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Maximizing Your Team Performance: A Key to Project Management Success
April 27, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: HR Management, Project Management Best Practices
Maximizing Your Team Performance: A Key to Project Management Success
By Jaime Gracia
Effective teams are organizational assets; they perform well and help the organization to achieve its goals and objectives. As a project manager, improving team performance should be an ongoing process, and you need to constantly ensure your team members deliver properly. Here are some tips to maximize your project team’s performance:
Vision
Your team can only hope to perform well if they understand the end game; what it is they need to deliver and why. It is best to reinforce the project vision, goals, milestones, and deadlines. Team members will need to be assigned responsibility for delivery, and then be held accountable for execution. By empowering team members and making them feel wanted, team members will have a better sense of how their contributions impact the project and why their efforts are critical to the success of the project and the company. Getting the buy-in from the team early can be the difference between success and failure, and help ensures commitment going forward.
Setting Expectations
Effective program managers give clear guidance and direction to their team members, and then hold them accountability for delivery. Of importance is letting them know how you will how them accountable, and you intend to measure their performance. You should know what motivates each team member, and what you need to do to support them in their role to be successful.
Do not micro-manage; let the team do their jobs. Of course you need to manage the project, but the point is to allow your team to excel and be empowered to perform. As pressure gets ramped up with deliverables, budget crunches, etc., don’t put the team in a pressure cooker or their performance will suffer. Be flexible and lead from the front.
Set Milestones
Manage to the milestones, with periodic checks to measure their performance regularly. Weekly status checks are best, or you can meet with team members individually as appropriate to discuss their achievements, provide feedback, and communicate issues as needed. Constructive communication is vital, as focusing on failures is counterproductive and destructive for morale. Feedback should always be on ways to prove and looking forward, not backward.
Attitude
As hard as it can be sometimes, don’t be angry. Easier said than done, but if you are stressed, that will always be reflected in how you deal with your team. Be positive, reassuring and supporting, even when things go wrong or the project is delayed. Lead by example.
Praise in Public
There is no excuse for forgetting to praise performance and your team’s successes. Congratulate those responsible in your team for great work, meeting milestones, turning in deliverables. This is not just a back-slapping exercise, but an important team building activity to ensure performance does not go unrecognized.
Meet with the Team
They are unavoidable, so meet with the team regularly to build strong esprit de corps. Have team social functions; who doesn’t love a good happy hour? The objective is to help build a strong bond with your team, so you work better together and achieve objectives.
Sharpen the Saw
If people need a break, give it to them. Try an anticipate burn out, and allow team members time off for working hard. This will lead to higher productivity, reduce absence, and help improve motivation as team members know you are watching out for them and not being a ruthless task master.
Everyone is different
Treat them differently. I do not subscribe to the theory that everyone should be treated the same because people are motivated by different things. Getting to know your team members and building the relationship will be an important driving force to understand what motivates each team member. If you can reward each person differently based on their motivations, then you can improve their performance.
Victory
Celebrate success at the end of the project. Many team members will just move straight onto the next project, without celebrating the success of the last one. Take a breather, release stress, and allow team members to recharge their batteries.
By implementing these tips, you will be giving your team the right tools and motivation to help them complete their work quickly and to a high level of quality, and improve performance.
Jaime Gracia is a Senior Associate with Octo Consulting Group, based in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia. He has more than 15 years of professional experience providing consulting support for the acquisition of services and technology, contract administration, program management, logistics analysis, performance-based logistics, performance-based contracting and maintenance planning for government and commercial clients including numerous DoD and Federal Civilian Agencies. He is an author and speaker on various federal government and contracting issues facing our nation, and is an active member of the Tyson’s Corner Chapter of the National Contract Management Association. His blog, The Acquisition Corner, discusses numerous issues in government contracting and federal acquisition.
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1 person has left a comment
Great summary! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Every now and then I’m reminded about the necessity to balance between the three:
1. Tasks [completion]
2. Team [building]
3. Individual [needs]
Especially when ‘the dip’ is around.
Greetings!
- Lech