Leading project teams

Many managers are called upon to lead project management teams and achieve specific outcomes. But how effective are these teams generally? Is their success assured or more or less hit and miss? How can the leadership of these project teams play a vital role in the success of the project?

Project management software is of course available but the best software in the world will not help you if you can’t do the key task of leading a team! Our comprehensive Leadership Skills training course will help develop your team leading skills.

What is a project?

Let’s be clear from the start about what we’re talking about. A project is a temporary activity undertaken to create a specific outcome.

When you, as a project leader, accept responsibility for a project, you accept the schedule, timeline, deadlines, resources, and expectations set out at the start. You need to have the details and plans in place to handle whatever arises during a project’s duration – setting appropriate expectations for timelines, milestones, and deliverables. And, to ensure success for each and every project you need to have the right team.

Leading a project team

The success of a team and its overall effectiveness is obviously going to be influenced by the quality and skill of the person who leads it. So what makes an effective project team leader?

As with all aspects of management, the styles used by individual leaders vary. Leaders are individuals and as people will have a tendency to be more task oriented (their main concern is to get the job done) or more people oriented (their main concern is to ensure that people work well together). Effective leadership requires a balance between both task and people orientation.

As a project manager you know that your team has been set up to achieve a particular set of deliverables and the team must commit to this goal.

But teams are made up of individuals, each of whom must share the team’s common objective but each of whom will also have personal objectives, which they want to satisfy through membership of the team. One team member might want to impress the boss, another might be looking for skills enhancement, and another might want to work with another particular team member. Also teams have the group dimension; they are co dependent or inter-dependent.
Take a moment to answer the following questions:

• What type of project leader are you?
• Are you more task or more process oriented?
• How effective is this to your leadership of current projects?
• How can you develop balance in your team leadership?

Building the ideal project team

Do you have a choice of whom you have in your team or are they imposed on you by the project brief? Obviously this will have an effect on the team’s effectiveness.

Clearly it is better if you can hand pick your people. However, these will probably include employees of the organisation as well as contractors, freelancers, associates, stakeholders, quality controllers, contract compliance managers, consultants, suppliers, partners and so on. You may have the final say in who they are but you probably won’t have complete control over the selection of this range of personnel.

It makes it even more important therefore to get them on board as soon as possible.

Bear in mind these key points:

• Get the group to meet together as soon as possible
• Establish your rules for working together; hours of work, reporting lines, decision making procedures
• Clarify your terms of reference; reiterate the expected deliverables of the project
• Get commitment from all team members
• Discuss and iron out any concerns

Above all you need to work out ways to co-ordinate your team by getting everyone to agree on the objectives and schedules for the project.

Don’t imagine that teams only need to be full of paid and official project team members. You can have valuable assistance from informal advisors, mentors, and helpers. This can help project management on a tight budget as long as everyone’s roles are clearly agreed at the outset.

Related posts:

1. What is leadership?
2. Leaders and vision
3. How leaders add value to teams
4. Leading meetings
5. Leading in times of change

Similar resources you may like

Related posts:

1. What is leadership?
2. Leaders and vision
3. How leaders add value to teams
4. Leading meetings
5. Leading in times of change

Tags

Building project teams, leadership skills, leadership training, leadership training sussex, Leading projects, Project management, sussex

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