Project leadership principles and practices

Copyright ©2010

Introduction to Project Leadership

Analyze Weick's Argument

Reply

Before joining this discussion, be sure you have read the summary of Karl Weick's article, "Leadership as the Legitimation of Doubt," included in the activity "The Importance of Uncertainty" in this topic. Think about what Weick says about leadership and doubt. Do you agree or disagree? Have you ever been part of a project that faced doubt? How did you or the project manager you were responsible to respond? How would you respond differently now?

In my opinion, the most significant "takeaway" from this case study example is that there are three possibilities with respect to knowing or not knowing important information in connection with business decisions. First, there is the state of knowing; second there is the state of not knowing; third, there is the state of not knowing but assuming in error that one does know. Obviously, knowing important information is the optimal situation and it is preferable to not knowing. However, not knowing is not necessarily a problem, especially when one realizes that knowledge is lacking. The realization that one lacks knowledge or information allows the individual to pursue whatever course of action is necessary to acquire that knowledge or obtain that information.

By far, the most dangerously unproductive potential exists when one lacks knowledge or information but does not realize it. In those instances, the negative consequences associated with lack of knowledge can become greatly magnified by the erroneous assumptions based on factually incorrect data. This cases study really illustrated the old adage that "knowing what you don't know is more important than what you know."

In my professional experience, I have been part of teams led by managers who were open and honest about what they did not know and I have been part of teams led by managers who would never admit there was anything they did not know if they could avoid acknowledging their lack of knowledge. From a leadership perspective, it seems that managers who suggest by their own responses that it is not acceptable not to know something are the same managers who do not tolerate acknowledgment of uncertainty from their subordinates. That cultivates a climate of fear and forces individuals into making erroneous choices mainly to avoid being caught without an answer or having to admit that they do not understand something. That type of leadership is conducive to higher levels of mistake and motivates individuals to worry more about "fault" and "CYA"-type of concerns more than about the actual business objectives.

Conversely, managers who acknowledge their own limitations and communicate that acknowledging what one does not know is more helpful that pretending one knows tend to inspire team members to do their best and to solicit assistance when necessary. From a long-term operational perspective, a team that understands the importance of recognizing the limits of knowledge is less prone to error and more capable of improvement than a team led by managers who discourage the admission of relative ignorance. As a team leader or manager, I will communicate that mistakes may not necessarily be able to be eliminated: their consequences can only be minimized by immediate disclosure or maximized by being hidden or delayed from acknowledgement.

Dealing with Difference -- Module 3 Discussion

Think about your personal MBTI results. Based on the presentation "Understanding Your MBTI," are you surprised by the results you received? What did you learn about yourself?

Consider your project group experiences. What are the MBTI dimensions that you think you work best with? Which do you have the most trouble with in project teams? As you look at the postings of your colleagues, what trends and relationships begin to emerge?

You must respond to the initial post and to the posting of at least one of your colleagues.

According to the MBTI results, I am an ESFJ (extroversion -- sensing -- feeling -- judging). Like Michael, I can recognize some of those characteristics in myself but others seem somewhat foreign to me and were surprising. Considering the responses of my colleagues, it seems to me that this pattern is fairly consistent: namely, most people recognize some of the characterizations of their results but are surprised by other aspects of our results. Even more specifically, I notice that within individual elements of characterizations (such as the description of feeling in my cases), we are more surprised by certain parts of those elements than by others.

Michael Chase said:

"I wasn't really surprised by my results; however I would say that not all of the characteristics of my being introverted I agree with. Some characteristics that I don't agree with are "liking routines," as I tend not to like day-to-day routines because they make work boring and then one stops learning. I like the differences that each assignment or project brings. Also, in my profession I definitely need to be able to multi-task (extraverted) and I feel that I excel at doing so and do like to multi-task as a way of being efficient. I also like being spontaneous (extraverted) at times. At least on a social level, I definitely feel that the best times that I have are often doing things spontaneously. Usually when something is planned, I don't have as much fun because it's almost as if I'm trying to stick to some plan of events and it becomes somewhat stressful."

Specifically, I recognize that I have extrovert tendencies and that I tend to rely heavily on my logical reasoning abilities in making judgments. Likewise, I also recognize that I am perceptive; however, I was surprised by the feeling component, particularly because it includes the element of being "unsettled by conflict." While I do recognize the need to build consensus and to be sensitive to others' points-of-view and needs, I would definitely disagree with the characterization of being unsettled by conflict. If anything, I dislike avoiding any controversy once it becomes apparent because I strongly prefer to address it as soon and as directly as possible to resolve it logically and fairly.

