Process Excellence Coaching & Consulting

Let me share several thoughts around the dynamic between the Project Leader and the Project Team. I believe elements listed below are significant factors to achieve project success, develop project leader and, last-but-not least, help project leader maintain right work-life balance.

To be effective, the Project Leader does not have to know anything about the process in scope.

He or she just need to have the right team with the proper level of process knowledge.

It’s all about creating tandem:
– Leader understands overall direction, bigger picture and general principles of managing projects
– Team is crew of local experts about the topic to study.

To some extent, Project Leader is kind of the Captain of the Ship, sent by the Project Sponsor to the city over the sea. Captain knows how to navigate by stars but does not know how to operate this specific ship on this specific part of the sea. Only crew knows it. And one would not work without another…

The most effective projects are those with close cooperation within this tandem. For example:
– planning project actions together for the best effectiveness
– discussing change acceptance topics together
– challenging each other (“Hey, leader – why we should work on this now? What is the point?“)
– working on improvements together, crafting new processes together, etc.

My recommendation for leaders: each time you are working individually on any project task or each time you are just telling people what to do – ask yourself:
– Why are you not using your team’s knowledge and expertise?
– Are you sure that your decision is right?
– Do you know enough?
– Maybe you are captain setting direction for the ship, not knowing that depth of the sea is too low just around the corner (because you did not ask the crew)?

Of course, there will be situation when leader will be working individually and telling what to do. These may be the most efficient ways to progress in given situation. But let’s decide about it consciously, not by chance.

If there is no tandem between Leader and the Team:

Leader will interact with the team more like directive supervisor, what may mean:
– Making most of the decision individually leading to more stress and higher risk of making wrong decisions
– Tendency of just listening to the Project Sponsor ideas and following ‘Project Sponsor’s commands’, leading to being more a messenger between Project Sponsor and the team than a leader
– Having typically more work, because with passive team all problems, conflicts and interdependencies between tasks need to be solved by the leader personally (because leader is the only person “in the middle”)
– There is higher chance of problems with implementation due to change acceptance issues.
– There is very little leadership development for the project leader

It all starts from defining the project phase.

When discussing the approach for the upcoming project – project leader should consider how big the team is really needed. Of course, it is great to have all the experts from all the areas, but it is difficult to create partnership relation with 20+ people.

Sometimes high stakeholders are expressing their need to be part of the team. It may help with expertise and influence, but at the same time may create tensions and lack of trust.

The attitude of team members is also very important. It is hard to create effective and inspiring cooperation with group of people without any engagement and willingness to contribute.

But it does not end there

Even carefully selected and initially engaged team will not fly, if not properly inspired by the Project Leader.

For example, if the leader do not involve the team from the beginning in ‘partner mode’ – team will go automatically in ‘command follower’ mode (“I will do what you told me. This and only this“). Meaning no engagement, problems with participation, no support for discussions with project sponsors, etc.

This first opening meeting with the team is usually called Kick-off meeting. Let’s use it wisely and not mixed it with the Project Approval meeting. Project Approval (mainly between Project Sponsor and Project Leader) is to clarify where to go. Kick-off (between Project Leader and Project Team) is later and is about how to go there together.

But even after Kick-off, Leader’s attitude is continuously important to keep the tandem working (by assigning important/creative tasks to team members, asking for their opinions, etc.)

The best way to get project effects efficiently – is to have ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ made of Project Leader and the Team. Let’s invest some effort to it!