« Organization Structures in Project Management
Team Formation in Large Matrix Projects »

Project Management Mind Games

October 14, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Motivation, People Issues

Project Management Mind Games
By Tom Ferguson

As well as a written work contract, project team members will have also defined a psychological contract that will influence how they contribute to a project. The psychological contract consists of a set of mutual expectations that team members and Project Managers have about satisfying a set of mutual needs. It is part of the mind games of Project Management.

Team members will typically expect:

  • Safe working conditions
  • Fairness and respect
  • Equal work distribution
  • Clarity of role and responsibilities
  • Clarity in work assignments
  • Opportunities to develop
  • Participation in project decisions
  • Adequate rewards
  • Recognition for achievements

The Project Manager will typically expect:

  • Adherence to policies and procedures
  • Commitment, innovation, creativity
  • Team player
  • Maintenance of the organisation’s reputation
  • Trust, honesty and integrity

In a nutshell, it is a game of give and take - you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. The psychological contract can have more influence over behaviour than any written contract or positional power or authority that the Project Manager or anyone else can bring to bear. Project Managers typically find themselves in the position of managing people who do not formally report to them so the psychological contract is especially important for projects.

Violations of psychological contracts can have significant implications for your projects as team members who feel that their contracts have been broken may react in a negative way. The last thing a Project Manager wants is for team members to adapt the attitude of “If you’re going to treat me like that, then I’m just going to do as little as I can get away with.” This may be accompanied by feelings of anger and betrayal. Expect this to result in reduced loyalty, effort, communication, innovation, productivity and commitment. These are the lifeblood of successful projects so the potential impact is obvious.

Project Managers must know the significance of the psychological contract and must make every effort to keep them. Flexibility is one element of the psychological contract which is a key issue these days. Take hours of work for example. The Project Manager could have discussions such as, “you should be here between these core hours. I understand the need for flexibility so if you have to start late or finish early because of family or other commitments that is ok. However, I expect you to keep me informed and that you will make up the hours some other time. And there will be occasions during the project when we may have to work extra hours and it will be much more difficult to be flexible”.

The integrity of psychological contracts will no doubt be tested especially when the pressure really comes on. To keep the psychological contract, the Project Manager must behave as they have promised even under the most pressurised conditions. The pillars of maintenance are honest open communications and integrity. This type of environment allows the inevitable disagreements and conflicts that occur in projects to be dealt with constructively and in a way that prevents team members from perceiving a breach of the contract.

The benefits of building and maintaining good psychological contracts are immeasurable, for both Project Managers and project team members. Team members who feel appreciated by the project will give of their best and will go the extra mile in times of crisis. The Project Manager can maintain a happy project accompanied by the attitudes and behaviours that are key to unleashing the innovation, creativity, productivity and commitment that is necessary for successful project delivery.

© Tom Ferguson 2009

Tom Ferguson has over fifteen year’s Project Management experience across both the public and private sectors. He holds a Masters in Project Management from the University of Limerick, a B.Sc. in Information Technology from Dublin City University and a Diploma in Executive Coaching from the Irish Management Institute (IMI).

In addition, he has been certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and as a Certified Training Professional (CTP) by the Irish Computer Society.

Tom runs his own company dedicated to collaborating with organisations to make their projects work. For more information, please visit http://www.pmedge.ie.

Share this article:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • blogmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • TwitThis
  • Yahoo! Buzz

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 and is filed under Motivation, People Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 people have left comments

Tom,

Thank you for this gift. This is great stuff that is not talked about in PM literature. We need more of this. I think we have been so focused over the last few years on the technical aspect of the PM job that it is rare to find this body of knowledge referred to often as “soft skills” or lumped under “communication skills”. I don’t think PMI has helped in this regard, given that these topics were only given just one chapter or appendix in the latest PMBOK. I find myself going outside of the traditional project management and PMI books to learn about such concepts.

In my view, lack of knowledge about this aspect of project management is what is actually causing PMs a lot of stress and even failure on some of the projects that involve many stakeholders with conflicting interests and heavy dose of politics. And as you know, such projects are now becoming the new normal. We PMs who came from heady technical background, such as IT, struggle the most I think.

By the way, do you have other writings you have done on this topic or do you know where I can find more of these concepts.

Thank you again for taking the time to write such a good piece.

Samad Aidane
IT Project Manager
Seattle, WA

Samad Aidane wrote on October 15, 2009 - 12:52 am | Visit Link

Thanks, Tom!

And that’s just one-shovel deep in outsourcing schemes, wherein cheap labor ought to bring about heady outcomes.

Anatoly I. Tatarco
translator consultant
Russia

Anatoly I. Tatarco wrote on October 16, 2009 - 12:39 am | Visit Link

Tom,
Thanks for sharing your good idea.
From my experience, teams are formed by people who feel accountable each other in a rather “silent” way. A sort of secret pact that creates the uniqueness of the special bound. However, the idea of “publicy” sharing the rules can improve the quality of this relationship.
It is a trade left to each PM, more discussions on this can help us, as human being - before than professionals - to improve the quality of our working environment.

Eugenio Magnone wrote on October 16, 2009 - 9:42 am | Visit Link

Thanks everyone for your wise comments and kind words regarding this article.

Samad: I agree with you that these skills are often what makes the difference between success and failure. The traditional view has been that if the PM applies the correct tools / techniques (hard skills) in the correct way at the correct time, then the project will be automatically successful.

Of course, this is nonsense and the neglect of soft skills is indeed contributing to the dismal project failure statistics. I will be writing some more articles focussing on soft skills over the next while so keep an eye out for them on PM Hut.

Tom Ferguson wrote on October 18, 2009 - 11:20 am | Visit Link

feel free to leave a comment

Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

All fields marked with " * " are required.

The Stevens Enterprise Project Management Master's Program

Project Management Categories