العادات السبع المدمرة (
السيئة) لمدراء المشاريع
Seven Habits of Highly
Destructive Project Managers
You have all heard about
the book Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People. Here is a similar list of seven habits -
only these are for highly destructive project managers.
In other words, you don't want to do these things.
1.
Motivate by intimidation. Since project team members rarely report functionally to the
project manager, some project managers try to "motivate" team members
by instilling fear. This could be by shouting, threatening to remove them,
humiliating them at team meetings, etc. This may seem to have short-term gains
at times, but is never a good management technique.
2. Not knowing your team. The personal lives of team members impacts their work
behavior as well. An effective project manager knows enough about his team
members that he is able to understand what motivates them. This does not mean
you have to pry into every personal details. The point is to have some interest
in the team members as human beings to build a more effective work
environment.
3. Not being open to ideas. Some project managers believe that there is just one way to
do things right, and that one way is their way. Not being open to team
suggestions and ideas stifles their creativity. Such a closed attitude prevents
new and better methods from being implemented.
4. Negative expectations. Many project managers are convinced that employees are
untrustworthy, sneaky and lazy. This causes them to constantly monitor team
members and treat them like children. In a situation where expectations leads
to reality, this type of project management behavior can lead the team members
to actually become poor performers.
5. Not communicating performance
expectations. Many team members are
shocked to learn about project manager perceptions and expectations late or at
the end of the project. Ineffective project managers withhold a lot of
important information from team members - including their performance
expectations. They then provide negative input to the functional managers for
performance feedback, which is terribly de-motivating to the team members
affected.
6. Viewing themselves as the only decision
makers. Ineffective project
managers tend to believe that they alone make all the decisions. They fail to
realize that project managers are as prone to making errors as anyone else, and
only managers that admit their errors stand a chance of thrive and grow.
Ineffective project managers fail to see the opportunities for a collaborative
relationship between project management and team members.
7.
Creating a negative
work environment. Project managers help shape the
organization through the kind of culture they propagate. This helps determine
whether team members enjoy work or dread it. An organization of poor project
management leads to poor project execution, which leads to all kinds of
negative characteristics for the entire work environment.
As
a project manager, look at the list above. If you are doing the opposite of
these traits you are probably doing well. On the other hand if you have one or
more of these habits you should think seriously about changes.
