Project+ Exam Prep: How to Be A Good People

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People form an integral part of a project. A project cannot exist without people; computers and network
routers don’t do the actual job, they are just facilitators.

Managing people effectively is an art which is yet to be perfected for the most part, and the
accountability solely lies with the project manager — most of the time. It is indeed most of the time, as
there are certain types of organizations where people management is offloaded from the project
manager’s plate, onto a manager who only deals with people. These types of organizations are minority and will not
be considered in the reminder of this article.

Who is a People Manager?

Just as a business would manage its finances and sales targets with professionals from respective fields, a people
manager is a person who manages employees of an organization. It is a job meant only for specialists, and verticals
that are responsible for people are generally called the human resources department.

Organization structure aside, a people manager looks after employees’ professional needs from the time of
employment, and as long as the employee continues to be a part of the organization. You could also say that he acts as
a guardian angel in tending to the employee’s needs.

Some qualities that a people manager should possess are – the ability to be trusted, understand people issues, ability to
resolve them and to understand the human resource requirements of the organization.

Responsibilities of a People Manager

Here are the main responsibilities of a people manager in an organization. This list is not comprehensive but covers
most common ones.

Understand the human resource requirements of the organization

Hire people who fits the needs or the organization – read as people who are self motivated, competent and good
at what they do. The unstated requirement is to find people who can swallow the whole hand when you show
them your thumb.
Issues and conflicts arise from time to time, and it is the responsibility of the people manager to sort things out
within limits of the organizational policies and guidelines.
Feedback is a strong mechanism to reflect the performances, and employees receive performance feedback on a
regular basis. In this process, he would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of an employee from his purview
and suggests improvement measures. This entire process in organizations is generally referred to as the
performance appraisal process.
Take action against erring employees, which might include demotion, termination or being innovative by
 grounding employees from attending monthly luncheons.
Recommend training for employees to improve their competency, and to increase employee satisfaction

A Look at Human Resources from Project Management Perspective

If we are talking about managing people in a project, the Project
Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) should definitely have
processes around it. Let’s take a cursive look at it.

There are four processes listed in it, and they are:

1. Develop human resources plan – Before a project gets underway, the project manager has to estimate the
number of people he would need, and the skill sets that are needed in achieving the project.
2. Acquire project management plan – This is the process of interviewing people and getting them on board.
3. Develop project team – It is imperative that anything that does not grow will perish. A team that does not grow
will find the same fate as well. The project manager needs to ensure that during the team’s stay in a project,
their competencies and skill levels improve, thereby improving the project performance.
4. Manage project team – Getting a team together is one thing, while managing them throughout the life of a
project is another. Management includes resolving conflicts, providing project performance feedback and other
day to day activities.

Common Challenges in People Management

Managing people is a huge challenge. The one who comes out on the top is the one who completes the project with
least amount of conflicts and indifferences.

A new project manager is bound to struggle while managing a project team. He may have learnt about issues of
various kinds pertaining to people, and also might have theoretical knowledge while preparing for the PMP, but
experience teaches him things that are generally mostly not in the book.

No situation has a fixed solution. One cannot use a standard set of practices to deal with people issues; while you could
very well do that with Windows servers. Later on in the career, a project manager might have déjà vu moments that
could deem helpful.

I have been managing people for some time now, and I want to share some issues that cropped up and how they were
mitigated.

• Trust
I was a new manager then, and I replaced the earlier project manager due to resignation. The team knew more than I
did on the project, obviously! Many seniors in the team doubted some of the decisions I made, and I knew the
frequency of their brain waves within a couple of working weeks. I had to gain their trust, and show them that I knew
what I was doing, and was quite competent at it. Proving your worth to your juniors is a mandatory exercise if you ask
me.

Gaining trust is not a one day job, it is a process that could take several days, and luckily for me, I was on a long term
project.

I stuck to the task. I was there when my team members needed me. I ensured that I attended each and every meeting
including the technical ones, and got into the nitty gritties of the project activities.

When my team knew that I was identifying myself as a part of the unit, and was offering my support rather than just
ensuring that the project performance was at par, they started to trust me, and my decisions were accepted fairly.

Being a part of the team, attending meetings and looking out for my team helped me gain their trust. It may not work
in all situations. If you are looking into reining your team in, be innovative and earn what pushes their buttons the right
way.

• Team Building

Most organizations are rigorously working on this concept, and the key to success will be shouldered on how well the
team gels and the result will reflect it. Tons of team building exercises are available today.

Like gaining trust, building a team is an arduous task. It is harder if the team is spread across different geographies,
worst if they are in different time zones. Co-location works best if team building is a priority.

In my project, my team sat on the same floor, and they knew each other pretty well even before I joined. This made my
job simpler. And yet, I wanted to build it further, so I organized Friday luncheons, monthly outings, and a big outing
every quarter. The big outing was sponsored by our client, and the rest were paid from our pockets, and my team
members had no qualms over it as long as they had a good time.

During these outings, I never ever spoke about work. I wanted keep work where it belonged, and bring the team
together outside the usual boundaries. By doing this, the team knew that their bonding was not restricted
professionally, but also at a personal level. Each person knew the other well, and that knowledge helped them perform
better. I was amazed to know that several of my team members were far more talented than I assumed. This method is
one of the tried and tested ones, and the failure rate is close to nil.

• Conflict Resolution

If any manager says that he will ensure that conflicts don’t crop up, I would say that he’s blatantly lying. Each
individual in a project team has a different mindset, approach and mannerisms, and conflicts are bound to surface. The
longer the project duration, higher the conflicts within the team. Keeping them to a bare minimum is smart
management rather than trying to eliminate it.

There is no single potion to manage conflicts. Managers are required to wear different hats while they try and resolve
differences in the team.

One such hat is that of a facilitator. Let’s say that your team members are fighting out on an approach to follow. They
find it hard to come up with a solution that screams consensus. You, as the project manager can put all the things on
the table, bring out the pros and cons of all the approaches on offer, and basically facilitate in arriving at a solution.
Your team members will appreciate this approach more than anything else.

In the second case, let’s say that a project team member is erring, and
project delivery is at stake. At this point in time, there is no sense in
facilitating to bring the erring employee back in line. Time is money,
and errors are generally not paid for. You have to don the hat of a
dictator, and take appropriate action as deemed best by you. You don’t
have to consult your team, and your decision stays final unless it is
 vetoed by the higher ups.

The in-between approach is finding support amongst project managers these days. The project manager brings his team
together, asks them to share ideas, and take note of all the brilliant ones. This brings in a feeling among team members
that their inputs are well considered. On the other hand, the project manager would have already made up his mind on
the decision to take; maybe he will enhance it with the ideas of his team. He plays dictator while his team sees him as a
facilitator; two birds in one shot.

I have played donned all three hats, and it is indeed important to know which one to use. Things can slip out of your
hands if you end up wearing the wrong mask, beware!

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