Every experienced project manager has certainly experienced challenges in getting their teams to behave like…well, teams. But with organization and guidance you can help your project teams accomplish more and eliminate many of the setbacks and challenges that make teamwork so difficult.
Do your project team members show confusion about who is responsible for what aspects of the job? Do their conversations and meetings usually end in heated personal attacks? Or do individual members ever exhibit an "every person for themselves" attitude and refuse to help their teammates? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you’re not alone. Sometimes, a team simply doesn’t "gel."
Every experienced project manager has certainly experienced challenges in getting their teams to behave like…well, teams. But with organization and guidance you can help your project teams accomplish more and eliminate many of the setbacks and challenges that make teamwork so difficult. Consider the following five strategies for unifying and organizing your teams:
1. Establish a Project Organization with Clearly Defined Roles
Project organization must go beyond a hierarchy chart. Each person needs to know what function they play on the team, how they fit into the other functions, and what happens if they don’t do their job.
Depending on your industry or functional discipline, you may employ standard or customary roles on your project. Start with these standard roles that are typical for your type of projects. But if the particular project need warrants a special role that is outside the standard, then create a special role. And if the project doesn’t need a particular standard role, then eliminate it. This may sound easy enough, but many project managers hesitate to deviate from standard roles. At the end of the day, however, results are what matter the most, not how well a team adhered to the standard project role structure.
If the project is unique or the environment doesn’t have standard or customary project roles, take a more pragmatic approach to role definition. Identify three to six aspects of the project that are most important or that pose the most risk. Create roles that encompass the concern or risk areas. Then ensure that all major roles are defined correctly by crosschecking the roles with the work that needs to be done.
This type of project organization addresses concerns or areas of risk head-on by defining a role with a singular point of accountability to manage the areas of your project that are most likely to fail. By doing this, you’ll sleep better knowing that the most crucial areas are covered.
2. Eliminate Finger Pointing and Public Fights
Every team project will likely involve lively discussions. Often, these discussions lead you one step closer to project completion. But when they get out of control, these discussions lead to finger pointing and fighting. Be deliberate in letting these discussions take place and in letting team members question each other, but put a few rules in place to maintain a level of civility.
Allow team members to challenge and stretch, but when a decision is made everyone must stand behind it as a team. What happens in the room stays in the room; outside of the room the team remains unified. This means no gossiping or badmouthing a team member to outsiders. Also, wrong decisions must be accepted as a team. In other words, no finger pointing allowed. And finally, don’t allow problems to become personal. Focus on problems, not on people.
Inevitably some rules will be broken. However, you should still strive to get some ground rules in place to avoid team strife whenever possible.
