University of Maryland, College Park

Pearl Diving Assignment 4

Lukas Koch

Communication for Project Managers: ENCE424

Dr. Shana Webster-Trotman

November 23, 2019

Introduction
The course ENCE424 “Communication for Project Managers” consists among other
things of different in-class sessions. In the beginning of each class, a quote representing the
corresponding topic is showed and discussed. In this essay, I take one of the quotes we talked
about and discuss it. The significance for the course and for a role as a project manager and
leader is stated. Subsequently, I explain the concept of nonverbal communication and its
importance. The second concept described is the SCARF model. This explains how an ancient
brain can help a leader to build winning teams. Finally, I give insights into one of the in-class
sessions which deals with debating. The events are described briefly, and it is stated how I would
have behaved as a leader. Furthermore, I explain our team performance during this session and
why I am pleased with it.

Quotes from the classroom

Once a week there is an in-class session for the course ENCE424, “Communication for
Project Managers”. During this in-class session, students use a variety of exercises like debates,
small group discussion and role-plays to practice the course objectives. In-class sessions are
designed to foster peep-to-peer learning and to give the students the opportunity to apply the
discussed techniques. In the beginning of each class, a different quote, which is related to the
topic of the session, is read out by one student. Afterwards a discussion takes place. One of these
quotes is from John Calvin Maxwell. “Leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less.”
This quote has in principle one important statement. Leadership means influence. At first glance,
this seems to be too simple as an explanation for such a complex area. In the literature several
different definitions for leadership emerged over the past decades of research. However, one of
the most important definitions of leadership deals exactly with the concept of leadership as
influence. This definition is from Northouse and he states that “leadership is a process whereby
an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse 2016, p.
6). This quote contains four important components. The first component states that leadership is
a process. This means that leadership is a transactional event, that occurs between the leader and
the followers. This emphasis that leadership is not a one-way event but there is a mutual
influence between the leader and the followers. This two-way interaction is inevitable. A team
leader influences his team members by setting goals, standards and personal relationships. On
the other hand, the followers influence the leader, what leads to changes in the leader’s behavior.
Leadership occurs in groups. This includes every size of groups starting from two group
members. Is seems obvious that leadership cannot occur for a single person. At least two people
are necessary. Just then a common goal and influence is possible. Another important factor is the
common goal. This means that the group is trying to achieve something together. This is
probably the most difficult factor to achieve. In a business environment the goals of all people
involved are different. Some people want to earn money to live, some want to have a great
career, some have an intrinsic motivation about the topic they work on and others care about the
company they work for. One important task for a leader is to align all followers towards the
common goal and assure that everybody is working towards that direction. This is done via
influence. Leader and followers have a mutual purpose.
It can be seen that this quote is somewhat exaggerated and simplified and that leadership is of
course not only influence, but that other factors also play a role. However, the most important
component is influence. This is concerned with how the leader affects the followers. Without
influence no leadership exists. This indicates how important influence is for a leader. Since a
project manager always influences other people within the project he can be seen as a leader.
Influence is therefore of essential importance for leaders and project managers to achieve
success.

Concepts from the readings

During the last weeks of classes many different concepts were presented and discussed.
One of these is the concept of body language. Peter F. Drucker said that nonverbal
communication serves as the single most powerful form of communication. The importance of
nonverbal communication has been researched and proven by many studies. According to this
research, the audience derives seven percent of the message through the words the speaker uses.
This is a very small percentage when you consider that many people assume that the words we
say have the most weight. Another 38 percent of the audiences’ impression is made through the
speakers’ use of voice. This means the tone of delivery. The biggest part of the speakers'
impression on the audience is body language and appearance with 55 percent (Rivlin & Gravelle,
1998). This underlines the importance of nonverbal communication for our interactions with
other people. The ways a person communicates nonverbally are various. Nonverbal
communication takes place through appearance, facial expression, body language, eye contact as
well as gestures and movement. Subsequently, these different approaches are described. One
important factor is the facial expression of a communicator. The facial expression can show how
we feel about the speech and the audience. Smiling is an important tool to build rapport with the
audience. It is a gesture of welcome and mutual comfort and goodwill. Additionally, smiling can
help the speaker to relax and to gain composure (O’Hair & Rubenstein & Stewart, 2016). Using
it from time to time, a little smile is very helpful to get the audience on your side. Another
important point for the facial expression is to avoid a resting face. Being not aware of his own
resting face can have negative impacts in the audience perception of the speaker. Maintaining
eye contact is another important factor of nonverbal communication. This helps to establish a
positive relationship with the audience. It maintains the quality of directness in the speech.
People know that they are recognized. It indicates acknowledgment and respect. Scanning is one
important technique to maintain eye contact with the audience. This means to move the gaze
from one person to another and from one section in a room to another while resting long enough
at one position (O’Hair & Rubenstein & Stewart, 2016). The next tool is natural hand gestures.
Physical gestures can illustrate the size or shape of an object or express emotions. A speaker
should avoid making distracting gestures like spinning a pen (O’Hair & Rubenstein & Stewart,
2016). Also, permanently moving of the hands can be distracting. Gesture should be used
consciously and purposefully. On more important tool is nonverbal immediacy. An audience
responds more positive to a speaker who creates a physical and psychological closeness with
them. This can be achieved through an enthusiastic vocal delivery, frequent eye contact,
appropriate facial expressions and a natural body movement (O’Hair & Rubenstein & Stewart,
2016).
Since in university or in other environments, presentations and public speaking is an important
requirement, it is possible to apply the concepts almost everywhere. I try to apply them in all my
conversations with people. Watching recorded videos of our own speeches showed me how my
nonverbal communication looks like. This is very helpful to make improvements and sharpens
the awareness for the own nonverbal communication.

