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How to Improve Team Performance

Some of the leading factors affecting the performance of a project team are the lack of clear understanding of the tasks, undefined roles, and low skills to accomplish the work. There are a few steps the Project Manager should take to ensure that the foundation of a sound process to build better performance is in place in the project environment.  Improving performance is not something that a project manager dictates and expects the team to deliver, there are conditions, expectations, and measures that are required for true performance.

There are three things required to build performance in the project team: First, provide clear and well-defined roles and responsibilities, second, ensure the person has the ways and means to do the task; and finally, follow-up with timely feedback and hold the individual accountable for results. The more a project manager uses these three steps, the more profound, powerful, and simple they will become.  It is not enough to make sure everyone has work to do, but they have the means to do it and opportunities to get feedback.  The project manager should ask these questions before asking a team or individual for better performance:

  • Are their roles, responsibilities, and tasks well-defined? 
  • Do they know what the results should look like? 
  • Do they have the tools and training? 
  • Do they have the ways and means to accomplish the task? 
  • Do they need help? 
  • Do they need the project manager to get information, tools, or assistance? 

Once the team has all, they need to do their work, the project manager should make sure they all agree on what results are expected and let them decide how they want to do it. 

The project manager then should come back to either praise good quality work done on time, or encourage better performance if progress seems inadequate.  This might be formalized as a weekly review of project status, to update schedules and assess progress against goals. The relationships of these three components can be seen in the performance triangle:

The idea of giving people clear task ownership is especially important in project work.  The performance triangle applies not only to managing team members.  It even applies to managing whole organizations.

Here are some final tips to keep in mind:

  • Make it clear who is responsible for tasks and give clear ownership, don’t ask several people to get the same job done.
  • Keep yourself available to the team members.
  • Assign new team members to tasks with adequate task definitions, guidance, and training.
  • Don’t let poor performers continue without comment, give them feedback and explain the consequence if they do not meet what is expected of them.
  • Reward your excellent performers.

Enroll in the next session of our online course, Leadership in Project Management for Development Organizations and NGOs. Register now and obtain a 20% discount with the promo code 20LPM. Click on the link to find out more about this course. https://www.pm4dev.com/elearn/ecourses/elpm.html  

 

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