Has the whistle blown on your coaching skills?

When was the last time you checked on the health of your team? When working with troubled projects, I often say there is likely a troubled team behind it. Often the trouble in the project is not directly related to the actions of the team, but no one ever likes to be part of that team who is struggling to win the game. Emotions are all over the place and our ability to really think through the issues is impeded by the drama of the moment.

As Project Managers a large part of our role is to coach and mentor our teams. Like any sports team, our project teams need guidance, strategies, corrective action, praise, and reprimands. Its a package deal that helps round out the individuals and glues the team together as a single functional unit working towards the common goal.

When was the last time you as a project manager attended training or focused some education in the area of coaching? All too often we assume as PMs we have the skills to lead a team. As sponsors and executives we assume that our PMs must have these skills because they have managed teams before, but do they really have the skills to drive a professional team?

This training starts from the top down. When looking into your professional development options to further enhance your skills, don’t ignore the “soft skills” of human dynamics and team building. Its the people who make the projects – honor your team by learning how to effectively deal with the issues that often show up and guide them to resolution. Our ability to become a highly effective team leader capable of coaching, training, and mentoring our team will result in projects that stay out of deep trouble and spend more time driving on the road to success and not towards the ditch of failure.

At MTI we focus a great deal of our training and coaching programs around growing the Project Manager into a highly effective leader, teaching advanced skills to deal with all types of issues, not just the project management issues.

How are you handling the “drama” on your projects and with your project team?

As always, feedback and comments are welcome.

Have a great weekend!

“B”