How to enable employee independence and whole-team support on project management teams
Project teams must work as a unit to succeed. However, project teams are made up of individuals with their own thoughts, needs, expertise, and opportunities. For a team to work as a cohesive unit the individuals that make up the group must be empowered, feel like they have autonomy, and feel supported. The individual needs to be elevated to bring the whole team together. Here’s our tips for enabling employee independence while boosting whole team support.
Tips for empowering individual team members
Prioritize education: Make sure ongoing education and upskilling is priority in your budget and strategic plan. Each team member should have an ongoing learning plan with a budget dedicated to making it happen. Goals should include both their areas of interest and key skills for their role and work. Work collaboratively to find education opportunities and look for ones that really spark interest for the individual team member. When the passion is there,-and when opportunities tie to the individual and not just their job,-career education feels less like a chore.
Encourage managing up: Encourage team members at all levels to “manage up.” This concept means individuals not only take responsibility for their work, but to be empowered to check in with team members at all levels on progress and ask for what they need. When done well, this does not mean junior members end up taking on more work. Instead they will be encouraged to ask for updates from their own managers and peers and take the lead at work, instead of just having tasks handed to them.
Position for success with internal and external clients: Depending on your project and company, your project team may have “clients” internally, external clients paying for your work, or a mix of both. Position all your team members for success with these stakeholders no matter what their role is. This includes clarifying who serves as the main contact point for various tasks, allowing individual team members to share achievements they had a hand in directly with stakeholders, and ensuring everyone knows that all members of the team play important roles.
Tips for creating whole-team support
Hold regular brainstorming meetings: Depending on your organization, you likely have team members who work on entirely different projects or whose work is so different they rarely interact. To build cohesiveness and create team-wide support, schedule regular brainstorming meetings where individuals can bring challenges they’re having to be discussed by everyone. After providing a quick background on the task or client, the entire team can work together to suggest fresh solutions and ideas. This helps your entire team contribute to all projects, learn about others’ work, and foster an atmosphere of support.
Spotlight different roles in reporting: When reporting on progress in team meetings or to stakeholders and leadership, be sure to spotlight the work of individual roles among the broader team. By calling out how individuals are contributing to the overall work, you help educate others about different roles and see how all the pieces tie together.
Use inclusive language: Though you certainly want to call out the positive impacts of individual team members, use language that shows the team is all in it together. “We” is always the right wording when discussing a project. This is even more true when discussing where things may have gone wrong on a project; while you might be able to trace a mistake back to a single person, the ramifications are always the responsibility of the entire team.
Empowered individuals on a team who are excited to do the work create a strong team. Counterintuitively, you strengthen the whole unit by focusing on the singular. As always, the most important tip for both empowering individuals and building a strong team is communication. Communicate well, and often.