8 Helpful Tips to Effectively Lead a Project Team

For any Project Manager, team management is a crucial skill to develop. Are you leading a project team? If so, you should warrant and motivate your team members. You can do this by showing effective leadership. Without making your team overwhelmed, you should know how to effectively use their full potential for the project’s success. Of course, it is a blurry line. But when you gain experience, you can tread it to become a successful team leader. Here are some tips to help you find the right answer to the question of how to lead project team:
 

1. Know the Purpose, Goal and the Results:

To become a successful team leader, you will have to first gather the team. Then, you will have to clarify the project’s purpose to the members. You should be ready to provide them with answers to some questions like:
 

• What is the purpose of this project?

• What are the project goals to achieve?

• How to work towards achieving the project goals?

• What are the results expected from the teamwork?

When the team members are aware of the project’s purpose and goal, they can focus better. Even, when you guide them on how to march towards goal achievement, things will become easier for them.
 

2. Ensure Balance within the Team:

When you are thinking about how to lead a Project Management team, you should think of one thing. You know how much time your HR has spent to hire you into the organization. The reason is that selection of the best people for a job means that half the work is almost done. So, when you are given the responsibility of selecting members for your team, you should ensure one thing. You should check whether the personality and technical prowess of the people, whom you think to shortlist go well with the project needs.

When you have highly-skilled members, they will help. But, if they cannot operate in a team, they are more likely to slow down the project progress. In the same way, a person with interpersonal skills alone cannot add value to the team. So, it is better to look for people with the right Project Management skills. Also, you should ensure that you find a perfect balance.
 

3. Effective Task Management is Important:

You can find a wide range of analog and software options for effective management of the task. When it comes to getting things down, tracking the tasks is helpful. The right task management is equally effective to ensure that you are aware of the big picture. Also, it will help to check whether your team is heading towards the goal at the right pace. When talking about task management tools, here is what a task management board looks like:
 

4. Make Time To Lead:

To ensure effective Project Management, team leaders will have to invest time in the role. In most cases, this is something added to the already lengthy task list of a person in an organization. When this happens, setting a new leader turns out to be a failure.
 

5. Limits, Responsibilities, and Scope:
    

Again, as a Project Manager, it is your responsibility to clarify the project scope to your team members. Of course, you should explain to the team about the things included. But, you should also help them know things that are not part of the project. In turn, the members will get to know about the things they can overlook. Also, they will get to know about the things they should focus on. So, wasting of precious time of the team members on not-so-important tasks can be eliminated.
 

6. Ensure Transparency and Visibility:
    

In most organizations, Project Managers are not under the control of the policy of the organization on data sharing. Nevertheless, within the team, you should ensure proper visibility of the required data to the team members. Also, you should be transparent with all members. 

The biggest mistake done by inefficient leaders is that they try to keep the information to themselves. They release them only on a need-to-know basis. This type of leadership is highly toxic. When you maintain transparency in your projects, you can get the utmost benefit. Particularly, you can benefit from the skill set of each member. Even, it will help with improving internal accountability. It will aid with smooth project progress and can do much more. When you maintain transparency, it will be possible to improve collaboration. Even, you will experience an improvement in communication within your team.
 

7. Maintain Work Containers:

Your team members should have a place to put the materials they use and make for the project. It can be anything like a Slack channel, a Box folder, a SharePoint site or a Google Drive Folder. In this way, things can live in many places and these are called work containers.

Each work container should have a story, a thread that comments on them. The thing to remember here is that you cannot get all these things done with a single tool. Rather, you should use different tools and each of them should integrate and fit together with meaning. A story is nothing but a frame that encompasses different platforms you use. It will function as a guide to know when to employ which system. Now, you might wonder how to identify the structure and story of your team:

Observe: 

Have a look at how your team labels files they share. Also, check where they share them. Also, know the format they are in. Have an eye on how your leadership team presents things. Also, look at how other teams in your organization function and how they communicate. When you observe these things, you can gain a starting place. If your organization permits, you can also uncover pre-existing structures to gain a better idea.

Interview and Probe:

Talk with your teammates one-on-one about structures they have used in the projects that they participated in the past. When you listen more, you can understand what they are familiar to them. You are not listening to take directions from your team members. By listening to each member, you can get different cards from them for sorting things.

Conversing with team members will help you know the expertise in different tools. You can get to know how your team members experience different platforms and tools. For instance, when a person says these are things I use to communicate, some might say this is how I share stuff.

Synthesize your Story and Structure:

Now that you know what is familiar for your team. You also know what behaviors are appreciated or preexisting. Now, it is time to create a structure and story. You can make a slide to explain what is going to be done. Also, you can say how each member is accountable to the other.

Naturally, it will take time for your team to get used to the structure that you have created. But, motivate them to stay on course.  It takes around three weeks before teams identify that a new system has been put into practice. Also, it will take around 6 weeks to make the structure you have created into a habit. You can understand that you have made your team move on the right path when one thing happens. When one of your team members comes to you and says we have our Wednesday meeting at 4 pm today.

8. Get To Know Your Team Well:

Leadership is all about how you impact your team for achieving its goals. This is something you will struggle with when you do not have a complete understanding of your team members. When you are trying to understand them, identify what makes them tick. Of course, as a leader, you might feel tempted to jump in and begin making big moves right from the first day. But, remember that you are not there to flex your ego. It won’t work if you put your ego in the first place.

As a responsible leader, listen to your team members. Identify the issues they face. Also, know their aspirations and their ideas. Make sure to identify their potential weaknesses and strengths. Only then, it will be possible to formulate a leadership approach. In short, getting to know whom you are working with is the initial step to bonding with the team. It will help you establish their trust and respect. Always remember the old saying of listening two times as much as you converse. Only then, you can gain a better understanding of your team members.

As you are wondering how to lead team project, you should get close to your team. You should do this particular with those struggling. New team leaders find success when they hold brief 10-15 minutes conversations. They do this once or two times a week. You can also consider having calendar openings during office hours. On these openings, you can permit your team members to approach you. They can get to you at these times when they need some help.  

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Conclusion:

With these tips on how to lead project team, you can see your project team marching forward to success. Remember that a good team lead can also maintain a healthy friendship with his team members. It will fuel the overall success of the project.