PMI PMP Project Management Professional – Role of the Project Manager Part 2

7. Leadership Skills

In order to be an effective project manager, we have to be able to manage and lead. So we need to have some good insight, some good understanding of leadership skills. So leadership skills, we’re talking about having a vision, being optimistic and positive, seeking collaboration, managing relationships and conflict. Of course we’re communicating effectively, active and listening, being asking and listening to feedback, giving credit to people where credits do, and then being action and results oriented. So leadership skills, we’re talking about the ability to get things done, but motivating and aligning and directing people. There are eight characteristics that we need to recognize of a good leader.

That you’re able to guide people, that you can lead people to results, you can motivate people, you want to inspire and direct the project team. You have to be able to negotiate that’s part of leadership. But we negotiate for a fair and balanced result. We have resilience that we can work through issues. Communication, we know how important communication is. You can solve, can you solve problems and offer quick wins? You have to be able to think. Critical thinking is a skill and that’s just a flower that doesn’t grow in everyone’s garden. So thinking is pretty important. Interpersonal, you have to be approachable and friendly. So these are eight characteristics when we think about leadership that we should recognize. Leadership though is really about dealing with people, having the ability to deal with people. Stakeholders are people too.

So stakeholders, we want to deal with stakeholders. This means having some people skills or soft skills, more formally known as emotional intelligence, the ability to understand emotion and behavior. So what emotion may be behind the responses or the feedback or the behavior you’re seeing among the people that you deal with? It’s also the ability to control one’s own emotion and our responses and to be professional and to not let our emotions influence other emotions negatively and so we can influence others emotions. So you’ll have a little bit of that on your exam about some emotional intelligence and dealing with people. Project management and leadership requires us to be a visionary.

To be able to see the end result of the project. We need to be able to describe the products, the things that we’re creating, be able to enunciate the project goals, what are our key performance indicators, how do we know we’re successful? So communicate that and talk to that. So when people ask people being management or key stakeholders how your projects are going, it’s the ability to know what they’re after, what are the key performance indicators, what are they interested in, and then talk to that. We’re on scope, we’re slipping a little on schedule, costs are good.

So just those hallway meetings are a great opportunity though, to be able to define the goals and enunciate the goals. And so you can communicate those objectives of the project. And it’s not just to the stakeholders, but also to the project team as you’re in motion, make the connection between assignments and the value and then yes, to some extent as a visionary you have to be able to dream. You have to dream and help others dream and help others realize that they can achieve more than what they realize is possible and to be optimistic and to be positive and collaborative, that you want to have some collaboration with your project team and with stakeholders and vendors and so on. We need to be able to manage project relationships.

So this means building trust and satisfying concerns, getting people to agree, finding consensus and then balancing competing objectives. And we’ve seen that a couple of times. Time, cost, scope, that those are the big competing objectives. So balance finding trade offs, facilitating that, negotiating that also under managing project relationships. The idea of persuasion, negotiation, compromise, there has to be some give and take among team members and among stakeholders and so we help facilitate that. Part of that facilitation may be conflict resolution. Conflict is natural, it happens and always pleasant. But we need to be able to help facilitate the resolution of conflict. And we’ll see that again in chapter nine when we talk about human resources and conflict management there in chapter nine of the Pinbox.

Developing personal and professional networks is very important, but long term relationships are very important. Yes, we want relationships just for the duration of the project. Sometimes that’s the nature of the work. But long term relationships are important and that helps you work. If you’re working with those same people over and over and over, you understand how one another works.

You have a relationship, you have rapport and that makes it easier to make decisions and to get feedback and to provide guidance for those individuals on your project and then being able to understand politics and to understand your political capital and how it affects your project and how you might use that to get things done. Leadership communication is very important. Seen us already 90% of a PM’s time is communicating. Part of communicating though is managing expectations.

So we want to set expectations for the project upfront like in our kickoff meeting, in some of our early planning meetings. So manage expectations, accepting feedback. So feedback isn’t always pleasant, sometimes it’s seen as criticism but accepting feedback and understanding why we’re receiving feedback, especially if we’re seeing some trends. And as a project manager, can we offer constructive feedback to our project team and then asking and listening is part of our communication model. We want to focus on what’s important, prioritize the work, review and adjust as needed, create a prioritization method that works for the project. So what’s most important? That’s what we work on. What about high level strategic priorities?

So I want to see, is this something that supports a high level, is this a moderate or is this a low level priority? So part of that prioritization of our requirements of what is most pressing for our time, what’s the most valuable use of our resources.

