Wong - The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management

The EIGHT ESSENTIAL PEOPLE SKILLS for PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Other Books by Zachary Wong

Human Factors in Project Management
Personal Effectiveness in Project Management

The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management

Copyright 2018 by Zachary Wong

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First Edition

Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-52309-793-7

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9794-4

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9795-1

2018-1

Book producer: Westchester Publishing Services

Cover designer: Adam Johnson

Cover art credit: Image by Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

Dedicated to Elaine, the love of my heart

Amy and Sarah, the heart of my happiness

The Eight Essential People Skills were developed after decades of study, research, experience, and feedback from hundreds of team leaders from industry, government, and academia. These eight were identified as the most common, sought-after skills by project leaders for solving the toughest people problems in todays workplace, including how to diagnose and solve people problems, confront and correct bad behavior, reduce team dissatisfaction and disharmony, turn around difficult people and poor performers, get people to do what you want them to do, raise employee motivation and attitude, reduce change and risk aversion, and manage a difficult boss.

The purpose of this book is to give you models, tools, and insights to help you effectively diagnose and correct people problems. These Eight Essential People Skills are a set of practical strategies, methods, tips, and techniques to help you immediately improve as a project team leader. As one reader expressed, I need this materialyou dont learn this stuff in school or at work and it relates to the things we actually face in the real world.

If you are a current or prospective team leader, congratulations! You have one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs in todays workplace. Leading teams is a double-edged sword, as the joy and satisfaction of working with others are too frequently tempered by the heartaches and headaches of supervising personnel, resolving disagreements, and handling people problems. Youre expected to be part supervisor, part counselor, part coach, part management, and part frustrated.

The Eight Skills are designed for individuals, team leaders, and managers who oversee and coordinate the daily performance of others. Most books on people management and leadership tend to preach certain practices and habits to improve ones people skills. Adopting a set of standard practices does not make you an effective leader. The best team leaders are problem solvers and facilitators, so this book is structured that way, giving you facilitative models, skills, and tools to diagnose people problems and then offering you processes, options, and ideas that you can choose from to fit your situation and who you are.

Whether your background is in technology, social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, engineering, or other studies, it is unlikely that you were ever schooled in the principles and practices of leading and motivating a team. When it comes to learning people skills, youre pretty much left on your own, and nothing is harder than leading teams. To be successful, it takes a combination of supervisory, process, and communication skills; knowledge of human psychology, organizational behavior and human factors; and teamwork, integrity, and leadership. Given the breadth and depth of these subjects, its certainly a tall order to expect project team leaders to be fluent in all of them and an even greater stretch to believe that project leaders can adeptly apply them to a diverse work team.

More than ever, people skills are in high demand, due to the continued rise in team-based projects and organizations, a more educated and collaborative workforce, employees wanting more authority and responsibility, the need for more innovation and productivity, and workers seeking more meaningful work. In short, people want to know more, do more, create more, and contribute more than ever before. People are more socially connected, tech savvy, and eager to make an impact. Never before have individual workers had more power, freedom, ability, and technology to make tremendous differences in their work teams, departments, companies, and industries, as well as the world. But are team leaders adequately equipped to serve this new avant-garde and take advantage of this tremendous brain trust and human resource? How do you facilitate and motivate people in this new global work environment? Because of changes in the demographics and culture of the workplace, project team leaders need a new set of skills, models, and tools to lead our changing workforce.

A project team leader is someone who provides guidance, direction, facilitation, coaching, expertise, and motivation to a group of individuals who are working together to achieve a common goal, work product, or result. The Eight Skills are applicable to not only project management but all fields and workplaces where you find team leaders, such as team managers, group managers, supervisors, superintendents, coordinators, technical leads, and anyone who oversees the daily performance of others. These are people who have direct contact with their work team and are responsible for the work direction, productivity, and performance of their team.

In this book, people skills are defined as the ability to understand, facilitate, communicate, and work with people on an individual, team, and organizational level to meet stakeholder expectations, motivate high employee performance, and achieve team success. Its imperative for todays project team leaders to possess strong knowledge of and skills in working with people, building an effective team, and solving people problems. People skills in project management is a huge topic that is immensely important for todays project team leaders. Although the task may seem daunting, the objective of this book is to try to condense this vast subject down to the few critical skills that project leaders need and want in managing team performance today.