boundaries remind people of what's acceptable to you and what's reasonable to expect from you, and prevent difficult people from taking up too much of your time and energy. Failure to set these boundaries simply allows a toxic relationship to develop. Establishing boundaries isn't easy, however. Difficult people don't like boundaries. They want to shift responsibilities according to their mood and create work environments that mirror their personal environments. Here are some ways you can set boundaries:
Effective relationship management is not for the faint-hearted. But when you know how to handle difficult relationships appropriately, you'll be in a much stronger position to achieve your objectives and succeed. How do you manage difficult people? What advice would you give for establishing boundaries? |
Communicating Change
| To implement a successful change initiative, you must first create the desire for change within the affected stakeholder community. If stakeholders believe the message being communicated, the way they react and feel changes in response. Research in Australia, New Zealand and the United States has consistently demonstrated physical changes in people based on what they've been told. Studies report people Down Under and in Canada who are told wind turbines cause health problems actually experience health problems. Similarly, in a 2007 study, Harvard researchers told some female hotel employees that their usual duties met the U.S. Surgeon General's recommendations for an exercise regimen. Four weeks later, the researchers found improvements in blood pressure, body mass index and other health indices among the informed group compared to a control group of attendants who hadn't been so informed. What this suggests is the conversations around your change initiative will have a direct effect on how people experience the change. Gossip and scaremongering will cause bad reactions; positive news creates positive experiences. To drive success, you need to make the right conversations. Some strategies to help include:
Expectations tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. You need to communicate the expected change your project is creating will be beneficial and good for the majority of the stakeholders. If this message is both true and believed (the two elements are not automatically connected), the experience of the stakeholders is more likely to be positive. Communication often can mean the difference between project success and failure. A 2013 PMI Pulse of the Professionâ„¢ in-depth report shows that executives and project managers around the world agree that poor communication contributes to project failure. Of the two in five projects that fail to meet original goals, one of the two do so because of ineffective communications. The study also reveals that effective communication is a critical factor in creating success. Given the stakes, it's time to ask: How much positive communication do you do each day? |
Go for Growth
| One of the key stakeholder management roles fulfilled by project leaders is helping team members grow and improve. Remember, you cannot be successful as a leader unless your team succeeds in achieving its objectives! You have four basic ways to develop team members: teaching, coaching, counseling and mentoring. Understanding the differences and selecting the right approach for each situation helps you help your entire team to succeed. Teaching The focus of teaching is to impart knowledge and information through instruction and explanation. The goal for the student is to acquire a skill or pass a test. Learning has a one-way flow, and the relationship between teacher and student is minimal. Effective for: Simple knowledge transfer. This can be facilitated by external experts delivering focused training sessions or asking a skilled team member to do the teaching. Your job is to make sure the right training gets to the right people at the right time. Coaching Coaching usually focuses on skills development and performance--how to do something better, faster or more effectively. The role of the coach is to give feedback on observed performance, typically in the workplace. The coach is likely to set goals for the student and measure performance periodically as that person develops new skills. Coaching requires a close working relationship between learner and coach. Effective for: Driving improved performance. Every elite sports team has a committed coach. As a team leader, you need to take this role seriously if you want to lift your team's skills and performance to the elite level! Counseling The counselor uses listening and questioning to build self-awareness and self-confidence in the student. The goal is to help the person deal with something they are finding emotionally difficult. As with teaching, learning in this manner is one-way, and the relationship is minimal. Effective for: Helping a team member deal with personal difficulties, such as when someone feels he or she has been harassed or victimized. Don't be afraid to bring a skilled external counselor. Mentoring Mentoring is a partnership between two people, with an emphasis on mutual learning. Good mentors adapt to the needs of the learner. The role of the mentor is to build capability and help the learner discover personal wisdom by encouraging him or her to work toward career goals or develop self-reliance. Because the mentoring relationship is focused on the mentee's