And I want to remain vigilant on project constraints, time, cost, scope, but there may be other constraints as well, constraints, anything that limits your options. So I want to keep those in check and make certain that I am balancing the needs of the project with these constraints. Be flexible on tactical priorities. So I don’t want to just fall in love with a solution. If a project team has a way to do the work that they thinks better, and I trust my team, then they should do that work. But let’s fail fast and fail often. And what I mean by that is we don’t want to invest a lot of time to see if something works.

So let’s try a smaller approach and see if it works or not. And if not, let’s try again and again and again. Rather than investing a lot of time and money and not finding out the solution doesn’t work until late in the project, let’s find out if it works now. So be flexible here on our approaches, on our tactics, and then we have to be able to manage massive amounts of information. So part of that knowledge management system that we talked a little bit about earlier, leadership skills, we know as a leadership we have to have a vision, we have to be optimistic and positive. We want to seek collaboration with others, be able to manage relationships and conflict, be able to communicate, asking and listening to feedback, giving credit where credit is due, and being action and results oriented.

Let’s take a look at now the six leadership styles. First off is a transactional leader, sometimes called management by exception. A transactional leadership style is all about rewards and punishment, where this leader gives the rewards to the top performers and punishes the bottom performers and everybody in the middle is just kind of in the wash there. So you’re an exception is why it’s called management by exception, because you’re an exception that’s rewarded or an exception that is punished, an exception for the remainder of the group. Then we have the idea of servant leadership or a servant leader.

And this is a leader that focuses on the needs of the project team and the people served. And this is a leadership style most associated with an adaptive or agile or scrum. And it has this theme of that this leader carries food and water for the team. It doesn’t physically mean carry food and water, but it means it makes certain that the team members have the things that they need in order to get the work done. Then we have a lazare leader, a laze fair leader.

This means hands off. So they don’t make decisions where the team is all self led and the team makes all of the decisions. So it does give the team an opportunity for some autonomy but sometimes the leader can appear absent or it seems like the leader doesn’t want to make any decisions. So it’s kind of a dangerous leadership style. A transformational leadership is someone that’s inspiring and motivating, and so they inspire and motivate the team, and they tell the team that you can do more than you think is possible, that you can get the work done. They want to empower the team, to take action, to find innovation and to perform and get the project done.

So, transformational, then we have a charismatic a charismatic leader is one that does the work with you, do as I do now. And it’s think of someone who is not only motivating and high energy and inspires the team, but they also inspire the team to help them to get the goals and to go do it now. And often they take part in that. So they’re charismatic and they’re very excited and very happy, and they want the project team to be successful.

Then we have interactional, and this is kind of a hybrid type of leadership, more coaching and motivational. So it’s where you have a transactional, transformational and charismatic leadership all blended together, where it’s interactional that they participate with the team and they motivate and inspire the team, but the team is still held accountable for their actions, for the results of their work. So this is six leadership styles that you should recognize. You might see some scenarios where you have a question and they’re describing one of these leadership styles, and then you have to pick out which leadership style is being described. All right, good job. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

8. Politics, Power, and Getting Things Done

As a project manager, we have different types of power that we can utilize on our projects. So in this lecture, we’re going to walk through these different powers and take a look at their characteristics. First off, positional power. This just means you have the position of project manager. So you can imagine a project manager that’s recently been hired and they’ve been assigned to a new project. Well, this person doesn’t have any real power. They’re brand new. They don’t know the project team. They don’t have a relationship with the team or with stakeholders.

And so this is also known as formal or authoritative or legitimate power. But it’s just the role that they have as project manager. Then we have informational power. Informational power means the project manager can control data gathering and distribution where everything goes through them. And so they have control of the information. And information can be power.

So that’s informational power reference power is where the project team or stakeholders have worked with that individual in the past, so they already have a relationship with that person. So it’s referring, it can also mean that the project manager says, we’re going to do the work this way because Jane the CEO put me in charge and this is the way she wants it done. So I refer to that other person, that authority and use their power. Typically, referent though, means I’ve referent.

I have a relationship already with that individual. Situational power is whether a certain situation in the organization, so a change in leadership or someone leaves the company, or there’s a change in the project team or a shift in the dynamics of the team. And now a new person emerges with power. So situational power is just based on the situations, whatever that situation may be, that kind of gives someone some advantage of some power over the project.

We have personal or charismatic power, and that’s just where you have a warm personality that other people like. So you’re just friendly and that’s great. Reward power is where the project team sees the project manager as someone who can reward them. So the team acts accordingly.

So you think you’re going to give me a reward, then I will behave accordingly. Ingratiating power is where I gain favor through flattery.

