This is the second of six articles that discuss key skills for successful project managers. The extract posted here will be published in its final form by the University of North Georgia Press in a forthcoming book, Delivering Value with Project Management, by Woods & Marshall (2023).
Link to Skill #1: Leadership, Delegation, and Influence

Strong interpersonal and technical skills help project managers excel at their work and enable others to see them as effective leaders and managers. In this series of articles, I share six key interpersonal skills that project managers should focus on developing.

Skill #2: Motivation and Teamwork

One of the primary responsibilities of a PM is motivating and building project teams. How a PM behaves in this role will depend on how they view the motivation of their team members. Building motivation in your team helps everyone work more efficiently and produce better results. Motivation is an internal force that drives people to perform at their best. The project manager motivates the team toward completing project goals with passion and provides a profound reason to complete the work. Recognition and rewards are an essential part of motivating teams and are formal ways of recognizing and promoting desirable behavior and are most effective when carried out by the management team and the project manager. Consider individual preferences and cultural differences when using rewards and recognition. Some people don’t like to be recognized in front of a group; others thrive on it.

In the late 1960s, Douglas McGregor put forth two models to explain how managers view their employees and team members’ motivation towards work: Theory X and Theory Y. These theories describe two very different viewpoints on how employees act and how they are motivated. Project managers who align with Theory X think that employees generally try to avoid work when they can, don’t take responsibility for getting work done, and might be incapable of performing quality work. These project managers will try to micromanage their employees. Unfortunately, this style of leadership often leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby employees become unmotivated because they are not trusted.

Project Managers aligned with Theory Y believe that team members put forth their best efforts without being closely managed, ask questions without prompting, desire to meet their goals and take responsibility for their work. These project managers will trust their team and not try to micromanage. In general, a project manager with a Theory Y mindset will be able to establish trust with team members and lead them from the formation of a team to becoming a high-performing team.

The project manager also relies on various team-building techniques and exercises to motivate the team. A team is a group of people working together to accomplish a shared goal. Teams are different than groups because team members must collaborate, or work together, to achieve the team’s goals. Team members are also interdependent in that they must rely on one another to get things done because each team member holds complementary skills, so no one person must be skilled in everything required to achieve the goal.

Team-building is getting a diverse group to work together most efficiently and effectively. This may involve management events and individual actions designed to improve team performance. One primary goal of team building activities is to develop an effective team. Effective teams have several common characteristics: high levels of team trust, strong group cohesion, and engaged team members.

On projects, trust is the filter through which we screen the information we share and receive. The more trust team members feel in a team, the easier it is for information to flow between team members. Conversely, as trust diminishes, data has a harder time getting through, and projects highly dependent on an information-rich environment will suffer from information deprivation.

Team cohesion develops as team members see themselves as an integral part of a team and are dedicated to the team’s success. Team cohesion creates a productive team environment because all team members are motivated to support the team’s success. Project managers can build and support team cohesion by helping members identify strongly with the team’s goals and processes. Project managers can undertake team-building, relationship-building, and other interventions to foster team cohesion. Cohesive teams also contribute to individual team members demonstrating engagement with the team.

Engaged team members contribute to effective project teams. Engagement occurs when individuals are strongly invested in their team emotionally, cognitively, and socially. Engaged team members care about the team’s work and how well the team performs. Such team members are also more likely to go above and beyond the minimal requirements to complete their work.

Deeper Dive: To learn more about engaging a project team for increased performance, check out this article available at PMI.org

Woods, J. M. (2015). Engaging your team to greater project performance. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2015—North America, Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/engaging-team-great-project-performance-9941

Next week we will discuss negotiation and conflict management as important interpersonal skills for project managers.

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