Project Management Tips Every Manager Should Know

Managers have a lot on their plates. When you work as one, you will be responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the organization, which can include keeping track of the income made and how the employees perform on a day-to-day basis. Managers will also be in charge of the staffing and training of new employees and setting new goals for the organization.

You’ll have several responsibilities as a manager, which is why you should spend time and effort in honing your project management skills. This skill is essential because it helps managers define a realistic plan, organize chaos within the team, and encourage collaboration, making it easy for them to produce high-quality projects in less time.

Listed below are some project management tips every manager should know:

1.      Learn How To Communicate With Every Level

As a manager, you will work with different individuals in order to complete a single project. The more extensive the project is, the more people you will have to work with. Depending on the project you’re going to manage, you also have to work with individuals outside of your organization.

To ensure that you can easily complete projects with all of these individuals, learn how to communicate with every team member based on their levels. This means that if you are tasked to work with remote employees, consider looking into SEO project management tools so you can communicate with them without the need to see personally. If you’re going to work with the heads of different departments, make use of online communication channels to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

2.      Get The Right Resources Behind You

Regardless of how easy you think one project is, expect that you will still experience several roadblocks along the way. If you were tasked to come up with a robust marketing strategy for an organization, for example, you would likely experience problems that are affiliated with the changing demands of the customers or the on-going strategies implemented by the competitors.

Another project management tip to follow is to always have the right resources behind you. As a manager, you should identify the niches, experiences, and talents of the individuals who belong to your team. The uniqueness of your team members can become your ticket to solve and surpass the roadblocks you can possibly experience as you’re working on a specific project.

This process will require a lot of hard work as you will have to put your best foot forward to converse with every single team member, but this will surely be worth it in the end. Once you have successfully built a rapport with your team members, you can easily collaborate with them and get any project done on time.

3.      Formally “Kick Off” All Of Your Projects

How you handle the first meeting with your team after the project was given to you can significantly affect their motivation and engagement in completing the project. If you introduced the project to your team with low morale and insufficient details, more often than not, they won’t be interested or excited to work with you. How can they look forward to completing the project if you were not able to provide the necessary details?  Do you think they will be interested in working with you if you yourself aren’t excited to complete the project?

Make sure that none of these happen by formally kicking off your projects with all of your team members. You should make the most out of your first meeting by energizing the team, setting proper expectations, and establishing guidelines. You should also maximize the first meeting to encourage the team members to ask questions and share their insights about the projects.

4.      Hold Regular Team Meetings

Contrary to popular belief, holding regular meetings isn’t a waste of time in project management. Holding regular meetings is actually essential for the team to share information, solicit feedback, set individual timelines, and update every member involved in the project. Regular meetings are vital, especially if you are going to work with a large team.

For you to facilitate and hold effective team meetings, make sure that you follow these tips:

• Always have an agenda and make sure to inform participants about these days or weeks before the meeting. Sending out the agenda ahead of time will make it very easy for the team members to set their expectations and prepare their questions for the topics to be discussed.

• As a manager, make sure that you stay on track and control topics being discussed during the meeting. Avoid talking about your personal life (like how your son won against his football match or asking about how your colleague’s weekend went) in order to save time. These discussions should be done in the pantry during breaks, not during meetings when a lot of people are involved.

• Take notes during the meeting, or, if you can’t do it by yourself, assign someone who will solely have this task. List down all of the important points discussed during the meeting and email all of the participants about this information.

If someone from the team has questions about the meeting or the agenda, they can easily look into this email rather than asking other people about it. The latter can delay tasks and often lead to miscommunication.

5.      Praise Your Team For Accomplishments

Human beings naturally love to feel appreciated and valued. They will be motivated to work better if other people in the team will see their efforts and are happy about their contribution. Praising a team member during one of your meetings will surely boost their morale and keep them engaged to work better with the team.

Another project management tip that every manager should follow is to never forget praising the team for their accomplishments. A simple tap in the back or congratulating them for a job well done will go a long way in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of your team members!

Knowledge Is Power

Project management is not an easy skill to develop, but as long as you’re willing to learn, this will gradually become innate to you. Along with your dedication and patience, this article can surely help make this process easy for you!