So I say, oh, it was such a great job and I don’t know what we would do without you, and you’re just wonderful, and you’re so handsome and so on. So it’s just flattery. So at first it’s like, wow, you don’t respect that. But after a while it’s just like, come on, it quit sucking up to me. So it’s false power and this wears down over time. Pressure based power is where the project manager can restrict choices to get the project team to perform and do the work. So I put pressure and takeaway choices where, okay, you have to do these five assignments and you can choose any order you want. To do them in, but they have to be done by Friday or you can have off the weekend as long as you get all your work done. So I’m restricting choices and I’m really putting pressure on the team to get results and to do the project work. Guilt based power is where the project manager can make the project team feel guilty in order to gain compliance.

Be like, Well, I let you take off last Friday, but now we’re really behind and I don’t know if we’re going to get all of our work done this week or I’ve really covered for you, or Bob over here has done extra work, but you haven’t. And it’s just this mopey sad thing and putting people on a guilt trip in order to get them to get the work done, to get compliance. Persuasive power is where the PM has the ability to persuade and to do a little bit of sales pitch to get the team member or the team or the stakeholder to act a certain way or to get their work done or to come to a specific decision so they can persuade, they can give a sales pitch or plead their case or help that other person understand why this is the best decision they need to make. Avoiding power is just where that individuals like Laza A Fair refuses to act to get involved or make decisions. So I just avoid it and you all figure it out. So those are the powers that we need to recognize for our exam. You’re doing great, you’re making great progress. Look how far you’ve come already. Keep pressing forward.

9. Comparing Leadership and Management

Continuing our discussion on management and leadership. In this lecture, we’re going to compare and contrast leadership and management. Leadership and management are definitely not the same things. Leadership is about aligning and motivating and directing people. Leadership has more emotional intelligence. Intelligence leadership is getting people to work together, to be inspired, to achieve great things, to find ambitions, to create goals and set goals. Management is about getting things done. Management is more about business skills than what we see in leadership. Leadership personality. So, some things that we need to recognize when it comes to a good leadership personality they’re authentic, but they’re interested and they have concern for others. They’re courteous, they’re polite. They show respectful behavior. They know how to speak and treat other people. They’re creative. They’re able to think critically or have some critical thinking.

It’s not easy to say, not easy to do either. So they can seek solutions through creativity. Cultural they’re sensitive to cultural norms that they have the time and the patience and the understanding to look into that culture and how does it affect the project and how will it affect their relationship with others. They’re emotional. They show empathy and understanding. They understand where people are coming from emotionally. And they have the ability to manage their own personal emotions. They’re intellectual. They demonstrate intelligence. They also respect the intelligence of others.

Within leadership personality, we also have five traits that may overlap a little bit when it comes to project management. They’re managerial. They show some management aptitude in all aspects of the project. They understand politics and how politics can influence the project. They’re service oriented. They provide others what they need in order for those people to be successful. And they’re social, they’re friendly and approachable. And they understand the needs and the wants of the project team and stakeholders. And then they understand the systemic nature of frameworks and systems. They want to build projects that can operate within that system and be done in an orderly fashion to compare and contrast management and leadership management, I use direct and positional power. Leadership, I’m guiding, influencing, collaborating management, maintain leadership, develop management’s more administrative or leadership is innovative.

Management focuses on the system and the structure. Where leadership focuses on relationship building, then we have control versus trust management, near term goals where leadership is long term vision. Management thinks about how and when and leadership thinks about what and why. Management is looking at the bottom line while leadership looks at the horizon. And we have the idea of do things right versus do the right things. And then operational issues and problem solving as opposed to vision, alignment, motivation and inspiration. Now, we need management and we also need leadership as project managers. So we need both of those attributes to be a successful project manager. All right, good job.

10. Performing Integration

Chapter Four of the Pmbok Guide Six edition is on project integration management. And I like to call it the Gears of Project Management because it’s how do all of these knowledge areas and processes work together? How do they affect one another? Well, there’s another type of integration or a few different types of integration, integration that we’re going to talk about now. So this is different than the performing integrated change control than project integration management. This is integration within the project and how is it integrated with the organization and the vision and so on. So let’s look at performing integration. As I just mentioned it’s, how is the project integrated?

So integration at this level we’re talking about, you have to work with the project sponsor, you understand the goals and the vision of the project. Then how does that fit and support the goals and the strategy and objectives of the organization? Projects, as you know, have to support the broader vision. They have to support the goals, the objectives. So if the project is not contributing business value, if it’s not supporting the goals and the objectives, then that project is likely not going to be initiated or it’s going to be canceled. That projects have to be integrated with the goals, the vision and the strategy of the organization. Process level integration, as I was talking about a moment ago, is the interrelationship among processes that what I do in one process can affect other processes in my project. So processes, to be clear, these are predefined actions that will bring about a predefined result.

