Freeview Company / Re-Launch of Freeview Analysis of Interpersonal Skills

Leadership

Team Building

Motivation

Communication

Influencing

With over 19 million subscribers Freeview is the most subscribed or popular digital television service in the United Kingdom. Recently they launched Freeview Play enabling their subscribers even more control and choice. Freeview Play has a catch up TV feature, too. The greatest selling point for Freeview is the fact that it free. Subscribers do not have to pay anything to subscribe to its channels. The company was launched in the year 2002 by DTV Services Limited, a firm that is jointly owned by Arqiva, BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky. When the company was launched in 2002 it had just twenty five channels but now it has grown to include over sixty free-to-view channels and twelve high definition (HD) channels (Freeview, 2015).

Summary of Case Study

In the last few years, there has been need for a new design and a re-launch both technically and in marketing owing to the emergence or rather re-emergence of competitors in the free-to-air market such as ITC and DTT. The BBC made sure that the proposal to buy Freeview was made within the short timescale set by ITC by formulating its investment, advertising and other strategic plans quickly so as to meet the deadline. The BBC made the bid for the licenses and got them. This time, however, the company followed a single management plan unlike in the past when it sought and considered opinions from all three companies. Still the resources, i.e. marketing employees, technical development employees, and management employees that were required were chosen from among the three companies so as to enable the company to make a number of important decisions. Such decisions include: working Transmission Company and other competitors as partners; hiring of project manager to manage staff in different regions and with different values; and hiring of managers for project launch. For making all these decisions, all shareholders agreed to an integrated project plan and the establishment of a small steering committee that was to provide overall management. The committee or team was given access to the project manager and was to play a key role in enabling open communication among team members (Weare & White-Hunt, 2014).

Analysis of Interpersonal Skills

Leadership

Effective leadership is understood and described in many disparate operations as concentrating the efforts of a team towards achieving a set objective. Enabling the team to work together is a prerequisite to effective leadership. In general, leadership is simply getting people to do what you want. Some of the determinants of effective leadership are trust and respect. Even though effective leadership is crucial during the entire project, it is most needed during the starting phases of projects when there is a need for one to communicate the project vision and to motivate and inspire participants towards setting their minds to achieving the set goals. During the entire project, team leaders are tasked with the following responsibilities: creating and maintaining communications and strategy; team building; fostering trust; mentoring; monitoring and assessing the progress of the project and the performance of team members (PMI, 2013).

The leadership strategy adopted by the BBC for this project was to set up a steering committee that would have access to the project manager. The company was of the opinion that this could help foster trust among team members and encourage all team members to work towards a common goal. The firm adopted strategic leadership complete with a clear vision and shared values; they thought that these would enable the staff to make decisions quickly with minimum official supervision. Moreover, that this would allow the project manager more time to concentrate on other important issues such as tailoring the project vision to meet the best practices in the constantly changing business environment (Rowe & Nejad, 2009).

Team Building

This refers to the process of assisting a group of people, united with a common objective, to work with one another, the head, external stakeholders, as well as the organization. Teamwork is the outcome of appropriate leadership and appropriate team building. Team building activities entail procedures (interpersonal behavior with stress on conflict management, communication, leadership, and motivation) and duties (create goals, describe and negotiate roles, roles, responsibilities, and processes). Establishing a team environment entails dealing with project team issues and discussing them as team problems without putting blame on people. Team building could be further developed by acquiring top management support; supporting team member dedication; initiating suitable rewards, morals, and recognition; developing a team identity; efficiently handling disagreements; encouraging trust and open communication amidst team members; and offering guidance. Whereas team building is vital in the front end of a project, it is a constant procedure. Modifications in a project environment are unavoidable. So as to efficiently manage these modifications, a constant or renewed team-building effort is needed....

Results of team building entail mutual trust, improved decision making, high quality of data exchange, and efficient project management (PMI, 2013). The team is built through leveraging the resources of three organizations in case of Freeview. These particular resources entail marketing personnel, management personnel, as well as technical development personnel. Even a project manager is chosen to manage personnel in different nations having varying cultures.
Motivation

Project teams are composed of team members having diverse anticipations, backgrounds, and personal goals. The general success of the project relies on the dedication of the project team that is directly linked to their degree of motivation. Motivation in a project environment entails developing an environment to fulfill their project goals while offering maximum satisfaction associated with what individuals value most. These values might entail job fulfillment, a sense of success, challenging work, success and development, ample financial compensation, together with other rewards and recognition that people consider as necessary and essential (PMI, 2013). In case of Freeview, through informal relations in a flat organization framework, the leader of the organization and personnel shall have better relationships. This shall improve the confidence of the personnel since they shall be engaged in all decisions too.

Communication

Communication is one of the single greatest causes of project failure or success. Efficient communication within the project team and amidst the team members, project manager, and all external stakeholders is important. Honesty. Clarity and transparency in communication is an opportunity for teamwork and great performance. So as to efficiently communicate, the project manager ought to be knowledgeable of the communication techniques/modalities of other parties, relationships, cultural norms, personalities, as well as the general context of the circumstance. Knowledge of these factors results to mutual understanding and hence efficient communication. Project managers need to identify a variety of communication channels, know what data they are required to offer, what data they are required to obtain, and which interpersonal competencies shall assist them in communicating efficiently with the project stakeholders. Conducting team-building activities to establish team member communication styles permits managers to arrange their communications with suitable sensitivity cultural and relationship disparities.

Listening (with intent to understand) is a crucial portion of communication. Listening methods, both passive and active provide the user with insight to the problem regions, negotiation and conflict handling techniques, decision making, as well as problem resolution (PMI, 2013). Freeview would now follow the approach of BBC, whereby informal and open communication is greatly stressed. This particular communication takes place when each party is capable of expressing ideas to each other, for instance in a dialogue or debate. In addition, this would provide everybody with equal participation in the organization's success.

Developing an environment of open communication gives room for the flow of creativity and energy. It creates an atmosphere whereby every employee has a good understanding of the objectives and what actually needs to be done to achieve these objectives. Therefore, this shall also allow the employees and employers to converse without formal chains that in turn shall save time and develop a strong rapport amidst the subordinates and superiors (Moorhead & Griffin, 2009).

Influencing

This is a tactic of sharing power and depending on interpersonal competencies to get others to work together towards common objectives. Utilizing the following guidelines could impact team members:

Lead by example, and follow through with commitments

Utilize a flexible interpersonal method and alter the method to fit the audience

Explain the manner through which a decision will be made

Implement power skillfully and carefully

Have long-term partnership in mind (PMI, 2013).

In case of Freeview, the organization has chosen to utilize the idea of team-socializing whereby every team member shall be given equal importance.

Project Management 7