The word “Team” derives from the use of oxen or bullocks shackled together to create a focused, shared force for transporting heavy materials.
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Category: Communication (Page 12 of 14)
Project managers spend most of their time managing tasks and resources on projects. This is all true whether the project is being handled remotely or if your team is sitting in the same room with you. It is just that the skills needed to effectively manage tend to skew more heavily on effective communication and the remote aspect can invite some challenges that don’t necessarily exist in the co-location project environment.
To manage a virtual team, it should be given more attention to six key strategies:
1) Hold meetings regularly, not sporadically
Keep every meeting. It can be very tempting to skip what might seem like a meaningless meeting. Even if there is nothing new to report, it is still important to have those touch points with your team to keep them fully focused and engaged. Even if your team status call is only 5 minutes long – you still need to have it.
2) Streamline communications
Consolidate and prioritize communications using email, texting, blogging and staying in touch and being personal. Communications of an important nature should be cohesive and never delivered in fragmentary pieces that have to be pieced together by the receiver. Mutually assess the communication preferences of yourself and your team members to develop a communication plan.
3) Be a good listener
When you are out of easy reach and you are tasked with managing the performance of others it is easy to get into the trap of needing to transmit lots of information. Do not forget the listening part and always be sure to keep an open mind. Be present and try to enter the perspective of those speaking to you. This will help you ask effective questions and identify what direction to go with your own needs and agenda. You might be very pleasantly surprised at how much more information you get from your team this way.
4) Manage deliverables, not activities
In the virtual project world, it is difficult to stay focused – and keep your team focused – on the project deliverables. Do not get too bogged down in managing the minute details because the distance you have between you and those that are performing those activities make that type of micro managing even more difficult. Focus on the higher-level tasks and the overall deliverables and expect your team to perform.
5) Know your team members and manage accordingly
Every employee is different. Mobile workers make it easier for managers to take a more personalized approach in how they work and interact with members of their team. Understanding what enables each employee to perform at his or her best is the most important responsibility of a manager.
6) Leverage technology
Today, the list available tools is endless, choose what suits best for your team and project. Choose a solid tool – like a web-based PM scheduling, status and document sharing tool for teams as an example – and ensure that your project team know how to use it. Putting a web-based solution in the hands of the project team can definitely make project manager’s job easier as task progress update responsibility can be delegated to those actually doing the work.
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A good leader must be a persuasive motivator and a good story can be a powerful leadership tool.
Well told stories can be used by leaders to inspire and motivate their people. According to Annette Simmons, author of “Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins” there are six types of stories that can be used at work:
- “Who I am” Stories, to give a powerful insight into what really motivates you
- “Why I’m Here” Stories, to replace suspicion with trust
- “Teaching Stories”, to make a lesson clear
- “Vision Stories”, to stimulate action and raise morale
- “Values in Action” Stories, to define what certain values mean to you
- “I Know What You’re Thinking” Stories, to show respect for the other point of view while convincing your listener that you’re right.
Whatever story you tell, just keep in mind the following tips:
- Be authentic
- Pay attention to your audience
- Practice
- Create an experience
To learn more: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/BusinessStoryTelling.htm
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Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them”. Paul Hawken
Assertive behaviour allows us to maintain effectively our point of view, without prevarication of or suppleness to the counterpart’s position. An assertive way of communication goes beyond the perfect balance between two poles: passivity and aggressiveness. It involves the conversation partner and aims at finding a common solution.
Among other things, to achieve assertive communication it is essential to:
– Listen proactively (not avoiding eye contact, using gestures to express approval);
– Summarize and reformulate what has been said by the interlocutor;
– Share one’s point of view;
– Confirm that there is a relationship with the interlocutor that goes beyond the issue under discussion;
– Show empathy and propose to solve together.
Many more useful gimmicks are available at http://bit.ly/VYb147 with a selected bibliography. Now, try to put them into practice!
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Do you ever wonder what makes some speakers so successful? Have you ever been in awe of a speaker and pondered, “How did she do that?”
The answer is through a lot of work.
There are some people who are naturally gifted at speaking, but most of us have to work really hard at it.
In her TED Talk Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows that body language affects how others see us and it may also change how we see ourselves.
Amy Cuddy’s research on body language reveals that we can change other people’s perceptions — and even our own body chemistry — simply by changing body positions.
Having a vision is not as simple as saying that you want something. Creating a vision is the process of building understanding on it.
According to the authors: “For a leader, vision is all about helping others see that bigger picture and begin to make those connections to a larger effort. As a leader, you need to focus on being the effective communicator of direction to your team.”
To learn more, read the article by E. Yaverbaum and E. Sherman.
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Privacy shouldn’t be the price we accept just for surfing on the internet.
Gary Kovacs, in his Ted Talk, explains why it’s your right to know what data is being collected about you and how it affects your online life.
According to Craig Jarrow, the author of Time Management Ninja web site, effective email communication is as much a skill as anything else. The shorter and tighter your email messages, the better chance that they will be read, understood and acted upon.
Here are 10 Reasons That Your Emails Are Too Long:
- You don’t know what you are trying to say
- You don’t know what you are talking about
- Your signature is unnecessary
- You are writing a book
- You are spamming
- You are rambling
- You are forwarding a mess
- It shouldn’t be an email
- It should be multiple emails
- You don’t edit your emails
In today’s high-speed communication, no one wants to read overly long email messages.
So, get to the point!
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