Your Project Management Coach: Best Practices for Managing Projects in the Real World

Chapter 16

Transforming People Into a Team

The people assigned to your project work together only temporarily but you need them to pull together as a team if you want to get their best. Although the trek to teamdom might not be pretty, you can help your team members make the journey.

Another challenge is that the people who work on your project report to other managers. You have to learn how to motivate people without direct control over their careers and salaries.

This chapter introduces several techniques for managing people — techniques that work whether folks are team members or direct reports. Everyone is different, so this chapter is only the beginning. You have to figure out which approaches work best with your personality as well as the resources assigned to your projects.

Cross-Reference

This chapter relates to Task 6, “Maximize team performance through leading, mentoring, training, and motivating team members,” in the PMP Exam's Domain III.

Developing a Team

You can throw people together on a project, but that doesn't mean they're a team. People learn to work together over time and the process can be disconcerting both for the team members and people like you watching from the sidelines. To add to the challenges, teams need different types of support as they grow. For that reason, it's helpful for you to understand the phases that teams go through and how you can help at each stage of the game. For example, a newly formed team requires detailed instructions and lots ...