Danh mục: PM Skills

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Influence without Authority

Depends on different contexts, Project managers and product managers might have different powers/ authorities. They can sometimes act as “CEO” of the team or can own no power in another flat structure. There is an immortal phase in the PM community “influence without authority”. This is a helpful guide/ technique to drive the team through uncertainties and challenges.

Why influencing people is important:

As a PM, we need to work with varieties of stakeholders with different backgrounds, priorities, experiences. Failing to get people aligned with each other will definitely hold the team back. So, it’s critical for the PM to influence stakeholders to agree on vision, approach, prioritization & the team can move forward.

How to be better at influencing people:

It comes from how we behave with teammates, the culture and trust we build with the team. This is not something that happens overnight. It requires continuously cultivation & practice on the daily basis. Each person might pursue his own way to build up a skill. There is some specific advice you can consider:

  1. Start with the why: to make sure that each individual understands the core motivation to drive the team forward.
  2. Active listening: to truly understand your teammates, to show we care and enforce relationships.
  3. Embrace differences: people can have different viewpoints to solve problems. Facilitating teams to make decisions is the key to build a healthy culture where people can contribute. 

Any other advice to practice the influencing skill with teams?

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Active listening in project communications

Communication is crucial for project management. Poor communication will lead to misunderstanding in deliverables, misalignment on delivery and project failure as a consequence. And communication should be 2 ways when we not only focus on conveying messages but also listening from others. Being a good listener will benefit us as PM in day to day works with variety of stakeholders. Members will feel easier to share, issues are easier to be solved through team collaboration, customers are more likely to get what they truly need. 

How to get those benefits from Active Listening:

  • Focus on the speaker with 100% attention. It shows the care and motivates others to share with us even the hard facts.
  • Be open and encourage honest communication no matter what the hard facts are. Usually, it will lead us to the root problems that need to be solved.
  • Show that we are actively listening: eye contact, body language and confirm how we understand the received information.
  • Respond appropriately with needed questions to discover underlying facts; ideas or proposed actions from the speakers; share thoughts in a brief and clear way. 
  • Silents and pauses are also powerful in conversation. They bring spaces for us to think a bit more deeply and allow the other to finish their sayings. 

More guidance for active listening and high quality conversation:

How to Learn to Listen and Make others Listen to You, Rima Evans, apm.org.uk

The Art of Active Listening, Jorge Martin, projectmanagement.com

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Meetings That Don’t Suck

Meeting is a part of our daily job as PM, sometimes it’s the biggest part of the day. However, people have reasons to claim that meetings are the least productive part of the day. How can we get the most out of valuable meetings. Here are some thoughts:

Source: https://www.bringthedonuts.com

Kill the status meeting

We all know how expensive a long status meeting with a wide audience is.  The wasteful part of it should be replaced by an Information Radiator where anyone can pull the necessary updates on a regular basis. I personally still support status meetings just to focus on the important topics (sometimes required the wide audience’s attention). Then, the outcome of the meetings should be reflected to a public Information Radiator as well.

One-on-one meetings are important

This is the crucial moment to enhance relationships, surface hidden problems, align on vision with your direct reports, designer, engineering leads, etc. It should be immovable or equally important with other meetings. It helps us to learn about our people, listen to them and show that we care.

Well organized

Of course, all meetings should have an owner, agenda ahead of time with sufficient audience. So, people can be prepared, arrange representatives, provide needed inputs or even the answer to make the meeting not necessary anymore. That helps to save time, effort and people can stay productive.

 A busy calendar doesn’t make us important

We might have the feeling of importance with a full calendar or even double, triple booked. However, it might be a sign of ineffectiveness or changes should happen. We all need to have spaces for ad-hoc, unexpected stuff or just for others to reach us. PMs should also have time to focus or just breath and think about important things to do. 

Calendar bankruptcy

This is a very interesting concept to clear everything and start over again. All the debts or unnecessary meetings will be automatically removed and important meetings will be rebooked again. Some startups choose to do this by Jan 1st – the beginning of the year to remove all of the scheduled and repeated meetings. Then, people need to rethink whether it’s worth investing people’s time or any wastes can be eliminated. It saves tons of effort and productive hours for companies.

Do you have another tip to keep meetings productive?

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Project management skills to Adapt to Changes

The Covid pandemic has completely shifted the way people working with each other. Gathering up in a room to focus on a meeting topic is not that easy anymore. The new conditions also require project managers’ adaptability to stay effective with the changing environments.

Major changes in PM skills to adapt to the New Normal:

    1. Asynchronous vs Synchronous communication: Communication is still crucial for all projects. The principle to keep a common forum for team collaboration while protecting focus time for members to be productive is unchanged. The changes are around how we keep the information flow remotely in an efficient manner. Everyone should be aware that synchronous meetings with all members are even more expensive than before. Async communication should be utilized more for regular discussion. A variety of tools like Slack, MS Teams can support the changes & the Team should also adopt them in the evolving way of working.
    2. Single source of truth and Clarity: It’s becoming more important than ever before to maintain the single source of truth, or people will become frustrated with ambiguity and communication overhead. The team’s tools and methodology should allow people to easily pull their needed resources/ data to perform their owned works. It is also easier for all stakeholders to be aware of the big picture – how all activities are integrating to deliver expected outcomes.
    3. Project Management is everyone’s responsibility: Self-organizing and ownership habits are the keys to success as a team. There might be tons of unknowns for a single project manager but it should not prevent the collective success of the team with cross-function skills. People who are closest to the work should know the most and be in a better position to manage the work delivery.
    4. Empathy: we are all human beings and understand how this challenging circumstance influences everyone’s life. The project manager should always cultivate the psychological safety for the team, & enable people to share ideas even strange ones. As we are all in an abnormal situation, reaching out to members, identifying problems and finding out suitable solutions together requires special care from project managers.

What is the biggest change in your opinion for PM skill in the New Normal?

Reference: new-rules-of-project-management, CIO.com