Today, everything and anything is a project. There is a lot at stake if you are heading an important project for your organization. If you do not plan properly, then you could be staring at a difficult project that drags on for eternity. Moreover, if you do not showcase leadership attributes during the project lifecycle, you will end up with team members who lack motivation and direction.
There will be many obstacles that crop up during the entire duration of the project lifecycle. Being a project manager, it is your job to lead the project through difficult circumstances. Your ability to showcase leadership skills and establish proper logistics of communication will help you to steer the project in the right direction.
It can be a make-or-break situation in a project when it goes through micromanagement, lack of communication, and when there is a disorganized structure to the team and processes. Everything goes south when a project faces such difficulties and this can annoy your team as a project manager you might find resistance to your views on the project.
Ways to lead your team through a difficult project.
1. Disagreement Within the Project Team:
Expert Tip:
Keep a common goal for the team. This goal can be broken down into many short goals that can be established all along the project lifecycle. The disagreement stems from small misunderstandings at the beginning of the project where the views of team members are not gathered to reach a consensus. As a project manager, you have to take your team’s views and see if you are able to incorporate them into your project plan and see if it improves the overall process.
This can be done by listing the objectives and priorities of the initial project plan where team members get to know which goal is first they have to achieve. By doing this, team members stay on the same page and help to avoid disagreements. Even when there is a change that is being incorporated where the priorities and goals change, communicate the same to the team as and when it occurs.
2. Half-Hearted or Uninterested Employees:
Expert tip:
As a project manager, you need to know what motivates your team. While hiring your resources you would not get a fair idea of what motivates each individual. But, as you go along you will understand your team members and get to know what exactly motivates them. In fact, industry experts believe 70% of the workforce does not find their work engaging, and 1 in 5 people spread negativity throughout the organization. When you delegate your work to the team, understand their motivation factor. For some, it may be the paycheck and for others, it may be positive feedback. Get to know if they want to become a more valuable contributor by taking on more responsibilities or timely rewards for their contribution. Understand what your team members’ needs are and you will have a happy team with a zeal for the successful completion of the project.
3. Not Respecting Your Team’s Talent:
Expert tip:
First, recognize and respect your team’s talent. You have been given the opportunity to lead the project because you are good at it and you know how to manage a project with different views towards it. Micromanaging is easy, but it takes courage from a project manager to empower team members to do things that they are good at. In fact, this will make your job easier, as you will have a lot of options and approach a problem with more than one solution. Give your team the space they need, to do the thing that they were supposed to when you hired them. Better, appreciate the differences in your team and combine those differences which act as an added advantage to drive your project in the right direction.
4. The Constant Change in Project Schedules:
Expert tip:
When there are ad-hoc schedule changes, keep your employees and projects organized. Schedule changes in a project are one of the common causes to slow down a project. Even when we know that changes are inevitable in a project, most of the damage is done when trying to get everyone back on the same page. As a project manager, you will get a lot of stick from your team and stakeholders when you don’t manage these changes properly.
You can use the latest project management tools to manage your schedule changes and give access to your team members. So, when there is any change, the tool automatically updates your plan. There are other tools like collaborative tools and one that helps you to prioritize your work. This ensures everybody is on the same page and there are no more surprises in your project.
The project goals and the direction in which it is heading is an important aspects of leading the team through a difficult project, and one needs to ensure everything is aligned in the right way. Once the tasks have been delegated to the team, step back and let them do their work. Yes, there will be setbacks now and then, but that is how they will learn. But, what is more, important is that you allow them to get back on their feet by guiding them in the right direction. Bring that team camaraderie towards achieving goals, and trust your team to get the job done.
