Top 5 team building tips for PMs
Project managers set the tone for their project teams. The best team building occurs when you take advantage of everyday opportunities to boost your team’s morale. Here are some project management team building tips:
Use your kickoff meeting to shape your project team. Anytime you get your team together is an opportunity to build team morale. The kickoff meeting is the first – and in many ways the most significant – opportunity to develop team synergy. Hold a contest to pick a team name. Have your sponsor give a motivation speech to the team. Or schedule time to get to know one another.
Boost your team during weekly status meetings. Status meetings are great opportunities to generate enthusiasm. Recognize achievements such as consecutive periods of “all status targets met,” handling a sensitive customer situation, or a technical idea that moves the project forward. When things aren’t too great, use the status meeting to generate new ideas to rescue the project and encourage the team to keep moving forward.
Celebrate milestones. Recognize the team when you reach a milestone. When a milestone was late or over budget, acknowledge the obstacles that were overcome and the lessons learned. That helps boost morale. For longer projects, create milestones to recognize progress, which will help maintain morale and forward momentum.
Reach out to team members – particularly remote team members. Hold one-on-one conversations with project team members on both a business and personal level. Here are two great questions to enhance a team member’s sense of belonging and purpose: “What does this project mean to our customer?” and “What does this project mean to you?” Listen carefully to the answers. The first question can confirm team alignment. The second question can help you choose the best assignments for your team members to maximize the value the project provides to them.
Formally recognize the value your team members deliver. Write a one or two paragraph summary of each team member’s contributions and send it to their manager. This helps you earn a loyal team member for future projects. Do this diligently and you’ll have a team with high morale before your new project even begins, because team members will pursue a position in your projects!
For more about team management, check out Daniel Stanton’s Project Management Foundations: Teams course or Cyndi Snyder-Dionisio’s Leading Remote Projects and Virtual Teams course.