By Leif Rogell
Anyone who does routine work in a traditional organisational structure (e.g. Paying salaries in large companies or manufacturing screws in factories, you can in principle work with the same colleagues from training until retirement. You get to know them, both their good and bad sides, and their unique characteristics. You learn how to interact with your colleagues individually and how to maintain order in the department over the years.
Project work is constantly evolving. To meet the challenges ahead, different tasks require different skills. The project organization and the project team are both reorganized for each project. This collaborative approach to working is becoming more popular, as can be seen in the form of e.g. You can see matrix organisations.
The likelihood of colleagues not knowing each other well working together increases when the working group, or the project team is constantly being reorganized. This increases the likelihood of miscommunications and conflicts.
Project managers are required to deal with these’superficial relationships’ in their daily work. Understanding the psychology of these situations will help project managers assess their colleagues’ behaviour and guide them in the right direction if necessary. It’s about how people react to each other when they first meet, how they behave in unfamiliar situations, how project teams develop from project groups, how corporate culture influences project work, how personal conflicts can quickly become disruptive, and how project work can be disrupted by personal conflicts.
Projects are new, temporary and one-off tasks. You cannot know how to do something if it is your first or only time doing it. This means that you will need to learn the tasks yourself or along the way. There are many similarities between teaching new skills and knowledge and how to approach a task. It is therefore important for project managers to understand the learning process and the different learning styles. These can help them explain the behaviours of their project group. Some people prefer to experiment and reflect on new tasks. Others prefer active learning. This is interesting because different learning styles work well at different stages of the project’s life cycle. When working on the project scope, imagination works brilliantly. Reflection works well during planning and hands-on mentality is great for project execution. These phenomena can be used by project managers to help emphasize a positive attitude and helpful behavior.
A project manager who is successful will be able to manage all aspects of human behavior and to consider them in his project management and guide accordingly. A project manager must be able to deal with all aspects of human cooperation in the project environment, including economic issues and project organization.
About Leif Rogell
Bad project e.K. founder Leif is Leif’s owner. Leif is the founder and owner of bad project e.K. in Mannheim, Germany. He is also the author of ‘Psychological Project Management.
Visit him at: www.bad-project.com/English/