personal goals it should be kept separate from direct lines of management control; it is very difficult to mentor a direct report. Mentors may draw on a number of approaches (teaching, coaching and counseling) to help mentees achieve the goals they've set for themselves. Because the relationship is mutually beneficial, strong bonds are often forged, which often outlast the mentoring relationship. Effective for: Building the capability of the learner. Carefully select the people in which to invest the effort and emotion of building a relationship. If it's not right for you, help your team member find the right mentor. However you choose to develop in your team members, the investment is worthwhile. An empowered, motivated and skilled team is the best underpinning you can have in your quest to be a successful leader. What combination of methods do you use to help team members grow? |
No Need to Know It All
| Many project managers feel they need to be the expert who has every answer to every question to maintain their authority. They think it's a sign of weakness to ask for help or admit they don't know something. The fact is that if you don't know something and waste time and energy trying to find the answer yourself — or worse, make an expensive mistake based on false knowledge — no one benefits, least of all you. Once your bluff has been exposed, your credibility is destroyed, and with it, your ability to lead effectively. Strangely, most people seem happy to offer help when someone asks for it, but are too embarrassed to ask for help themselves. But strong leaders, managers and team members overcome this "shyness" and take the time to clearly understand what they don't know. Then, they seek aid to build their knowledge. The key is asking the "right questions" — this makes you a better leader and also shows your team that it's okay for them to ask for help. Everyone wins by asking for assistance when needed. The energy wasted on struggling to solve the problem can be used for positive purposes. The power of "not knowing" will also open up two-way communication within the team and generate all sorts of efficiencies. Here are a couple of examples on how to put the power of not knowing to work:
By encouraging your team to ask questions, it reduces errors, frees up communication and enhances the information flow in a positive way. It seems obvious, but it won't happen without a push in the right direction. Things you can do as a leader to be open to not knowing are:
It really is okay to know what you don't know and seek help. The skill is asking effective questions that get the right answers, and then having the knowledge on how to use the resulting information. How do you turn a lack of knowledge as a barrier to success into a catalyst for positive outcomes? |
Leadership: The Mission Is Vision
Categories:
Leadership
Categories: Leadership
| As a project manager, you're a leader by default. And as a leader, your job is to inspire your team to achieve a shared vision. That means you create an "inspiring vision" of the future and then build the expectation that the vision is achievable. An "inspiring vision" is not simply finishing your project, either. A great example of this was one put forth by London's Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) responsible for building the facilities for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The ODA set a much-publicized "zero harm" goal. The London Olympics construction program completed the work on budget, ahead of schedule, to a high standard — and with no fatalities. Not only that, but the overall accident frequency came in at 58 percent below the UK construction industry average. This is a remarkable achievement, given that a total of 40,000 people worked on the projects. After creating the inspiring vision, make sure your team can commit to and communicate it effectively. To do so, each member must:
Framing your vision in the right context is a big part of communicating it effectively to your team and to all that touch the project. The London Olympics construction program knew that "on time and on budget" was not an exciting rallying cry to many people. (Project managers notwithstanding.) So it framed the project around the idea of looking after workmates, which was an easier concept for securing widespread buy-in. Looking after co-workers meant achieving a safer worksite. And for that, construction had to be well-planned, well-managed, clean and tidy — coincidentally, all the same facets for achieving a high-quality, on-time, on-budget outcome. After framing your vision, preferably working with team members so they own it, the hard work starts. The vision needs to be communicated and reinforced at all times. No compromises. As soon as you stop living the vision, it will fade. In London, for instance, safety was always the first agenda item at meetings. It was continuously policed, communicated and enforced. But more importantly, safety success was celebrated. Major milestones — such as 1,000,000 hours worked with no accidents — were big occasions. There were also smaller, more personal celebrations of people contributing to the vision. Enforcing and celebrating the vision created a culture focused on safety and achieving the vision of an accident-free project daily. What is the inspiring vision you can create for your team to help achieve your project objectives? How will you communicate and maintain that vision? |