Self‐Awareness

Self‐awareness is recognizing and understanding your moods and emotions and how they affect you, your job performance, and your team members. Part of self‐awareness is being aware of how you are feeling in the moment and not judging those feelings. In this way, self‐awareness is similar to mindfulness. Another aspect of self‐awareness is identifying what your triggers are—what leads to you getting upset? Depressed? Apathetic? Being able to recognize and understand what you are feeling and why you are feeling that way allows you to regulate how you behave.

Self‐Regulation

Self‐regulation is the ability to think before acting. It is suspending reactive behavior. When you identify emotional triggers, you can take steps to avoid those situations, but eventually you will find yourself in a situation where you are going to be upset. Therefore, once you identify your triggers, it can be helpful to think about healthy ways to disengage your emotions. For example:

• Take a walk;
• Take a shower;
• Take 10 deep breaths;
• Write down what is bothering you;
• Take a break;
• Take a nap.

Self‐regulation can help you make decisions and take actions based on thoughtful consideration rather than emotional reactions. Emotional outbursts reduce safety and trust, whereas practicing self‐regulation improves trust on your team.

Social Awareness

Social awareness is being aware of other's viewpoints and emotions. It includes understanding nonverbal cues and displaying empathy. For example, it's pretty obvious if you come across someone who has their arms crossed, is looking down, and not meeting your eyes that they don't want to interact with you. They may be angry, or upset or sad, but their body language is definitely saying, “leave me alone.” There are more subtle cues as well, a sigh, mumbling, or speaking slowly without much intonation can also communicate a person's mood. So can smiling, nodding, and gesturing.

As leaders we should be aware of these cues. We may even want to check in with our team members and ask if there is something they want to talk about or something they need help with. Pay attention to their tone of voice, posture, facial expressions, and gestures.

Social Skills

Social skills are about leading and managing groups of people, such as project teams. They also include building social networks and establishing rapport. In this context, establishing rapport means building a harmonious and sympathetic connection with others. As project leaders, we rely on our ability to create rapport with team members, functional managers, senior management, and other stakeholders.

Motivation

There are two types of motivation—intrinsic and extrinsic. Motivation, when considered as a component of emotional intelligence, refers to intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from inside a person or is connected with a task itself. It is based on finding pleasure or meaning in the work instead of the reward.

Intrinsic motivators include achievement, taking on a challenge, or being self‐directed. Other examples include believing in the work you do or knowing your work makes a difference. Most projects require creative thought, problem solving, inventing new technologies, and innovating. These types of tasks are more motivated by intrinsic factors, and the people who work in these types of jobs generally enjoy the work they do.

Extrinsic motivation is doing something based on an external reward, such as job title, bonuses, and cash rewards. Winning and avoiding failure or embarrassment are also extrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivation works well only for a very narrow focus when there are a simple set of rules—for example, performing repetitive work that doesn't require much thought or creativity. Extrinsic motivation is, for the most part, far less effective than intrinsic motivation.

Motivating Your Team

Because people are motivated by different things, to be effective at motivating your team you need to take time to get to know each person individually and understand what's important to them. You can do this by having candid conversations with your team members. That way you can align their work and incentives with what's important to them. For example, you may have one team member whose autonomy motivation expresses itself by wanting a more flexible schedule, or a schedule that allows them to work from home full or part time. Another team member may see autonomy as being able to sequence their work the way they want.

You can tailor motivation techniques based on a team member's dominant motivating factor. Each of us to one degree or another is motivated by the four motivators described above; however, the relative importance of each motivator varies from person to person.

Table 13‐1 shows a few examples of how to tailor the motivation techniques based on a team member's dominant motivator.

Example of Motivation in the Workplace

Google has long encouraged its employees to devote 20% of their time to side projects they're passionate about. This represents both autonomy and purpose. If people are working with their peers, it also encompasses relatedness. As people work in these areas, they naturally improve, which includes competence.

Many of Google's most successful products have come out of this 20% time. This is one reason Google remains one of the most innovative companies in the world.

Servant Leadership

A servant leader focuses on making sure the team has everything they need to get their work done, rather than providing direction. The intended outcome is that team members will feel fulfilled, appreciated, and supported. For teams that use scrum practices, the scrum master is a servant leader.

Some of the ways servant leaders support the team include:

• Ensuring they have everything they need to get their work done. This can include space, equipment, resources, and even decisions.
• Shielding the team from interruptions. One of the challenges in accomplishing work is constant interruptions from managers asking questions, stakeholders wanting to know the status of work, customers wondering if they can get another feature, and so on. A servant leader is the single point of contact for the team. They protect the team from interruptions and manage all interactions with external stakeholders.
• Removing impediments. An impediment is anything that gets in the way of accomplishing work. Impediments are also called blockers or barriers. Impediments often surface in the daily stand‐up meeting. The servant leader tracks down the impediment and works to resolve it.
• Communicating the project vision. The servant leader reminds the team and other stakeholders about the project vision. This keeps people focused on the work at hand. It can keep the team from over‐engineering a product, and it can keep non‐value adding work (such as excessive documentation) out of the work queue.
• Supporting team members. Servant leaders support team members by providing training, encouragement, motivation, and celebrations.

