Achieving good form in project leadership: an ongoing journey

Having uncovered the core function of leadership in project delivery, to establish and support a collaborative collective of diverse stakeholders, the next big question is: how? What skills can we develop to enable, realise and release our personal potential in project leadership?

The relaunch of my book by APM Evolving project leadership is a chance to reflect on one of the key functions of project leadership: securing and fostering engagement from, and between stakeholders, who then actually deliver the project.

Observing a great sports team ‘in flow’ is a vivid and compelling metaphor for the emergent fusion power of a project team collaborating to deliver far more than the sum of those individuals doing their own thing.

How do you do this?

The first step is always to consciously build a picture — ideally by using a systems diagram which identifies key stakeholders. Don’t do this alone as many projects have been delayed due to previously unaccounted-for stakeholders appearing — your team will help you fill in the gaps. For this reason, a proactive approach to relationship building informed by personal experience, but crucially insights garnered from other people’s insights and experiences, empowers us to then infer and deduce their perspective and priorities. Just what is their ‘stake’ in this endeavour, and why?

This then informs our classic stakeholder engagement grid; identifying who they are, what their interest is and their stake. From this, we can then prioritise. Importantly, as a project leader, this understanding and awareness also helps pre-empt communications inadvertently triggering a negative response by not taking due account of stakeholder sensitivities and respecting their interests. All stakeholder communications should reflect these potential sources of resistance to change.

By identifying and communicating mutual benefits first, we can then set any impact of short-term challenges or costs within the larger context of relatable benefits, stakeholder interests and expectations. The latter ensures that stakeholders are aware of governing interests be they legal, regulatory or, for example, environmental.

This initial and powerful exercise in identifying and mapping stakeholders also ensures that they understand where they sit in relation to others. It also offers powerful insights that will help to inform the vision of both the scope and form of delivery.

Some key words and concepts from the above are brought together in the book offering a tool for the project leader to both develop their own Insight, Foresight and Vision: the ‘Triple Catalyst’. These steps provide an overall situational awareness and understanding that enables them to engage, empower and enable each member of the team.

With this accomplished, the project leader then has a further key task; to facilitate and sustain progression of the team from a group of diverse individuals and subject matter experts, to a collaborative collective working effectively and efficiently throughout delivery. This management of the stakeholder engagement process requires the aspiring project leader to retain a structured approach to their own development and in turn that of the individuals which will trickle down into the team itself. The latter will take into account the dynamics of the Tuckman model of Team development from Forming through Storming to Norming and Performing of the team as a whole.

The ‘Triple Catalyst’ tool prompts and supports the project leader to develop personal insight, foresight and vision. While maintaining this, they then extend its application to secure engagement by individual team members then use it to proactively foster collaboration between them.

These four tools offer a path for the development of project leadership and the establishment of a collaborating team of subject matter experts with a shared alignment in what is to be done, and how:

The Triple Catalyst: Vision, Insight and Foresight, self, individuals and team as a collective.
Hersey Blanchard Curve – informing and progressing from directing to Delegation.
Tuckman Model – informing and progressing team: Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing.
GROW Model: Coaching

To achieve this, your team will rely upon you as the project leader to be prepared to develop a suite of skills such as mentor and coach and to follow each of the above steps. These steps enable the aspiring project leader to help progress and evolve team members from a degree of ‘directing’, enabling and instructing those commencing the journey along the Hersey-Blanchard curve, from ‘telling’ and lead them to a point where team members are in a position and motivated to take ownership through ‘Delegation’.

A tool for evolving from ‘telling’ to ‘delegation’ is the coaching ‘GROW Model’, offered by Sir John Whitmore. This tool encourages the project leader to gain the team members commitment and their stated intent in terms of their goals.

In considering what effect is to be sought by the project leader in the application of these tools for the self and the team, it helps to recognises and acknowledge how liberating it feels when others communicate their respect by expressing a high opinion of us. This might inspire us to ‘lead as we would be led’. Yet, consider how much more powerful it would be, through effective and informed coaching to ‘lead as they would be led’. Each step in our ongoing and continued professional development as project leaders can therefore, when consciously undertaken, be carried and passed forward to support this process in others.

Where to start? To inform your application of each of the above tools, observe interactions and communication between others and with yourself. What works best? Practice moving intentionally from ‘telling’, to drawing out the aspirations and intent of others, then aligning that to a shared vision built on your common ground of recognised ‘need’; what it is that needs to be done.

The return on your personal investment: consciously evolving your project leadership skills will cascade benefits, enhancing project success through effective stakeholder engagement. Crucially, in turn, this will serve to foster a team recognising your well-earned efforts by willingly bestowing on you the so-earned title of ‘project leader’.