The article is in continuation to the Project execution article, earlier to this post where we discussed aspects of running a successful project, here is the link to it. We will further the discussion in regard to the leadership and communication strategy and skills required to accomplish the efficient execution of the project. This will also end the project management journey with impact reporting and project closure report where we will discuss how to close a project sensibly. Happy reading!
Content of the Article
Leadership and Influencing Skills
How do you define a Great Project Manager? It's as simple as this;
It's about supporting the people on your team to do their best work
Enabling people to build things they're proud of.
What is a Team?
A team is a group of people who plan, solve problems, make decisions, and review progress in service of a specific project, or objective.
What is a Workgroup?
Working toward a common goal, their work is more likely to be coordinated, controlled, or assigned by a single person or entity.
Project managers develop and lead effective teams by fostering a culture of teamwork.
Teamwork is an effective collaborative way of working in which each person is committed to and heading toward a shared goal.
Why does teamwork matter in PM?
Teamwork fosters creativity.
Encourages accountability.
Helps you get stuff done.
Factors that impact effective teamwork
Five important factors that impact effective teamwork are listed below
Psychological safety
Refers to an individual's perception, of the consequences of taking an Interpersonal risk.
Be direct and Kind
Dependability
Team members are reliable and complete their work on time
Structure and Clarity
An individual's understanding of job expectations, knowledge of how to meet those expectations, and the consequences of their performance.
Meaning
Finding a sense of purpose either in the work itself or in the results of that work.
Impact
The belief is that the results of one's work matter and create change.
Leading High Functioning Team
Steps towards leading a high-functioning team are stated as;
Create systems that turn chaos into order
Communicate and listen
Promote trust and psychological safety
Create a team atmosphere where different opinions are welcome, and all members remain respectful of one another during challenging conversations.
Providing and accepting feedback, it's a healthy part of project management and usually makes for a better project outcome
Demonstrate empathy and create motivation
Present
Listening
Asking questions.
Delegate responsibility and prioritize
Celebrate the team's success
Air Cover
There may come a time when you will need to prioritize the needs of your team over the wants of your stakeholders. This is called providing “air cover” for your team, and it is an important part of managing a project.
When preparing to defend the team against out-of-scope requests, the project manager needs to be confident in the team’s progress toward the project goal.
Saying “No” without explicitly saying “No”
Intervening from behind the scenes
Bruce Tuckman's five stages of team development
Forming
The team get to know one another
The project manager should clarify the project goals, roles, and context of the project
Storming
Frustration might emerge
Focus on conflict resolution.
Listen as the team addresses problems to solve and share insights on how the team might better function as a unit.
Norming
The team has resolved some of its internal conflicts by establishing new norms.
The project manager should codify the team norms, ensuring that the team is aware of those norms and reinforce them when needed.
Performing
The team works together relatively seamlessly to complete tasks
The project manager should focus on delegating, motivating, and providing feedback to keep up the team's momentum.
Adjourning
Wrapping up
It's time for the team to disband
Celebrate the final milestones and success of the project
Team dynamics refer to the forces both conscious and unconscious, that impact team behavior and performance.
Why managing team dynamics is so important? The following helps in enlightening;
Teams have individuals with different skill sets, varying degrees of autonomy, and competing priorities.
Create a collaborative and psychologically safe environment.
Help the project manager understand how to motivate the team.
Ethical and Inclusive Leadership
Ethical leadership is a form of leadership that promotes and values honesty, justice, respect, community, and integrity.
Promote ethical leadership
By defining and aligning values within your team.
Demonstrating how adhering to those values benefits the mission of the organization.
Creating forums for employees via
Raise their viewpoints
Be heard
Receive follow-ups from company leaders on employee concerns
If ethical leadership's aim is to create forums where employees' concerns can be heard, inclusive leadership aims to put what we've heard into action to create an environment that encourages. And empowers each and every member of the community.
Inclusive leadership is when everyone's unique identity, background, and experiences are respected, valued, and integrated into how the team operates.
Diversity is the set of differences each of us possesses, whether visible or invisible that gives us each a unique perspective on the world and our work.
Inclusion is what the team does with that diversity of thought and perspective.
Three ways that managers can lead inclusively;
Fostering a culture of respect
Modeling the values of the organization.
Taking appropriate action if misconduct occurs.
Creating an environment in which team members feel comfortable speaking up with concerns, and recognizing team contributions regularly.
Creating an equal opportunity to succeed
With regular communication
Accessible documentation
Regular check-ins with the team to listen, share information, ask and answer questions, and provide support.
Inviting and integrating diverse perspectives
Creating a sense of psychological safety in the team
Inviting teammates to share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns
A common framework for ethical decision-making
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University developed the following framework as a helpful guide for ethical decision-making.
Recognize an ethical issue
Get the facts
Evaluate alternative actions
Make a decision and test it
Act and reflect on the outcome
Effective influencing
Influencing is the ability to alter another person's thinking or behaviors.
The four steps of effective influencing by leadership expert - Dr. Jay A Conger is an essential strategy that every project manager should know and use;
Establish credibility
Make the case for why your audience should listen to you
Sources of credibility
Expertise
Relationships
Frame for common ground
Make the case for how your idea can benefit your audience
Provide evidence
Make your case through hard data and persuasive storytelling
Connect Emotionally
Demonstrate to your audience that you are emotionally committed to your idea
Common influencing mistakes
The following is a note on common influencing mistakes;
Approach their audience too aggressively.
Resist compromise.
Failing to establish credibility, frame for common ground, or connect emotionally.
Assume agreement can be worked out in a single conversation.
What are the two buckets of power sources you can avail from;
Organizational
Personal
Where do the Organizational sources of power come from;
Role - your position within an organization, or team
Information - your level of access, and control over information.