Module 4. There are 4 parts to this evaluation. This section is not done yet Steven, I really need you to send me the actual file of this cases study to do this part…not screen shots…I just need the file or an exact link to the right video…I can't watch each one to figure out which one is the right one.

1. Analyze the Team's Cultural Differences

Look at the function and nationality columns on the MicroWidget 3000 Project Member Profiles chart. Using the work of Hofstede and Hall, briefly describe the differences in cultural dimensions that might exist on this team (in later parts of this project, you will consider other sources of difference). For example, are certain members from cultures with a high PDI and some from cultures with a low PDI? What might this mean for how the team functions? Finally, list any potential work subculture conlicts that might exist.

2. Analyze the Team's Personality Style Differences

Using the MBTI column of your Project Member Profiles chart, create a project preference grid. Then, answer the following questions:

1. What are the strengths of this team?

2. What are the weaknesses of this team?

3. What dimensions might cause individuals to react poorly to each other?

4. What might the team's interactions look like as a result of these preferences?

5. Are you concerned that any team members might leave the team? If so, who?

3. Analyze the Team's Learning Style Differences

Use the Learning Style Preferences column of your Project Member Profiles chart to determine the preferred learning style of each team member. What do these styles suggest about the types of activities that people will enjoy? What are some activities that Naomi could create to meet the needs of her diverse team?

4. Create a Plan of Action for Naomi

Throughout this course project, you have speculated about the issues that might arise in Naomi's team. Now, define a plan of actions that you would recommend Naomi take to forestall potential difficulties. What competencies will she need and what behaviors should she exhibit?

Name Function Nationality MBTI profile Learning Style Preferences

Naomi and Organizational Design

Let's take another look at Naomi and some of her concerns about the life of her project.

Management asked a key member of her team to move to a different project.

A competing priority caused the entire organization to shift focus away from her project for a week.

Team members were too busy with their functional priorities to attend project team meetings.

What has Naomi learned about organizational design that could help her to explain what happened on her team?

First, Naomi should recognize that the role of the project manager is one of integrator. This means that to complete her project, Naomi needs the expertise of differentiated players in her organization, and it is her job to set both the timeline and the tone of collaboration for the project. It is the project manager's responsibility to integrate the varied functions, so they can meet the complex needs of the organization.

Secondly, she must realize that this integration role takes the form of information manager. Specifically, the project manager performs the lateral-relations task. This means that the successful project manager recognizes who needs what information and creates mechanisms to assure that the right people get that information. In this capacity, the project manager is responsible for communication flow both vertically and horizontally.

Finally, Naomi needs to understand that, at least to some degree, she lives within a matrix. She must see that the diverse members of her team are responsible not only to her, but to functional managers whose objectives and priorities might directly contradict her own. Being effective as a project manager in this type of environment requires significant interpersonal skills.

Let's look at an example from Naomi's list: team members were too busy with their functional priorities to attend project team meetings. What if Naomi had understood the need for information management between her team members and their functional supervisors? It is possible that if her team members understood the importance of the project, they might have selected her priorities over those of their functional teams. It is also possible that if their supervisors understood the importance of Naomi's projects, they might have been willing to excuse team members from their functional duties. And finally, if Naomi had felt more confident about her skills in exercising influence and resolving conflict, she could have met with the relevant functional managers and tried to find a compromise that would have enabled her team members to attend her meetings.

The first step to being an effective project manager is seeing project management through our three frames. Naomi now better understands her role in the context of the first frame, organizational design. She is beginning to get the idea that there is much more to this role than she thought.

Think about how the lessons Naomi learned apply to your organization. Can you see these forces at play in your own project and functional teams?

Module 4 Discussion

Difference in Your Organization

Looking back at your course project, consider the skills you used to analyze and make recommendations about the team in the case study. How can you take those skills and apply them in your organization? How will you approach your own work differently as a result of having taken this course?

Share with your colleagues some of the recommendations you made in your course project. As you look at the postings of your colleagues, are there any recommendations that surprised you, or that you thought to be especially insightful?

The most important skills I learned are the ability to recognize the reasons why identical sets of situations and circumstances can be perceived so differently by multiple individuals. I recognize that in some situations the MBTI factors are important but in my particular situation working with Afghan Nationals, the Hofstede analysis is much more important.

