APM ChPP - Competencies 5a. Leadership and 5b. Team Management

[Music] Hello, welcome to another Paolo project training podcast and Paul neighbour and still with me are Carmen and John. Hello, Carmen. Hello. Hello, John. Hello, so we're two, um, five A and five B team leadership and team management. So these are you can choose either these. Yes, that's right. Okay, let's not discuss how crazy that seems to us, but you can choose either them. So leaderships, you just want to take us through what you think leadership is then well from the APM's point of view. So from an APM point of view is the ability to inspire others, you know, a project manager will have to come to terms that cannot do everything by themselves. So they will have to have the ability to empower people to deliver the work. And so a good leader will have to be able to provide direction to really articulate the vision and really like inspire and motivate the teams to be able to deliver the project. Brilliant. And how does that compare to team management? Hey, John. I think that the difference between leadership and management is a move point. It's been debated long and hard, isn't it? The difference in these terms is one's got one set of criteria. The other one's got a different set of criteria. I don't think we need to worry about what the differences are, what you need to worry about is which ones you're going to choose now, you're going to do it. One point one, two, you know, Carmen talks about leadership style. So I mean talking there about people like her, seeing Blanchard and the dare and people like that. Collaborated with others to maintain the momentum of a project. I mean, show how as a leader you drew in all your different stakeholders and help and got them to support you in running the job and encouraged others to adopt behaviors. I mean, everyone talks about leadership behaviors, things like open communication and setting visions and positive outlook and all those things. So we've got seven competencies here. Should we go through them in order then? So let's say 1.1 maintaining a team's understanding of commitment, vision, values and objectives. So what do they mean by that? Yeah, so that one is really about making sure that everyone working on that project fully understands the visions of what are their roles and what their contribution to that. And if you manage to do that, people will be more motivated to really want to do well and to perform well. So it's about how do you transmit that into people? How do you ensure that they have commitment to that vision? Briefly, what do people you rewrite for that? Either the visioning workshop or. Sometimes you may need to maybe organize a meeting, for example, and you could invite your sponsor to come there. So if you do that, remember when we write the professional practice, it's about your contribution. And you make people involved to achieve some of those things. So that may be a very good way to raise the importance of that project and people understand where that project fits in the organization. But it's only one way. You could have done it in many other ways. So let's move on to look at 1.2. Select an appropriate leadership style based on the situational context. Yes. By flexing style, is it? Yes. Directly selling talent. Coaching, telling, selling, participating, delegating, etc. You don't have to refer to models, by the way. But that's what's underpinning that question. It's a set-in. It does. That paper you want to point to, you will have to explain how you chose a leadership style and why that was appropriate to the situation and/or context. That's quite. That's relatively straightforward. 1.3. Collaborating with others to maintain momentum. So that includes suppliers as well. And stakeholders. Anybody you want to include? It's not specific, does it? It's with others. Sort of like how describe how you breathe air. Yes. Can you deliver a project about collaborating with others? It could include the bloke of the security guard outside. The most important person in the organisation. Encourage others to adopt behaviours which build trust, confidence and collaboration. Now this is quite interesting. Encourage others to adopt behaviours which build trust and collaboration and confidence. What do they mean by that? So I suppose you could do things like lead by example. You could build trust by trusting others. So if you empower people to do things, you trust in them. And that also by doing so you build trust with people. Encourage collaborations. So it's about thinking of a particular project and how did you ensure that the team work together with each other and make sure that people don't work in silos. And they collaborate and there is a team spirit. Is it like delegation and letting people deliver? Because it's interesting encouraging others. It's not about building trust in you. It's about encouraging others to be trustworthy. Yes. So it's delegating but it's also ensure that when you delegate things you provide clear objectives or people is fully understanding what the role is. And you have also delegated things that they have the ability to do that because it will be equally bad if you delegate something without giving the right support or the right environment or the right tool. So it's about delegating accordingly. From 1.5 is quite similar isn't it establishing environments which present opportunities for empowerment and autonomous working? Yes. It seems like a flexible working understanding that people have preferred ways of working so that will be about autonomous. But there is an under so you need to also fulfill empower. So you need to empower people and you need to give them opportunities to work autonomously. Where does things like the work breakdown structure fit into that then? Is that part of that defining work packages for people to deliver on their own accountability or is that not part of this? You could argue that yes it is part because by doing that everyone is clear about the role and who they need to collaborate with. So a racey char I would say will be a good way to encourage. I suppose if you approach it in the right way I don't see why that wouldn't be accepted I