Education and Training

The importance of teamwork cannot be overstated when it comes to concluding a project successfully. If your team isn’t working together, with each member on the same page at all times, you’re in for a catastrophe. You might think that teamwork comes naturally, and to some extent that’s true. However, as the project manager, it’s just as important that you take some specific steps to ensure that your team members get on and stay on the same page for the duration of the project.
Regular Team Meetings
No one relishes the thought of spending time that could otherwise be put to use working on the project sitting around a meeting room. However, despite their lack of popularity, meetings are important tools. They can help facilitate a number of different things, including ensuring that your team members are on the same page. Additionally, they can also be invaluable for helping members of the team voice concerns or talk about problem areas from their perspective. This not only builds teamwork, but helps you avoid potential pitfalls with your project.
Scheduling meetings can be somewhat difficult to do, but a little forethought can go a long way here. First, make sure that you schedule your meetings when it’s doable for the majority of your team members, and it doesn’t interrupt critical tasks. Consider holding a meeting during lunch (and providing lunch for your team so they don’t feel like they’ve been bilked out of their time). You might also consider holding meetings in locations other than the boardroom. Your local coffee shop or café might be an ideal choice.
Listen to Your Team Members
One of the leading causes for teamwork dissolution is a lack of active listening on the project manager’s part. If you’re unable to listen to your team members, it will affect everything from morale to the ways in which your team members interact. Remember that you set the tone for the entire project. If a team member sees that you’re not really listening, they’ll take that example to heart. It’s vital that your team members listen to suggestions and alternatives offered by other members of the team, but if they’re following your lead, that won’t happen.
To help encourage active listening, speak to team members in a semi-private location. This ensures that there aren’t other distractions to pull your attention away from what they’re saying. It also helps to realize that whatever it is they feel they must communicate, it’s of obvious importance, at least to them. That makes it important to your project, whether you think so or not. Be willing and able to listen to your team members when they have something to say.
With regular meetings and a willingness to listen to what your team members have to say, you’ll go a long way toward ensuring that your project is more successful than would otherwise be possible. You’ll keep team members on the same page, bolster morale and enhance project value.

Your team is only as good as the communication it enjoys. If you are able to communicate effectively with your team members, you can eliminate many of the most common headaches and pitfalls that affect projects. However, if you’re unable to implement effective communication, then you can expect to suffer through setback after setback during the course of a project. How do you communicate with your team members?
Keep an Open Door
In any management situation, having an open door policy is important, but it’s doubly true in the world of project management. Keeping an “open door” isn’t as difficult as you might think, either. Essentially, you just need to ensure that your team members know that whatever they need to talk to you about, whatever questions they might have, or whatever problems they’re experiencing, they can bring them to you. Your team needs to know that they can come to you with anything, and that you’ll actually listen, which brings us to the next point.
Listen, Listen, Listen
If there’s one problem that’s common to managers in virtually all situations, it’s the inability to actually listen. This is very important – if a team member brings something to you, stop what you’re doing and listen. Make eye contact while they’re speaking. Stop thinking about the million other things you need to be doing and actively listen to what they’re saying. Chances are good that whatever it is has some bearing on the project, and you owe it to your team members to listen if they’re going to go to the trouble of bringing it to your attention. Listening can be harder than it sounds. You’ll need to:

Make eye contact
Pay attention
Sum up their point(s) before answering questions or offering advice
Provide real answers to their questions and take action right away
Meetings
Meetings aren’t exactly everyone’s definition of a good time. Chances are that your team members won’t be all that enthused about weekly project meetings, but not only can you change that perception, you can use meetings to your advantage. However, you’ll need to make sure that you can 1) keep the meetings as brief as possible and 2) keep things on topic. By keeping your meetings brief, you not only encourage your team members to say what they need to say quickly, but you show respect for their time as well. By keeping the meeting on topic, you avoid running over time, but you’re also able to keep the conversation focused on finding solutions to the problems at hand, rather than veering off into other areas.
Be Available
Keeping an open door policy in the office is important, but you need to go beyond that. Project problems and the need for communication can occur at almost any time. Make sure that your team members know that you’re available when they need you, even if it’s outside of normal office hours.
By following these simple tips, you can enjoy better communication with your team members and see better success within your project.

Today, all businesses use projects to help accomplish their goals. Projects form the bedrock of productivity in every industry, from retail to IT and everything in between. In order to ensure that projects run smoothly and offer the returns necessary to see success, project managers must lead the team responsible for implementing that project. However, it’s vital that those managers have key qualities and knowledge in order to be effective.
What Is a Project?
While this might seem obvious, you need to understand what a project is. At its heart, any project, regardless of industry, scope, budget, resources or goals, is nothing more than a series of interrelated tasks designed to lead to a specific outcome or outcomes. A project manager needs to be able to see both the larger project-based picture and the smaller series of task-based instances that lead to project completion at all times.
Training Is Vital
In the beginning, there was no such thing as a project manager (not specifically, anyway). Over time, that changed as the need for specialist leaders was recognized. Today, project managers are found in all industries, though it’s still not really classified as a specific position of its own. Regardless, you’ll find that in order to be effective, you need training and education. Moreover, it’s vital that you get this training long before you jump into the PM world. PMI is one of the best-known education providers out there and has been around the longest, but numerous others can also offer the training necessary to be successful as a project manager. The important thing is that you get the training you need.
Ongoing Training
Any project manager who thinks that their education is over after completing their initial courses is in for a surprise. Many companies today are focusing on enterprise-specific training and education. This ongoing training helps ensure that PMs stay up to date with proprietary software, processes and procedures used within that company, and also helps to boost productivity and effectiveness. For PMs, ongoing training should be seen as an advantage, as there’s no such thing as too much knowledge.
Project Management Software
You cannot go it alone in the world of project management, regardless of how much education and training you might have. While your team and various stakeholders will be vital aids, you should also ensure that you have the right software. A vast range of project management software can be found today, from desktop programs to web-based solutions and even mobile apps. Perhaps the best solution here is to collaborate with your team and determine what software (or software combination) will provide the advantages, capabilities, features and tools necessary for a successful project.
Project managers have a lot of responsibilities – these tips will help you become more effective, more successful and happier in your position. With the right software, the right education and the right mindset, managing projects of any size can be surprisingly simple and easy.