Q1 – What aspect of project management did you find most challenging on this
project? How did you manage this? (250 words)
The aspect of project management that proved most challenging, especially as Project
Manager (PM), was Project Communications Management (Nicholas and Steyn,
2017). This is since, the communication challenges I faced as PM, are most applicable
to Morrision-Smith and Ruiz’s (2020) theoretical basis for barriers to communication
in virtual teams meetings: lack of colleague awareness, lack of motivational presence
and lack of trust. This challenge became certain very early on, since our weekly
Tuesday virtual MS Teams meetings, were causing much conflict over decisionmaking and time allocation (Binder, 2007; Morrison-Smith and Ruiz, 2020). Hereby,
the vast majority of team members failed to build any form of relationship over this
virtual communication channel, proving to be the root of such problems within the first
three weeks (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2016).
Nevertheless, a significant strength to my leadership, can be noted in my uptake of
‘structured-unstructured time’ as one of Haas and Mortensen’s (2016) Secrets of Great
Teamwork. The benefit of managing communications with this technique, was that by
allocating 10 minutes of open discussion at the beginning of each meeting, team
members could ask each other “How there day had been?” and “Plans for the
weekend?”. The significance of my application of this concept, is credited by Griffith
and Dunham (2015) whom support the resolution of communication challenges with
familiarity; certainly effective, as my team members were better able to interpret the
behaviour of their virtual colleagues and build awareness of the lives of colleagues
outside of virtual meetings. Hence, in the long-term, by breaking down trust barriers
through familiarity, a shared understanding was built, which arguably provided pivotal
in ensuring clear communication and completion of our Fundraising Strategy two
weeks prior to deadline (Binder, 2007; Haas and Mortensen, 2016).
Q2: What teamwork or leadership concept or theory have you found the most
useful for your team project on this module and why? (250 words)
The concept that proved most useful to my teams project, was Kelley’s (1988)
Typology of Followership, after team members had completed the followership
typology questionnaire. The importance, is noted in my subsequent ability as PM to
categorise each group member into types of followers: 3 exemplary followers and 1
conformist (Kelley, 1988). Consequently, this proved advantageous to our project in
the short-term, since it allowed me as PM, to concentrate on motivating those three
conformist followers whom needed substantially more direction (Buchanan and
Huczynski, 2016; Griffith and Dunham, 2015). Furthermore, long-term usefulness can
be noted in my subsequent acceptance of the ‘exemplary’ followers as my ‘trusted
advisors’, whereby due to their followership typology, I gave them more responsibility
(Kelley, 1988). The benefit, is evidenced in their behaviour in presentation creation, by
which they themselves, critically developed and designed their own allocated sections;
demonstrating the large extent to which responsibility and direction was correctly given
by myself, as a direct result of Kelley’s (1988) theorisation (Buchanan and Huczynski,
2016)
However, the extent of usefulness of this concept can be critiqued. Although not
highlighted by Kelley’s (1988) followership typology, my own experience, has
highlighted that a mixed group of both exemplary and conformist followers, is a
strength to a team. Thus, arguably my own experience of utilising Kelley’s (1988)
theorisation, has proven pivotal to my own theorisation of group dynamics, by which
our mixed team saw those individuals who challenged my leadership and those whom
explicitly supported it; pivotal to our success submissions (Binder, 2007; Griffith and
Dunham, 2015).
References
Binder, J. (2007) Global Project Management: Communication, Collaboration and
Management Across Borders. Aldershot: Gower.
Buchanan D. and Huczynski, A. (2016) Organizational Behaviour, 9th ed. Harlow:
Pearson Education Ltd.
Griffith, B.A. and Dunham, E.B. (2015) Working in Teams: Moving from High Potential
to High Performance, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kelley, R. (1988). ‘In Praise of Followers.’ Harvard Business Review, 66, 142-148.
Morrison-Smith, S. and Ruiz, J. (2020) Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a
literature review. SN Applied Sciences, 2(6), 1-33.
Nicholas, J. and Steyn, H. (2017) Project Management for Engineering, Business and
Technology, 5th edition. London: Routledge.