Project Leadership and Team Building

Overview

This three-day program will help you develop the personal and professional skills needed to lead your project team. You will learn when to create a vision and when to stick with a more basic problem statement. The program covers key general management skills such as motivation, feedback, and delegation. Other topics include how to develop agreement on roles and responsibilities, how to build a team that sees itself as a team, and dealing with a difficult team member. Approximately 70% of class time is devoted to casework and experiential learning.

Key Learning Objectives

Upon completion, you will be better able to:

  • Define the characteristics of an effective leader
  • Use “vision” as a project management tool
  • Create a motivating work environment
  • Provide useful feedback to team members
  • Delegate and assign tasks appropriately
  • Recognize a high performance team
  • Communicate more effectively with your team
  • Surface and deal with conflict

Detailed Topical Outline

Introduction
Leadership, management, and team building
Characteristics of a leader
Leadership essentials
Using Emotional Intelligence to enhance your performance

Visioneering
When to develop a vision, when not to
Levels of vision: corporate to project
Getting your team to buy into the vision

Storytelling
Why use stories
Good stories and bad stories

Motivation
Skill vs. will: the importance of knowing the difference
Herzberg’s view: motivation vs. satisfaction
Ideas for motivating your project team members

Feedback
Establishing the context
How and when to give re-inforcing feedback
How and when to provide re-directing feedback

Delegation
Delegation vs. assignment
Using Oncken’s Five Level Delegation Model
Understanding stretch goals

Team Building Basics
Work groups vs. teams
Characteristics of a high performance team
Stages of team development
Identifying team roles
Task and relationship behaviors

Communicating with Your Team
Tone management: how you say it is important
Dealing with stated — and unstated! — assumptions
Understanding and accommodating personality styles

Dealing with Conflict
Issues, problems, and conflicts: the role of emotion
Attitudes toward conflict
Respect as style and respect as behavior
Escalation of commitment
Selecting and using different conflict resolution approaches
Dealing with difficult behavior

LEGO®Kid Team Building Exercise