Managing Projects

 

Leadership Skill Sets

Leaders must have a number of skills to successfully achieve the goals when managing a project.  Some of these include effective communicator, motivator, delegator, decision-maker and empathy.

Effective Communicator

Defining a project requires clear direction from the leader.   An overall understanding of the entire scope, goals and timeline needs to be communicated to the project management team.  Each member must understand their role and their contribution to the project.

Face-to-face meetings or phone/video conferencing are good methods for communication.  Texts, e-mails and online collaboration tools can be utilized for keeping the project moving forward, however, these cannot be solely relied on for effective communication.

Motivator

This topic of motivating a team usually arises when discussing projects and business with other leaders.   How do you motivate each member of the project team?  If you think it is only about the money you may find out this is not the case for most members.

Besides providing the overall goal and the importance of each member's role, leaders focus on individual personalities.  Build stronger relationships with each team member and get to know them better.  You will find they require different motivations and it is okay to build your strategy with unique motivators.

Delegate with Authority

Provide clear direction on what the tasks entail and empower each member to execute the tasks.  It is easy to micro-manage and want to be involved in every step.   Let go and trust your team.

When you empower them to make decisions, they might make some mistakes or they might ask the leader to make a decision.  Encourage them to make their own decisions, provide guidance as needed and help everyone learn from any mistakes made along the way.

Decision Maker

As the leader, you will be relied on from time to time to make decisions.  Do not wait until you feel you have 100% of all the information as this is not realistic.  Remove your emotions and personal biases, ask questions, gather the facts and make a decision.  The key element here is to make the decision.

Procrastinating does not help and may result in the project not being successful.  As mentioned above, provide the tools and information to your team so they can make most of the decisions for a successful project.

Empathy

Leaders demonstrate and teach others how to be empathetic.   Businesses and projects are made up of people.  Show them you care.  Teach them to care.  It is a simple concept and we all need to show we care and help one another.

Listen to your team, ask them questions and show them you support them.  Caring about others helps with overall satisfaction, morale and success of projects.

What skill sets do you bring to your Project Management Team?

(Originally published on 04.20.22)