The people in the project

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The people in the project

• Terese Stenfors-Hayes

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Agenda and objectives

• Agenda Creating and managing a project team.
• Conflict management, motivation, group dynamics
  and some leadership theories
• Objective Basic understanding of theories for
  the topics above.

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Project manager vs. functional/traditional manager

• Limited time
• Only one objective
• Given competencies within the group
• Greater risks
• Rapid changes
• Greater risk of failure
• No formal staff responsibility

• Several objectives to prioritise between
• Staff needs competence development
• Greater distance to employees
• Greater formal power
• Needs to obey the rules and regulations of the
  organisation

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The managers different roles (Mintzberg)

• Interpersonal
• Team leader, ambassador and ceremonial leader
• Informative
• Listener, information giver and spokes person
• Decision making
• Visionary, problem solver, resurce allocator and
  negotiator

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Leadership

• The team paradox
• Great person theory
• Something you are born with
• Great opportunity theory
• Something you can learn
• Ask what the leader does instead of who he is
• The more complex a project, the more formal the
  style of management should be
• The more technically uncertain a project, the
  more flexible the style of management should be

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Leadership styles (Lewin Lippit)

• Authoritative
• Democratic
• Laissez-faire

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Assumptions about humans (Schein)

• Rational-economic assumptions
• Related to theory X (McGregor)
• Social assumptions
• Self-actualisation assumptions
• Maslow, theory Y (McGregor)
• The complicated human

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Power (French Raven)

• Legitimate
• Reward
• Coercive
• Expert
• Referent

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How to create a team

• Four important aspects
• Task
• People
• Context
• Process

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Task

• What type of task is it?
• Tactical
• Problem solving
• Creative
• Autonomy?
• Subjective or objective solution?
• Task design for individuals

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People

• Number?
• Competency?
• Technical
• Communicative
• Problem solving
• Roles?
• Diversity?
• Status system?
• Norms?
• Unity?
• Cohesiveness?
• Trust?

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Context

• Resurces
• Leadership and structure
• Feedback and rewards

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Process

• Aim
• Objective
• Confidence
• Conflict management
• Responsibility
• Communication
• Openness

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Why work in groups? (Schein)

• Affiliation needs
• Sense of identity and maintaining our self-esteem
• Establishing and testing social reality
• Reducing insecurity, anxiety and sense of
  powerlessness
• Problem-solving, task-accomplishing mechanism

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Why is it so difficult?

• The work is so temporary
• Everyone is used to his/her ways  
• Geographical diversity
• Size 
• Cultural diversity 
• Lack of time

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Group development

• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing
• Adjourning

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Characteristics of effective work groups (Mullins
2002)

• A belief in shared aims and objectives
• A sense of commitment to the group
• Acceptance of group values and norms
• A feeling of mutual trust and dependency
• Full participation by all members and decision
  making by consensus
• Free flow of information and communications
• The open expression of feelings and disagreements
• The resolution of conflict by the members
  themselves
• A lower level of staff turnover, absenteeism,
  accidents, errors and complaints

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Belbins 9 team roles

• Specialist
• Monitor/evaluator
• Plant
• Teamworker
• Completer/finisher
• Shaper
• Coordinator
• Implementer
• Resource investigator

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Social Loafing

• Ways to avoid it
• Individual results
• Fun jobs
• Reward and evaluate individuals
• Participation in goal creation
• Etc
• is only a problem when intrinsic motivation is
  low

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Groupthink (Janis 1972)

• The group feels invulnerable
• Warnings are rationalised away
• Unquestioned belief in the groups morality
• Opposers are ridiculed and stereotyped
• Group pressure on opposers is high
• Silence is taken as consent (a false sense of
  group unanimity)
• Members censor themselves not to deviate from
  norms
• The group is protected from information or
  individuals who would disrupt consensus

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Why do we argue (Lee)?

• Communication problems
• Structural design
• Personal differences

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Types of conflics

• Relationship conflicts
• Task conflicts
• Process conflicts
• Conflicts can change from one type to another.
• And in most cases the conflict is unnecessary

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Dealing with conflicts

• Five ways
• Accomodation
• Confrontation
• Compromise
• Collaboration
• Avoiding

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Avoiding or changing conflicts

• Strengthen the group identity
• Acknowledge individual achievements
• Good environment and surroundings
• Identify a common goal
• Practice conflict management
• Separate people, tasks and other issues

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Why is motivation important?

• To increase employees interest in taking an
  active responsiblity for work tasks and stated
  goals
• To decrease the number of conflicts, complaints,
  absence and staff turnover
• To increase ability to handle change and
  misfortune
• To increase chances to meet business objectives
  and improve results

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Kill motivation

• Unfair treatment
• Little participation
• Unrealistic goals
• Faulty expectations
• Unclear work tasks, rules and goals
• Lack of challenges
• Bureaucracy
• Lack of trust for management
• Scandals and doubtful ethics
• Too much control and supervision
• Internal politics

• Too much or too little to do
• Favouring
• Uncertainty for the future
• Broken promises
• Threats
• Weak connection between reward and achievement
• Failing communication
• Limited responsibilities
• No feeling of control

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Creating motivation

• The daily work
• Leadership
• Personal development
• Social relations
• Status and image
• Respect and recognition
• Support for own ideas and initiatives
• Speed of work
• Salary and benefits
• New things happening at the workplace

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A motivating manager (Insight Lab AB 2003)

• Self insight and a clear idea
• Interest in other people
• Active leadership
• Clear delegation
• Social relations and feeling of togetherness
• Support employees personal development
• Have a vision and be continuously improving

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Hackman and Oldmans work design model
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How is it implemented?

• Combine tasks
• Publish results
• Let people work in teams
• Empower
• Open feedback channels

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Goals

• Goals are a motivating force
• Specific goals lead to increased performance
• Difficult goals, when accepted, result in higher
  output than easy goals
• Participation in setting the goals might
  motivate further
• Set goals only, not the route to achieve it
• Private and organisational goals might collide
• Goals should be
• Few
• Realistic
• Agreed
• Measured
• Explicit
• Specific, time restricted, not relative, positive
• Goals need to be part of a vision
• MBO is a motivational program based on goal
  setting

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Employee recognition

• Using different ways to reward behaviour and
  publicly recognize both individual and group
  accomplishment
• Can be almost anything
• A note
• A picture
• A thank you
• Rewarding behavior with recognition immediately
  leads to its repetition
• To maximize motivation potential, publicly
  communicate who and why is being recognized
• Recognizing employees superior performance
  often costs little

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Employee involvement

• A participative process to encourage increased
  commitment to the organization's success
• Involve workers in decisions that will affect
  them
• Increase their autonomy and control over their
  work lives
• Include techniques with a common core
• Employee participation
• Participative management
• Workplace democracy
• Empowerment
• Employee ownership

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Reward programmes

• Based on what an individual values
• Timely and clearly linked to a behaviour
• always or sometimes
• Who, why should be publicly and clearly stated

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Always evaluate!

• Learn for next time, both from mistakes and
  successes!
• Evaluate the group
• Conflict Management
• How motivational strategies worked
• The work task
• The work process
• Communication
• Etc.

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Recommended reading

• Essentials of Organizational Behavior
• Stephen Robbins