Another important concept we learned during the semester is an acronym for how an ancient
brain can help a leader to build winning teams. The acronym is called SCARF. SCARF
represents status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness. The model works because each
of the components is based on how human brains were created to increase social bonding. The
first component deals with status. This includes the threat of social status. People do not like to
be compared unfavorable with others. On the other hand, humans gain a great deal of pleasure
when they feel valued. There are different ways to increase the status of a person. Monetary
rewards are one possibility. On the other hand, the perception of status increases, when people
recognize that they get praise. A leader can achieve this by making the person feel good about
his- or herself (Gallo, 2018). I personally want to apply this technique by trying to show people
more often that I value them and what they do. This helps others feel better about themselves and
raise their status. The second component is called certainty. Uncertainty triggers a threat in the
brain. This explains why humans hate it, when they do not know something. If people don't
know what's happening, it can have a negative effect on them. It requires extra neural energy.
This neural energy is missing for other tasks and can lead to a lack in engagement. The
communication of plans, decisions and the role of each individual in the group helps to overcome
this (Gallo, 2018). Through communication, I want to achieve that everybody knows where we
want to go as a team. This can be applied in the next university project. Communicate common
goals, each responsibility and how we want to work together, helps to reduce uncertainty. The
next component is autonomy. It can be a threat if people feel a lack auf autonomy in their lives.
This includes their work place. People want to have control over their lives. Through the increase
of autonomy people have pleasurable feelings. This can be achieved when people have the
permission to make choices (Gallo, 2018). The fourth component is relatedness. Meeting
someone new is stress for the human brain. It tries to decide whether the person is a friend or a
foe. Building healthy relationships is important to engage successful collaboration. Trust, respect
and integrity are key factors to create a successful relationship (Gallo, 2018). The last factor of
the SCARF-model is fairness. The brain of humans’ watch threats in the social standing. Humans
want to belong to something, and they strive for a group status. Being treated in a way people
perceive as unfair leads to negative reactions. Fairness is closely related to transparency. People
are more engaged and motivated when they receive information in time (Gallo, 2018). These five
components are not difficult to apply, and I want to try to use them as often as possible.
Applying the SCARF-model can be helpful in every situation where collaboration between two
or more people is necessary. Through an increased awareness of these factors it is possible to
apply them in various situations.
In-class debate