An environment of servant leadership results in a more efficient and productive workspace and higher‐quality work products.

Self‐Managing Teams

Self‐managing teams pair well with servant leadership. While the servant leader is supporting the team, the team is accountable for delivering the work. The servant leaders may function as a facilitator or coach for the team, but ultimately it is up to the team to figure out how they are going to accomplish the work, rather than a manager deciding for them.

At the start of the project the team will assess what they need as far as space, equipment, communication, and so forth. They will also determine how they want to work together, such as:

• Communication norms;
• Making decisions;
• Resolving conflicts;
• Addressing technical issues;
• Coming to consensus; and
• Improving their process.

These agreements may be posted in the work environment or may be recorded in a team charter that is signed by each member of the team. Figure 13‐1 shows a version of a team charter.

During the project the team is empowered to organize and estimate their work. This occurs during iteration planning meetings. Then during the iteration, they have the autonomy to accomplish the work, resolve technical challenges, and employ the agreements they documented in the team charter.

Trusting team members to establish their own ways of working increases commitment and motivation. People work harder and take more pride in their work when they are respected and trusted as experts.

Self‐managing teams don't always start out smoothly. It can be a goal that takes time to achieve. The servant leader may need to provide coaching at the start and guidance along the way. However, as team members gain an understanding of what needs to be done and how to do it, the leader can step back.

Tailoring for a Hybrid Environment

When choosing a leadership style for a hybrid project, you will need to consider the organizational culture. If the organization embraces a top‐down management style, you should follow that approach. You can be open to suggestions, share power, and support the team, but ultimately you will maintain the final decision‐making authority.

Conversely, in a very flat organization or an organization that's very collaborative, you may be able to adopt a servant leadership style. There isn't a formula that tells you how to flex your style based on the environment. You'll need to assess the environment, the situation, and the organizational culture. That being said, here are a few guidelines for balancing predictive and Agile leadership styles.

1. Where possible, let team members figure out how to do their own work.
2. Be transparent. When you make a decision, disclose your rationale and reasoning process.
3. Lean toward collaboration and away from autocracy.
4. Share leadership where possible.
5. Use your position as a leader to serve your team.

Traits of High‐Performing Teams

The first thing that high‐performing teams have is a shared sense of purpose. Everyone on the team knows what the intended outcomes are, and everyone is committed to those outcomes. Along with the shared sense of purpose, team members display mutual accountability and trust for each other. Mutual accountability means that everyone on the team takes accountability for the project's success. There's no sense of “I did my job; why didn't you do yours?” The team works together and helps each other out as needed.

Mutual accountability leads to a sense of trust. Team members trust each other not only to get their work done but to consider the greater good of the team, to keep their promises, and to help each other out if needed. High‐performing teams collaborate. They don't work in silos. They work through problems and make decisions together, and they do this with open and respectful communication. These characteristics work together nicely. The sense of mutual accountability and trust leads to working together respectfully and collaboratively and vice versa.

High‐performing teams share recognition and empower each other. They share in successes and acknowledge each other's contribution to the success.

You've probably worked on projects where something completely unexpected happened and negatively affected the project. Maybe it caused rework, or perhaps a risk materialized, or maybe there was a big schedule slip. These setbacks are hard to come back from. But high‐performing teams demonstrate resilience to handle these setbacks, and they demonstrate adaptability to adjust to new ways of working to overcome negative situations.

Finally, these teams have high energy and an attitude of achievement. Team members have a positive outlook—they know that even when times are challenging, together the team can work through the challenges and deliver the project.

Building Relationships

If you want to build a high‐performing team, start with investing time in building good relationships. Here are five key elements to developing good relationships with your team.

1. Establish rapport: Rapport is a harmonious relationship with people. It doesn't happen in an instant, but you can take steps to foster it. For example, find commonalities with your team members, such as sports you enjoy, favorite foods, or pets. Another way to build rapport is matching tone of voice and choice of words. For example, if you're working with someone who speaks slowly and deliberately, match their speed, don't talk a mile a minute. On a subconscious level people feel more comfortable with those who are similar to themselves.
2. Shared experiences: As you go through the project, you'll create shared experiences, which increases rapport. Also be empathetic with what team members are experiencing, especially professionally but also personally, as appropriate.
3. Value the team and each team member: You build good relationships when you let team members know that you value them and their contribution. Team members may see things from different perspectives, such as a business analyst and a marketing specialist. Though they see problems from different perspectives, both perspectives have value. By looking at a range of viewpoints that working in a team affords, we can often develop better outcomes for issues that arise.
4. Be open and transparent: Being transparent with your thinking and how you make decisions builds trust. As a project manager there will be times when making tough decisions is part of your job. People may not always like your decisions, but if you can be transparent as to why you made a certain decision, it helps people understand. They'll be more likely to trust you if you're open about your reasoning and motivations.
5. Appreciation: Finally, it's important to let your team know that you appreciate them. This can be as simple as saying thank you or writing a quick note letting them know you appreciate something they did. It can also include writing a memo to their boss describing the team member's contribution.

Making the investment in employing these elements makes the work you will do with your team more enjoyable. It also sets the stage for them to develop into a well‐functioning and high‐performing team.

Key Terms

• emotional intelligence
• self‐managing teams
• servant leadership
• team charter