Accidental Project Manager Part 6

Accidental Project Manager Series
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6

Part 5 of the Accidental Project Manger series talked about communication success by identifying what is important to your stakeholders. Knowing what is important to all types of stakeholders improves your ability to uniquely craft your communication to their needs and avoid inadvertently triggering trouble with them.

Another issue you need to manage in your career is managing project team motivation. Motivation is sapped by a lack of vision. The good news is that you already identified the project when you created your business case.

Success Factor

So what is the secret of motivation: Over the long run, project managers must convince their project team that it is advantageous for them to perform project work. We need to remove obstacles when work gets tough

Over the long run, project managers must convince project stakeholders that it is advantageous for this project work to be completed. We need to remind stakeholders of why the work is important e.g. the vision.

Acceleration Factor

We need to combine the mindset of the leader with the heart of a servant.  We work hard to manage globally and we need some ego to allow us to survive the leadership challenges.  However we need to balance that with serving the organization.  Remember the virtues of Benjamin Franklin; do good every day?  It is still as relevant today as it was 200 years ago.  We need to keep the team strong.  The ego needed to influence globally needs to be reigned in locally to grow the team.

Rosemary Hossenlopp, MBA PMP © 2008 All Rights Reserved