Leah said:

This course has really opened my eyes to how cultural differences can play such a huge part in a team's dynamic. I work with many different cultures in my role, and although I've recognized that I sometimes needed to communicate with them in slightly different ways, I had not appreciated how alien some of my '"British" cultural tendencies may seem to them!

I agree with that completely. In the Middle East in general, and in Afghanistan in particular, gestures and postures that are perfectly benign in the West can transmit very definite signals of respect or of the lack of respect for others. Looking back at some of our team interactions within mixed groups as well as between groups of Americans and groups of Afghanis, I can understand in retrospect why some of our exchanges may have failed to elicit the response we had anticipated and hoped for. In fact, there was nothing wrong or missing from the verbal content of our communications. However, I can understand from the Afghani perspective how certain seemingly innocuous mannerisms and choices about who addressed whom first or in what order may have set the wrong tone for the exchange before any substantive ideas were even expressed at all. Looking back on it, we may have sabotaged some of our collaborative effort entirely unnecessarily by failing to put in the necessary effort to understand the way that our mannerisms might be interpreted from an alternate cultural perspective.

Moving forward with the information from this course, I would change the way that our team prepares for communications with individuals from other cultures by spending more time trying to understand their likely patterns of responses according to the concepts articulated by Hofstede. With respect to the MBTI profile information, I would make use of those characterizations internally, especially when it comes to delegating specific responsibilities to particular individuals and also for the purposes of pairing up individuals. In some cases, it will be advantageous to select team members for certain projects where all of them are strongest in specific areas. In other situations, it will be more beneficial to create teams that are composed of individual with complementary styles and strengths instead of identical styles. In either case, the important thing is to recognize the nature of those differences and the positive and negative implications they represent with respect to enabling the team achieve its objectives in a unified and mutually supportive manner.

Conflict Resolution -- Module 2 Discussion

Discussing Your TKI

Reply

Share with your colleagues your thoughts about a time when you used one of the conflict-handling modes successfully. What about the nature of the conflict made your choice of mode appropriate to its resolution? Was there a situation where you used a conflict-handling mode unsuccessfully? If you had the opportunity to go back and address the conflict again, what mode would you use now? Why?

Are there any conflict-handling modes that you overuse? What can you do to stop overusing that mode?

For this required discussion, please respond to the initial post and the posting of at least one other student.

Module 3 Assessment

Part 1

We recently experienced problems implementing necessary operational changes in petroleum engineering issues that, in retrospect, were obviously caused by our failure to recognize the personal issues and dynamics relating to cultural expectations more than to the technical issues involved. The Afghani team with whom we were working consisted of Khan, the President of the organization, Hamid, the Translator, and Laftala, the Operations Manager.

In this particular conflict, our U.S. team had determined that there were several serious problems in the operational solutions proposed by the Afghani team. We put almost all of our efforts into the technical explanation and we prepared to explain to the Afghani team why their proposed operations plan could not possibly work. It was clear from the internal communications and from the various drafts of the proposal that Laftala, the Afghani Operations manager actually understood the issues much better than Hamid, the President. During our meeting, we explained very clearly all the technical points that supported the position that had previously been advanced internally by Laftala that were subsequently overridden by Kahn. From our perspective, we expected that once Hamid understood the technical analysis, we would easily get his authorization and cooperation to proceed appropriately with the project.

Instead, Kahn became extremely difficult and ended up in a very heated argument with Laftala that we could not understand because it was entirely in Persian. It ended with Kahn angrily lecturing Laftala and gesturing for him to leave the room. We then spent a considerable amount of time negotiating everything point by point with Kahn through the translator until we finally secured Khan's authorization and consent to proceed. Ultimately, he authorized the exact operational plan that he had previously rejected from Laftala.

Later, we were debriefed by Hamid, the Translator. According to him, it was a tremendous insult to point out Kahn's mistake in front of Laftala. It did not matter who was right or why; the fact that Kahn, the superior was told that Laftala, his subordinate, was right all along deprived Kahn of any way to save face. According to Hamid, it would have been bad enough already for us to tell Kahn that Laftala had been right, even privately. We should have figured out some way to allow Kahn to maintain the appearance of having understood the issues on his own and better than Laftala. However, our worst mistake was to announce to Kahn that he was wrong and that Laftala had been right all along in front of Laftala. Hamid said that he actually changed as much of our wording as possible in his translation but both he and Laftala knew immediately that we had stumbled onto a hornets' nest the instant we supported Laftala's analysis over Kahn's.