Even with an experienced team, and project management processes that are in place with laser-focused employees—managers still find themselves frustrated in assigning tasks, and goals, and meeting established timelines. As a project manager, it is essential to have a team that completes its tasks quickly and efficiently. Implementing these five tips into your team management strategy can significantly impact a project’s success while boosting everyone’s morale, including unity and team pride.
- Clear Goals. Clear Roles.
Before beginning a project, the team lead will identify what the team wants to accomplish, share established due dates with timeline stop gaps to review completed, and address challenges the project may present to the roles and responsibilities assigned.
- Communication and Transparency.
A team must be on the same page at every project lifecycle stage. Teams that do not communicate are often the teams that fail. Communication and transparency of ongoing responsibilities, roles, and action items allow team members to work together, even if they are working on different aspects of the project. Cut down the unnecessary second-guessing with frequent communication.
- Share Knowledge.
Projects are places to showcase skills and create a result that meets your needs. However, it can also serve as a career advancement by providing a place to collaborate and learn amongst your peers. Teams that willingly share knowledge about other areas involved in the project’s advancement create more robust and capable teams. Sharing knowledge is critical to growing and tackling more intricate, complex, and meaningful projects.
- Turn Failures into Success.
Regardless of how well you plan, sometimes things need to be revised. Instead of allowing these failures to derail your delivery time, project schedule, or budget, use them as learning opportunities. First, bring your team together to tackle challenges and shortcomings together. This simple step allows you to build an effective team based on the three previous points. Learning opportunities allow you to realign your team to their goals and roles, serve as a communication checkpoint, and provide a space to increase shared knowledge.
- Evaluations and Rewarding Positive Behavior.
Evaluating your projects during the process and after finishing is a valuable step in project management. This evaluation allows you to further direct your team. One of the critical points of this step is to reward positive behavior. Employees respond well to being appreciated, and high morale increases productivity.
The human element of project management is varied and diverse, taking a project from a simple idea to a complete product. Moreover, taking charge of an entire team can be an overwhelming task. Still, with the steps above, you can create an effective team to manage better and handle the scope and scalability of a project.
Enroll in a project management course to learn the fundamentals of leading teams in the workplace.