think that's a perfectly valid way to ensure clarity and clear roles and responsibilities and collaboration. The next one 1.6 is establishing leadership approaches to work with remote teams and colleagues and stakeholders. That's interesting leadership approaches for remote teams. There are different challenges so working with teams and co-located present different challenges as opposed to working with virtual teams. If that's your situation, if that's your project, you could use this criteria to try to show how did you provide that environment for collaboration where you were working with virtual teams. Checking in meetings maybe like a coffee meetings but also ensuring that everyone is trusted to get on and do their work and means to update that maybe collaborative tools. You may have developed some collaborative tools so everyone could work on the same document remotely. I will imagine that sort of things will go quite well on that criteria. Don't you find just difficulties and challenges through facilitated open discussions in a timely manner? Yeah, I mean it's just about making sure that things aren't going wrong and festering isn't it really? It's a timely manner. It's a bit loosely wordy in terms of difficulties and challenges isn't it? Given the context as leadership, you've got to take that to mean individual difficulties and challenges for individuals. So if you know there's a bit of conflict bubbling the way out of the service, you've got to get to grips with that. Yeah, the other difficulty and challenges people don't like to share bad news. Oh, my project is going really badly. Maybe we'll catch up again and actually they never do. They never do. Only a problem shared and a problem half-duty. They projects only ever get laid out. Yeah, especially if you don't tell anyone. Maybe that's what I get now. Right, let's flip over to team management fairly quickly. Agreed team objectives and ways of working to achieve the vision. Oh, so leadership about setting the vision and team management is about delivering the vision, is that right? Well, I think leadership is more about gaining commitment to it and team management is more about how you're going to actually get on and do it. So this is a lower level. It's a slightly more mechanistic, slightly more directive approach, whereas leadership is more of a sort of delegating, visionary approach, isn't it? It's very similar actually. I mean, the two are very similar. It doesn't matter because you're going to do one of the other. Um, you know, I think it's, it's worth understanding what a vision is, you know, people don't understand what a vision actually is, it's, you know, it's not about finishing on time on budget. It's about, you know, enabling our, our stakeholders to be the best at, you know, building widgets in the world or something, you know, it's something a little bit more esoteric, a little bit more high level. But the vision is also the end state. It's what you want to achieve. No, it's not about being the best. It's about going, we all will be the best. So we will be the best at. Crossweiler, the good vision, didn't they? We should keep them in London moving, quite inspirational, isn't it? Oh, this next one is interesting, evaluate the maturity level of the team. Ooh, what's that all about? So, well, maturity is not just exclusive to seniority or experience. So, um, levels of maturity could be also measured in terms of their willingness to perform or other motivations. So, you may have a team which comprises a lot of senior individuals, but they don't have the willingness or the motivation or they don't have the right tools and skills. So, it's about assessing what maturity the team has and also recognizing that they may have different levels of maturity as well within the same team. 1.3, adopt a proactive approach to communications, to establish networks of support and effective ownership of delegated tasks. Come on, John, explain this one to us. You've got to look at the gist of what this is saying, really. Let's talk about communication. So, what communication did you undertake to get people working together and build networks and get them to own the task? Yeah. And you're going to rent a recie chart. Yeah, that's a good way of doing that. Statements of work, work breakdown structures. Terms of reference. But also, it's not just about writing a statement of work. It says, proactive approach. So, what you're going to say is, it's not just a fire and forget, I didn't just give you a work breakdown structure and it's better to get on with it. We had proper conversations, I made sure that you were, you had the tools, the time, the skills. You really understood. You really understood what was required. You were just going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's, yeah, I mean, I think that's quite, that's a general thread in lots of these. You know, you're not just dumping things on people. Yeah. You're trying to get them to work together. And I mean, again, some of these you see, they've sort of built together, don't they? But 1.4, trust and support, you know, consideration, the possible complexes of collaboration, virtual working type. When you read these, you've got to read into them and you've got to look to see what the main thrust of it is. And this is all about virtual working. You know, so in the context of virtual working. So, it's slightly different. Time to point it through. Different batteries and collaborations. But there will be a bit of overlap because there's a similar story to tell, you know. So, you could see how maybe in four sentences, you could spend three sentences describing your proactive approach and trust and support. And then one, how you apply that to virtual teams, you might hit two of those criteria. So, we've got a few left. So, let's move on fairly quickly. 