Project managers rarely have direct control over anyone on their teams; they don’t rule by decree. But good project managers do exert influence, which is more effective than making demands anyway. Strong leadership, with or without official authority, requires constant refinement of techniques and personal tactics. Here are five standards to keep in mind.
Our Understand the Human Factors in Project Management for Success webinar by Muhammad Aslam Mirza, PMP was so popular, we had to continue the question-and-answer session offline! Here, Muhammad offers advice based on your questions…
When problems are tackled collaboratively, usually the organization wins. Effective collaboration requires more than technology. There’s a subtle, but important, fact that the most powerful solutions are only as good as the people using them.
Can projects managers better serve their teams and achieve more valuable results by not getting involved in task-level planning? Yes, because the real-time judgment of those who are executing the tasks will probably be more constructive and insightful than a detailed plan created before work even began. It’s not abandoning the plan, but using it more as hypothesis than directive.
Most project managers are introduced to a way of seeing projects that is more reductive than holistic — more focused on work breakdown than flow and value creation; more metrics-measured than self-regulating. In Part Two of the series, the author explains why an emphasis on inputs, outputs and certain processes might hinder performance and, ultimately, project value.
Widely used project control methods often require more maintenance than the systems (and the people) they are intended to control. The pursuit of control becomes more burden than value facilitator. But on real-world projects, independent agents act in ways no closed-loop or anticipatory control mechanism could predict — and often for the better.
However you might define project control, you should question its purpose before attempting to accomplish it. Otherwise, you may default to a control strategy poorly matched to your intentions and your project’s purpose. There’s considerable evidence that individuals, not managers, PMOs or progress reports, exert the most meaningful control over successful projects, and that external controls compromise this inherent capability.
How can we motivate team members from passive compliance (or even worse, resistance) to committed dedication or even passionate innovation? Paying a salary does not motivate someone. Enter power skills to the rescue.
A lot of the things we have to understand as project managers seem more complicated than they actually are. But it's remarkably easy to find examples that everyone can relate to—just use your everyday life experiences.
Need some powerful techniques to improve your leadership skills? You don't need a promotion to put these skills to use. Instead, you can start to practice these skills in your next project meeting.
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"I once took a cab to a drive-in. The movie cost me $190." - Stephen Wright |
