As the project manager, one of your most important jobs will be to effectively communicate with the team so your team members understand their particular contributions to the project and you can keep them focused on the goals of the project. You need to understand the complexity of communication and how you use various forms of communication, including listening, to provide information to and receive information from your team. Finally, you need to help your team resolve differences using various conflict resolution methods.
Lines of Communication
Communication is a very complex activity, often taken for granted. The following formula illustrates the lines of communication (also called communication channels) that can exist based on the number of people involved on a project:
[n x (n – 1)] ÷ 2
where “n” is the number of people on the team who will be communicating.
This means if you have five people on your project, there are 10 lines of communication. Team members on the project don’t just communicate to the project manager, but also with each other. When they communicate with each other, the chances for miscommunication and distortion increase. If you have 20 people on the project, then there are 190 lines of communication—quite an increase for only 10 more people. These lines of communication keep growing exponentially and could become very difficult to manage if you don’t have a plan and a consistent method of managing the communication.
Feedback
There is a basic model of communication based on a sender encoding a message and receivers decoding the message. Perhaps the most important aspect of this model is that there needs to be feedback: You can’t expect to just send information out and that everyone will understand. And the receiver has some responsibility in understanding the message. The receiver needs to do something to confirm he or she understands the communication as you intended. So, using the terms of the model, the sender formats the message to be sent (encoding it in a way that can be decoded by the receiver). The receiver, or in this case, your team member, might “filter” the information to perceive the message according to his or her mindset as learned by culture, language, or emotions. But it is their duty to try to describe what they perceived so you can confirm the communication as you intended it. Important items need to be communicated often, too. People usually don’t get the message once. That’s why commercials play over and over again— the media has figured out that messages aren’t received the first time. You as a project manager need to remember it too: important information needs to be repeated. You will need to repeat important information like milestones, quality expectations, changes, the project goals, or job expectations.
You also need to understand the forms of communication—whether they are formal or informal—so you can use them in the appropriate situations: you will make decisions on whether your communication should be verbal, nonverbal (pictures or gestures), or written, depending on the situation. Become aware of your communication habits. You may frown a lot while you listen and folks may interpret this as disapproval, while you may be just listening hard—you may need to change that habit to have a more open look on your face. And as a project manager you will need to tune your listening skills: you will need to practice active listening (keep an open mind while listening—don’t formulate responses in your head), eye contact, gestures showing interest (like nodding), recapping what was said, and not allowing interruptions.
Conflict Resolution
As a project manager, you will also get the chance to practice conflict resolution. Most people have some natural reactions to conflict, but as project managers, you need to actively use problem solving as much as possible. The following five terms describe possible conflict resolution methods you may choose to apply.
Forcing One person tries to force their point of view to solve a problem on another. The opinion is usually imposed by someone with authority. It solves the conflict temporarily, but your team or the person who is on the receiving end continues to harbor issues.
Smoothing Emphasizes agreement, choosing to ignore the disagreement. Again, this is a temporary solution, because you or your team have not worked through the disagreement and solved the issue more thoroughly. The issue may resurface again.
Compromise Allows those who disagree to come to some kind of satisfaction when each party gives something up. This method provides for a grudging agreement, and although this may be a permanent solution because everyone makes a commitment to it, there might have been a better solution.
Withdrawal One of the parties avoids conflict by leaving or avoiding it so the conflict doesn’t get resolved. The project manager needs to look out for this kind of situation: you might need to have more discussions with the team to keep working on the issue. This is one of the worst forms of resolution, because no one wins and the problem will continue.
Problem solving (Confrontation) Getting to the bottom of the issue and resolving it to everyone’s satisfaction. Usually, you use the problem solving techniques of analysis, alternatives review, recommendations, and finally coming up with the best solution based on fact. This is the best way to solve conflict.
Lines of Communication
Communication is a very complex activity, often taken for granted. The following formula illustrates the lines of communication (also called communication channels) that can exist based on the number of people involved on a project:
[n x (n – 1)] ÷ 2
where “n” is the number of people on the team who will be communicating.
This means if you have five people on your project, there are 10 lines of communication. Team members on the project don’t just communicate to the project manager, but also with each other. When they communicate with each other, the chances for miscommunication and distortion increase. If you have 20 people on the project, then there are 190 lines of communication—quite an increase for only 10 more people. These lines of communication keep growing exponentially and could become very difficult to manage if you don’t have a plan and a consistent method of managing the communication.
Feedback
There is a basic model of communication based on a sender encoding a message and receivers decoding the message. Perhaps the most important aspect of this model is that there needs to be feedback: You can’t expect to just send information out and that everyone will understand. And the receiver has some responsibility in understanding the message. The receiver needs to do something to confirm he or she understands the communication as you intended. So, using the terms of the model, the sender formats the message to be sent (encoding it in a way that can be decoded by the receiver). The receiver, or in this case, your team member, might “filter” the information to perceive the message according to his or her mindset as learned by culture, language, or emotions. But it is their duty to try to describe what they perceived so you can confirm the communication as you intended it. Important items need to be communicated often, too. People usually don’t get the message once. That’s why commercials play over and over again— the media has figured out that messages aren’t received the first time. You as a project manager need to remember it too: important information needs to be repeated. You will need to repeat important information like milestones, quality expectations, changes, the project goals, or job expectations.
You also need to understand the forms of communication—whether they are formal or informal—so you can use them in the appropriate situations: you will make decisions on whether your communication should be verbal, nonverbal (pictures or gestures), or written, depending on the situation. Become aware of your communication habits. You may frown a lot while you listen and folks may interpret this as disapproval, while you may be just listening hard—you may need to change that habit to have a more open look on your face. And as a project manager you will need to tune your listening skills: you will need to practice active listening (keep an open mind while listening—don’t formulate responses in your head), eye contact, gestures showing interest (like nodding), recapping what was said, and not allowing interruptions.
Conflict Resolution
As a project manager, you will also get the chance to practice conflict resolution. Most people have some natural reactions to conflict, but as project managers, you need to actively use problem solving as much as possible. The following five terms describe possible conflict resolution methods you may choose to apply.
Forcing One person tries to force their point of view to solve a problem on another. The opinion is usually imposed by someone with authority. It solves the conflict temporarily, but your team or the person who is on the receiving end continues to harbor issues.
Smoothing Emphasizes agreement, choosing to ignore the disagreement. Again, this is a temporary solution, because you or your team have not worked through the disagreement and solved the issue more thoroughly. The issue may resurface again.
Compromise Allows those who disagree to come to some kind of satisfaction when each party gives something up. This method provides for a grudging agreement, and although this may be a permanent solution because everyone makes a commitment to it, there might have been a better solution.
Withdrawal One of the parties avoids conflict by leaving or avoiding it so the conflict doesn’t get resolved. The project manager needs to look out for this kind of situation: you might need to have more discussions with the team to keep working on the issue. This is one of the worst forms of resolution, because no one wins and the problem will continue.
Problem solving (Confrontation) Getting to the bottom of the issue and resolving it to everyone’s satisfaction. Usually, you use the problem solving techniques of analysis, alternatives review, recommendations, and finally coming up with the best solution based on fact. This is the best way to solve conflict.