A Different Approach To Team Dynamics

Project management can sound so dreary and dull. It’s something that you hear all the time in the offices of businesses. It’s the common wording used for many different actions. Whenever a new product is to be designed, launched, marketed, sold, exported, distributed and more, there needs to be a project leader who manages a team that will deliver all this. For other actions such as financial planning, risk assessment, this phrase isn’t as readily or commonly used but it does still warrant a place. Project management is basically, using the technology and people with relevant skills, to bring to life an idea. That’s the basic gist of it, but ultimately it means managing people. Without human beings, no project would ever exist. So those that are trying to evolve their business need to understand the team dynamic concepts. We’re all different therefore we will approach our roles and ideas uniquely. Here’s how you as the leader can get the most out of your chosen team.

The sensible positions

For any leader, utilizing the best minds is critical to success. The brightest and best people must be put into the right places to allow your project to become what you set it out to be. However, these employees need to be in a position that also inherently works closely with the leader. Therefore the research for the project should be done with such minds. 

The creative minds as well as the brightest minds should collaborate together for the development. This approach means that the foresight of the smartest minds can give an outline to the creative minds from which they can work out of. It means that designs of products, marketing campaigns, logos and more won’t be without some kind of hitched meaning to the goal of the project. 

The crowd that is good with numbers should be in positions where their skills are greatly appreciated. Financial planning is critical to a project, so a team that doesn’t have someone who is mindful of costs, losses, profit margins and such won’t last long. Go about your team and decide what the positions should be for the various kinds of minds and attitudes you have.

Workflow and manpower

Some tasks that seem difficult, could end up being quite straight forward. Tasks that seem easy could end up being much more complex than initially estimated. Therefore you need to be ready to shift the team dynamic and allocate more people to a particular group when and as needed. Take a look at the project management course on New England College Online where this is explored. Sometimes, workflow needs to increase or piles up on one side of the project and should be dealt with by shifting manpower towards it momentarily. 

For example, a marketing team has, unfortunately, run into a problem. The client has changed their mind and wants to redesign their logo. Now all the billboards, video advertisements, PPC ads, social media posts and more have to be quickly changed. This doesn’t stop the rest of the project from moving but the design team is bogged down. You can move to other parts of your team to the design team to get some menial tasks done or allow the additional staff to do the tasks that the design team would be doing had they not been slowed. 

Never in the dark

Teams that are not able to effectively communicate with each other, and not going to be working successfully together. It’s a huge problem to have when teams are avoiding each other or just downright not getting along. The common trope of team dynamic conflicts comes from the hierarchy not being balances with good solid feedback and praise. The most important members of a team will sometimes be resented by the others, this is a natural cause of hostilities. However, if proper and regular communication is made then teams will never be in the dark. By not informing other teams when big decisions that will impact them have been made, this can surprise and overwhelm them when you allocate tasks. Therefore you may wish to consider having one member of each team be part of a weekly meeting with the leading department such as R&D.

Team dynamics are perhaps the most complex part of being a team leader. You can fix problems in software but reading the corrupt files, you can redesign an engineering flaw, you can change the color of a logo but it’s much more difficult to understand people. Therefore you should engage in regular communication so no one is ever caught off guard. Assess when teams are getting overloaded and quickly shift manpower where it’s needed.