Network - People you're connected with professionally and personally.
Reputation - how others perceive you
Whereas personal sources of power include;
Knowledge - Knowledge refers to the power that you draw from your expertise in certain subjects, your unique abilities, and skill sets, and even your ability to learn new things.
Expressiveness - Your ability to communicate with others.
History - The level of personal history there is between yourself and another person.
Character - Other people's view of the qualities that make you
As the project manager builds his/her career, they can use the above to try to identify their own superpowers.
Communicating
Communication is the most essential ingredient for project success. Further, we discuss how to get with it;
Project Document Responsibilities
How do those documents get used?
Who has access to those documents?
How often do the documents get updated?
Project managers need to communicate certain information to their team multiple times and in various ways.
Principles of effective email writing
State what you want clearly.
Keep the content short and concise.
Structure your writing.
Check grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Common communication tools
The following is the list of common communication tools
Messaging
Virtual meetings
Work management and collaboration tools
Email Best Practices
Carefully select who you're sending an email to and why.
Make sure the subject field clearly states what the email is about.
Keep messages short and stay on topic.
Attach or link large amounts of information separately.
Clearly state action items.
Use correct grammar and spelling.
Write in an appropriate tone.
Be friendly, motivating, clear, and specific.
How to conduct effective meetings?
Structured
Start and end on time
Attendees were carefully selected.
Topics are prioritized.
Timeboxing - project managers need to set expectations for how long they expect participants to spend on a given topic and add a few minutes’ buffer to each discussion.
That way, the project manager knows he/she is not packing too much into the agenda.
A designated note-taker has been assigned.
Intentional
Clearly stated purpose and expectations, which should be in the meeting agenda as well as the meeting invite
Send any pre-reading materials in advance of the meeting so that everyone shows up prepared to participate.
Everyone understands why they're attending.
Collaborative
Collaboration is when people work together to produce or create something.
Digital shared meeting document
Let people know they're welcome to respond verbally, through the chat, in the meeting notes, or in any other format the project manager like to include.
Inclusive
Inclusivity is the practice or policy of including people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized.
Leave space in the meeting for participants who've been quiet
A key component of inclusivity is ensuring that your meetings and presentations are accessible.
Formalize initial check-ins for the group that builds understanding and ensure everyone knows their input is needed.
Give everyone your full attention.
Help all participants to be heard.
Help participants feel comfortable sharing different perspectives.
Use images that reflect the diversity of the world.
Making meetings accessible to everyone, the following are the concerned people to be considered;
Visual impairments and blindness.
Hearing loss and deafness.
Mobility disabilities, which means having difficulties getting around, such as people who require wheelchairs or canes.
Neurological disorders.
Checklist for productive meetings
Active participation from attendees
A clear and concise agenda that is followed throughout
The correct attendees (meaning the participants can contribute to achieving the meeting’s goal)
Common types of project meetings
Project kick-off - the official beginning of a project and serves as a way to align the team's understanding of the project goals with actual plans and procedures.
Status update - This category includes regular team meetings where the primary goal is to align the team on updates, progress, challenges, and next steps.
Task Updates
Schedule status
Budget Status
Current or Anticipated issues
Action Items
Stakeholder reviews - The goal of a stakeholder meeting is to get buy-in and support.
Present a project update
Seek and listen to feedback
Make a decision or resolve a major issue
Project reviews
Retrospective meetings
Schedule these meetings depends on several factors
Project's complexity
Number of team members
The level of information required by the project sponsor, clients, or others.
Project Closure
Project closing consists of the process performed to formally complete the project, the current phase, and contractual obligations.
All work is done.
All agreed-upon project management processes have been executed.
You have received formal recognition and agreement from key stakeholders that the project is done.
Negative Effect on Unclosed Project
The never-ending project exists when, for whatever reason, the project deliverables and tasks cannot be completed.
The abandoned project exists when inadequate handoff of the project deliverables occurs.
Avoiding the impact of project closure oversights
Oversights or skipping steps in the closing phase of a project can:
Impact the product’s or service’s scheduled launch dates.
Put your organization at legal risk.
Result in significant financial losses to your organization.
Undermine your team's credibility, and yours.
Damage your relationship with the customer or client.
Steps of Closing Process
A small closing process at the end of each milestone or a formal and more comprehensive closing phase near the very end.
Steps to conducting a closing process after each phase or milestone
Refer to prior documentation such as
Statement of work
Request for proposal
Risk register
RACI chart.
Put together the closing document
Conduct administrative closure of the procurement process.
Make sure all stakeholders are aware that a phase or project is ending.
Complete any necessary follow-up work.
Steps to conducting a closing process at the end of project completion
Provide the necessary training tools, documentation, and capabilities to use your product.
Ensure that the project has satisfied its goals and desired outcomes.
Document acceptance from all stakeholders like clients and sponsors.
Review all contracts and documentation with your project team.
Conducting a formal retrospective.
Disband and thank the project team
Impact Reporting
Impact reporting is a presentation that's given at the end of a project for key stakeholders.
Highlight key performance areas
Use metrics to showcase your results
Prepare an effective impact report presentation
Be concise.
Understand your audience.
Use visuals.
Describe your learnings.
Keep your stakeholders engaged. (Show, Storytell, and Engage).
Closing process for the team
A retrospective is a meeting aimed at discussing successes, failures, and possible improvements on the project.
Encourage team-building
Facilitated improved collaboration
Promoted positive changes in future procedures and processes
Project closeout report
Serves three major purposes
It's a blueprint to document what the team did, how they did it, and what they delivered.
It provides an evaluation of the quality of work.
It evaluates the project's performance with respect to budget and schedule.
To further read related articles please check the links below;
Source & Reference
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