So one of our processes, if you remember we went through all those processes earlier, one of them was to identify stakeholders. So it’s a pretty clear process what you’re doing. You’re identifying stakeholders and the result is the stakeholder register, the identification. We talked about creating those different plans. A scope management plan creates the scope management plan. If you are doing controlling quality, you’re inspecting and you are catching errors before the customer sees it. So a process is a predefined result. Process level integration, what chapter Four in the Pmbok is all about is that these processes are largely integrated, that what I do in quality will also affect what happens in risk or to some extent procurement or scope management. So it’s the integration that what I do in one knowledge area affects the other knowledge areas. Processes can happen just one time or they can happen as needed. They can be iterative. Now some processes, as you know, may not happen at all. We’ve mentioned that a couple of times, right when we’ve talked about procurement. If you’re not buying anything, you don’t need to procure.

Another type of integration is cognitive level integration. This is just based on your experience and the maturity of the project manager that you have insight into the project work and you understand what should be done and you can see problems coming a mile away. And so it’s the cognitive level, your brain, your ability to think through and perception and to understand what’s going to happen in the project next. So this includes things like leadership, your ability to get things done, and then just a mastery of those knowledge areas from project integration management all the way through stakeholder management. Now, context level integration is how that project is managed as times change. So you think about building a home back in the 1950s versus building a home now, and how technology has changed over the years and how different it is on how we build homes today as opposed to in the 1950s. So the project is managed by changing times. So project environments change. Think about technology, how the social networking and texting. I can’t imagine years ago texting as a project communication meeting, but now we use it all the time. It’s so handy, right? And so I can text.

This meeting is horrible. Get me out of here. Oh, sorry, I got an emergency. I got to go. Not that I’ve ever done that, but the idea is that texting allows us to communicate quickly and effectively. There are some dangers with that. My point being, at context level, technology has changed, and how we manage projects has changed because of that. As a project manager, we have to have the ability to look into these different changes into the landscape of the project and say, this is a technology, or this is an approach that we could incorporate and use, and that would help us manage projects better, and that would help us contribute more to business value. Context level integration also deals with being able to identify not only the benefits, but how does this disrupt the process. And sometimes disruption is good. It mixes things up and allows us to take advantage and to get better results in our project. All right, great job. I’ll see you in the next lecture.

11. PMP Coach: It’s Problem Solving

One of the skills that we need as a project manager is the ability to problem solve. We have to be able to look at a problem, dissect it, understand the challenges, and then see what the symptoms are and see what the root cause is. So problem solving requires some critical thinking, the ability to look at the problem, and how does that problem really affect our project? In your goal to earn the PMP, you have to do some problem solving as well. So what problems are you having as you study, as you complete this course, as you learn the terms and answer questions, so identify those problems. Let’s do some critical thinking here. What types of questions are you having trouble answering? What areas of the PNP landscape is most challenging to you? What areas are you most comfortable with because of your experience? What areas are you more weak in because you’ve not experienced that?

So these are opportunities to do some problem solving, and that’s part of passing the PMP exam. When I say that the PMP exam is problem solving, I don’t mean just figuring out questions. I mean figuring out personally what you need to study, what you need to spend more time in, and then how you take that information and then apply it so that you can answer those questions more effectively. All right, take some time and do some critical thinking and do some problem solving. As you prepare to pass the PMP, you’re making great progress. I have confidence that you can continue to do this and you can work your way through through this. Don’t get discouraged. This is hard work. Not everyone can do this, and you’re doing something that a lot of people haven’t even considered. So keep moving forward. Keep doing the work, keep investing the time. I have confidence in you that you can get this done. All right, I’ll see you in the next lecture.

12. Section Wrap: Role of the Project Manager

Great job. You did it. You finished this section talking about the role of the project manager. So you’re really making some great progress. In this section. We talked about, well, what is a project manager? What’s the sphere of influence that you have as a project manager as you try to influence people to get get the project done? That’s your ultimate goal when you’re managing a project. And, of course, to create business value. Business value is created by getting the project done. And as far as we’re concerned, we talked about the project management competencies, the technical skills, the business skills you need, and then, of course, leadership. You completed an activity or an assignment where you looked at the difference between what leaders say and what managers say.

So I hope you enjoyed that. I think that’s kind of a fun exercise. We looked at performing integration. So what does that mean, to perform integration at this level, at the process level, and the organization level? And then we talked a lot about leadership styles, and then in our coaching, there remember, it’s about problem solving. So a lot of people miss as they prepare to pass the PMP. Okay, great job. You’re making fantastic progress. Shows that you’re dedicated to earning the PMP. You’re putting in the work. You’re doing what other peoples are not willing to do so that you can do what others will want to do in the future. And so keep moving forward, and I’ll see you in the next section.