Developing the team processes for

improving competencies, helping team interactions, and

the overall team environment. Project managers require the skill
to identify, build, motivate, lead, and inspire the team to deliver on the
project, and to create an environment that facilitates teamwork, continuously
motivates the team, recognizes and rewards good performance, and
constantly provides feedback and support. Good project managers lead people. So
what are some of the things that you
could do to make your team more effective? Well the first thing you can do is
strive to communicate often and clearly with your team. Your interactions will
shape
the way the team reacts. And when you're doing this, look at how
the team interacts with each other. That is, how often do they communicate? What do
they talk about? Are there any conflicts? And are they truly acting like a team?
The next thing you can
do is train your team. During the building of your team, you need
to consider all the skills necessary to complete the project and
build your team accordingly. But sometime there's knowledge
gaps that need to be addressed. Take a look at the team and determine if there are
any additional
training needs to get the project done. If so, set up the time to get
certain members of the team trained in those particular areas. This will help with
this project, but that
will also help those team members with any other projects they're
working on in the future. Another thing you can do is do
team building opportunities. Think about ways you can help bring
the team closer together to develop as a team, okay. This may take the form of
meetings,
retreats, the training that we just talked about, or anything that
makes the team function better. One step that you can do is
establishing a team contract where team norms are established. Having the team work
closely together
to build camaraderie, encouraging collaborative problem solving and decision
making is another thing that you can do to help bring the team together so
that they start to form and gel together. And this is a great opportunity to
exercise your interpersonal and management skills, to ensure that your
team members feel like they're valuable and important members of the team. If your
team members feel
like they're adding value, then they'll have a greater
buy in towards the project. The objective of developing the team
is to increase the knowledge and skills of the team, to increase teamwork
and efficiency, to lower costs, to improve the trust and agreement of
the team, to empower the team, and to create a dynamic,
cohesive, collaborative team. But remember, teams just don't come
together without a little bit of work. Here are the five phases of team
development in project management. They are forming, storming, norming,
performing, and adjourning. Many of you know these stages
well because you've lived them. But knowing that it's normal for each team
to go through each of one of these stages will help you better manage
the team at each stage. Forming is where the team members
learn about their role on the team and are independent but they get along well.
Storming is where conflict
starts to occur within the team. The team starts to adjust the project work
and start making technical decisions and disagreements may cause conflict. Norming
happens after the storm and
the team starts to work together and adjust to each other. And then finally
performing,
which is what you're striving for, is the team's operating well and
introducing results. And then finally is adjourning,
where the team completes the work and moves on from the project. So what else can
you do to
help develop your team? Well, there's a few
things that you can do. You can colocate and
have everyone come together. You could create virtual teams if you have
people that are geographically displaced. You can establish a system of recognition
and rewards for high performers. And you can establish ways
to utilize communication and technology so that the team can
communicate more effectively. You can do this through email,
video conferencing, portals, etc. And I'd really like to emphasize again
the importance as the project manager of utilizing your interpersonal skills to
manage things that might arise in this process, which are conflict, making
sure that you use your interpersonal skills to influence the team
to get things done. You may need them to negotiate at times. And the goal here is
really to
continue to build the team. It's critical that you manage the team. The biggest
outputs of this process
are your assessments of the team and their performance. And these will help
encourage and
guide the team in the right direction. So now let's look at what we
can do to manage the team.