1.5, meet the demands of a project through balancing individual and team needs. Oh, this is like. Well, what's good for the team? It's always good for the people. This is like Winston Churchill and the war, isn't it? You know. The needs are the many outweigh, the needs are the few. Yeah, yeah. But it's. Yes, possibly. But I mean, if you've got someone that's. I don't know, that you need. That Scott individual needs, that you need to take out of. But you need also to make sure the team gets finished, you know. Yeah. If you left it to most people, they probably wouldn't. They'll probably do very little if they could get away with it. Yeah. But actually, that's not a great way of getting things done. Good. 1.6, providing opportunities for coaching and mentoring for team members, creating environment, learning and trust that promotes continued professional development. Can I just mention something here? There is a difference between coaching and mentoring. Yes. And all. And all. They've added and all. So, people talk about coaching and mentoring in one phrase. So, he needs some coaching and mentoring. Or she needs some coaching and mentoring. The coaching is different from mentoring. Right. Just a word of advice. Make sure you know the difference. Yeah, I'm sure if you're Google, you can find this blog post that will describe the difference between the two. Yeah. Well, yes. And they'll compete with each other. They'll have the whole. So, make sure you have a clear understanding of what you understand and be able to substantiate it, especially for interview. Yeah. Because different people believe different things about coaching and mentoring. There's actually a decent blog on the APM's website about coaching and mentoring. That's what I would recommend. I would recommend to go to the APM blog because it really shed some clarity there. It's a useful table with some of the differences. So, quite important the choice as well, because you may decide to write on this competence criteria. And you may have done one or another, which is perfectly valid because it's an or or. But the caveat is be prepared to be asked at the interview as well. And don't be afraid also to sort of express your opinion as well. You may have read that blog. You may have experienced both of them coaching and mentoring. So, it's just a bit of a heads up that if you did coaching and you write that, you still need to know the differences because you may get asked. OK. 1.7 Address Performance Issues, likely to negatively impact on the success of the project while removing remaining alert to any issues of stress within the team. I find this quite interesting that they're dealing with negatively impact. I mean, why not address performance issues that could positively impact? Yeah, there's been much more positive mindset. Yeah. So, with anything about performance issues, when I have to read performance issues, I think of like formalized performance issues. Is that in formal and formal performance? I think it's what you want it to be. OK. It's ambiguous, isn't it? So, I think it's to do with people that aren't pulling away, you know, what do you do with them? OK. The way I read it is, if you are in the situation when someone is not delivering, how do you address that and how do you see any symptoms or signs of maybe is too big to undertake them? Because you could do performance management, but perhaps the task in hand is already quite overwhelming for that person. So, it's about finding that right balance between key people's challenge, but not burn them down if you see what I mean. But if you were a fantastic lady, you had a high performance team. You wouldn't choose 1.7 because you may never have had any performance issues from individuals that's meant. So, 1.8. Well, it's quite interesting, 1.8, because this is kind of implying success. Let's read it. And there's the levels of performance through constructive feedback to individuals to celebrate success when evident. So, 1.7 is kind of. Oh, OK. It's a negative. It's 1.8 is implicitly positive, but you could also argue that you could acknowledge level of poor performance through constructive feedback. And they're that separate from celebrating success. Again, you know, some of these hands are underlined and some of them are not. I really do suggest you just ignore the underlines. But is a. is a. is an assessor really going to want to see all of those. Oh, to individual teams and success. Yeah, there's an awful lot in there, you know? Yeah. So, I think there's. I think the shorter ones are easier, generally. Yeah, yeah. When you see a lot of words in the criteria, just avoid it. When it's got lots of hands or all of these, yeah. If he's got two hands, you need to demonstrate four things. Four things, yeah. So, if he's got one hand, demonstrate. So, you go for a value eight maturity of the team. Because that's a short try. That's what I would do. Right, 1.9, last one, establish and learning culture and to promote continuous professional development. Oh, that's the same again. Well, it's. Come on, that's twice, yeah. Yeah, it is similar. It's similar, yeah. So, you could combine those two using your. Thinking. Well, that's the positive way of doing it with these. I mean, although they're quite low and wordy, you could see how you could write 250 words that would quite comfortably tackle four of them. So, you could combine your coaching and mentoring and learning environment with a learning culture, promoting continual professional development. I do strongly recommend that you don't just write something and then try and retrofit the criteria onto it. Start with the criteria, write some text and then see where you can decolonise and merge some of that text together to give you 250 words. Because if you do it the other way around, well, it doesn't generally work that well, actually. Yeah, but a very good example of the last one, established learning culture and promote professional development, is, for example, if one of your team members is performing really well, is doing outstanding work. [BLANK_AUDIO] Mae'n iawn i ddyn nhw'n cynnod, mae'n ei wneud â'r ymdyn nhw'n gwneud ymdyn nhw'n gwneud ymdyn nhw'n gwneud ymdyn nhw'n gwneud. Mae'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio i'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio yn ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ysbryddio'r ys Mae'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gweithio ac mae'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i'n gwneud i a'r ymw'n gwneud.