The in-class activity for module eight in ENCE424, “Communication for Project Managers” was
an in-class debate about a former construction project. The construction project took place in
Boston. Objective of the project was the design and construction of a highway through the city of
Boston. The name of the project was the Boston Central Artery Tunnel or Big Dig. In class, there
was a discussion whether the project was an engineering success or not. For this purpose, the
class was split up into three different groups. On group argued that the Big Dig was an
engineering success. The second group had the opposite point of view. A third group was the
audience which had to be convinced. I was in the group that argued that the Big Dig construction
project in Boston was an engineering success. Within the group I took the role as the
videographer.
In general, there is to say that the leader in our team did a good job throughout the whole
activity. Maybe I would have done just a few things in a different way. According to Tuckman’s
model for the development of a team, four phases are essential for the success of the team. These
stages are named forming, storming, norming and performing (Kitchin, 2010). As leader, I would
orientate myself on these five stages. The first phase is the forming stage. In this stage the group
needs to get to know each other. They need to develop a relationship and a sense of trust in the
other group members. Since we all participate in this class for the whole semester all group
members know each other, and the stage can be skipped quickly. The next stage is the norming
stage. In this stage people, fight about their roles within the group, power and influence and other
general settings (Kitchin, 2010). This phase occurred in our group as well. In the beginning there
was no common opinion who is going to have which role. Also, the approach we should use to
complete the task was discussed controversially. In that phase, as a leader, I would try to
moderate the discussion to keep it on an objective level and to assure that the discussion is goal-
oriented. However, this phase is important and supports the group's process of self-discovery. In
our group, it was not discernible that we find a solution within the discussion. At this point, I
would intervene as a leader to lead the group into the next stage. The next stage is called
norming stage. This is the resolution of the storming and is the agreement about the discussed
topics (Kitchin, 2010). It is important as a leader to guide the team towards a common goal.
Because of that, I would try to clarify the goal for all members and collect the ideas of all
members for the solution process. After goals and the approaches are identified, the distribution
of the tasks is necessary. If the group is not able to find a solution in discussion, I would ask
people in the group directly whether they agree to take on a certain task, of which I think the one
is well suited for. This process went well in our group and the roles and tasks where distributed
well. As the norming stage has been completed, we moved to the performing stage. In this phase
the group can achieve the optimal output (Kitchin, 2010). As a leader, I would try to be a contact
person for questions and problems. I think it is important to act as an interface between the
individual group members and to take countermeasures in the event of a noticeable deviation
from the target position. Since I am a people-oriented leader, I think personal conversations with
the members and positive feedback is important.
Finally, I can say that I am very pleased with our team performance in general. First of all, we
won the debate and each member of the audience voted for us as the winner of the debate. I think
we delivered great results and achieved our target. The research for facts was very
comprehensive and we collected a lot of information we could use in our arguments.
We delivered a good presentation of our facts and used Ethos, Pathos and Logos the convince the
audience. Furthermore, we were very well prepared for potential critical questions and had
prepared suitable answers. Besides the results of the discussion, also the group process went
well. We stayed just very little time in the storming phase and were able to decide on
fundamental settings in the norming phase. This was in my opinion one key for the success. The
leader did a great job by moderating these processes. If it was necessary, the leader has
intervened and tried to find a solution. Overall this was a great possibility to expire team work in
a very pleasant and successful manner.

Conclusion

Finally, I can agree with the quote of John C. Maxwell to some extent. I assume that his
statement was deliberately chosen to be pointed and simplified in order to achieve its purpose.
Influence is one essential factor in leadership. This already emerges from its definition. Without
influence leadership is not existent. However, other factors like a group of people and a common
goal are also necessary.
Communication consists of many different factors. All of them need to be considered when a
person wants to communicate successfully and efficient. Nonverbal communication is a very
important factor because 55 percent of a speakers' impression on the audience is influenced by
body language and appearance. Understanding and mastering this can be a decisive advantage as
a communicator. Another important concept from the readings is the SCARF model. It describes
how an ancient brain can help a leader to build winning teams. The SCARF model consists of the
components, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness.
One in-class session of the course deals with debating. The group leader has an essential
influence in the group’s progress and success. Different approaches can be used for the group
leader to manage the leadership process. One guide for the leader can be found in Tuckman’s
leadership development model, since every group runs through these stages. By respecting this
model and the individual stages as well as the corresponding reactions, the leader can help the
team to get through the individual phases as successfully as possible. Our team did a great job
during the in-class debate. We were successful in both, the content of the debate as well as the
group and leadership process.
 Works Cited

Patterson, Kerry and Grenny, Joseph and McMillan, Ron and Switzler, Al. (2011). Crucial

Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.,

Second Edition

Northouse, Peter. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice, SAGE Publications Inc, Thousand

Oaks, California 91320

Rivlin, Robert and Gravelle, Karen. (1998). Deciphering the Senses: The Expanding

World of Human Perception, New York: Simon & Schuster

O’Hair, Don and Rubenstein, Hannah and Stewart, Rob. (2016). A pocket guide to public

speaking, 5th edition, Bedford/St. Martin’

Gallo, Carmine. (2018). Five Stars the Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great, St.

Martin’s Press

Kitchin, Duncan. (2010). An introduction to organisational behaviour for managers and

engineers: A group and multicultural approach, Butterworth-Heinemann,