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0217 HN- Keeping the Dream Alive with Your “Dream Team” 1402×672
0217 HN- Keeping the Dream Alive with Your “Dream Team” 1402×672
0217 HN- Keeping the Dream Alive with Your “Dream Team” 1402×672
0217 HN- Keeping the Dream Alive with Your “Dream Team” 1402×672
0217 HN- Keeping the Dream Alive with Your “Dream Team” 1402×672

HUMAN NETWORK: Keeping the Dream Alive With Your “Dream Team”

Feb. 1, 2017
Let’s say you’ve found the perfect mix of people to staff your new project. They gel great together; everyone is a top performer in their respective field. They are all […]

Let’s say you’ve found the perfect mix of people to staff your new project. They gel great together; everyone is a top performer in their respective field. They are all gung-ho to get going. But then something happens.

First, one starts showing up late to meetings. Then, someone else plans a vacation he absolutely must go on. Next, you have another who leaves the company altogether for warmer waters.

You reflect on what went wrong and realize that, one by one, they lost their will, their zest, their joie de vivre for working on your project.

One of them needed an upgrade to a special coding software, but you didn’t want to get it for them. They didn’t have the tool they needed to do their best work.

Another needed to attend a training class for using the upgraded safety gear the company mandated you use — but you wouldn’t give them time off the project to attend.

And the third person was great at graphics design, but because no one was willing to do the project accounting and he had some slack time, you assigned that job to him. Willing to be a good team player, he accepted, but he had no talent or aptitude for that. You’ve suddenly become the leader of the project where good people come to die.

We’ve found that regardless of the type of project your team is working on, the team members need the right talent, tools, and training to do the required work. But there also has to be willingness to use their talent, and the willingness to provide the right tools and the training.

People can have all the talent, tools and training in the world, but if they don’t have the will to do something, nothing will happen. On the other hand, people can be willing, but if they are missing any or all of the 3 pillars — talent, tools, or training — you risk creating that project where good people come to die.

As a Project Manager, to keep your dream team alive and thriving, start with the folks who have both the talent and the will, and then make sure you provide the right tools and the training.

I’ve been working on a huge project all summer in Alaska called the Alaska Research Garden, where we are testing out a variety of year-round food production ideas. This is our first year at it, and one of the projects is to build our main outdoor garden area.

The outdoor project got off to a slower start than we expected when it took 3 times longer than expected to get the material we needed. We found the talented people to do the work, but they were very busy wrapping up other projects.

We hit our stride and our dream teamness about a month into doing the actual manual labor. We had the talent, the tools, the training, and the willingness. It was an absolutely incredible experience, after having had one frustration after another (the norm doing projects in remote parts of Alaska).

We hit this sweet spot after we had cleared the land, done the masonry work, built the 3-foot raised planting beds, and filled them with large trees that will act as the soil heating source over the next 2 decades. Earlier, we had been waiting, waiting, and waiting for a large chipper to arrive on the ferry from Juneau. The project crew went to work on other job sites. The chipper finally showed up. The mason had come back to do the second part of the project — he offered to get it off the ferry at 1:30 a.m., since he was staying in town closer to the ferry. Our dirt working guy had moved us up to top priority, because we paid him well and fast. Plus, we made him lunch, so he liked being on our job site. We were done with the chipping part of the job in less than one-fourth of the time than we had allocated — even though the day most of the work happened, it was a torrential downpour. We had the right talent with the right training and the right tools to create this dream team. Every single one of us had the willingness it took to create such a sweet spot.

I started contemplating: how do you assess willingness? I realized that it shows up in team members’ attitudes and behaviors: enthusiasm, availability, and active engagement. Developing these qualities in yourself FIRST can then inspire your team members to show up in a similar fashion. Yes, I have found willingness is contagious.

Let’s look at all 3 elements of willingness.

1. Enthusiasm
Let’s check in with you here. How willing are you to get the job done? What are you going to do to make it happen? Just where is your "oomph," spirit, and vision, with this project, and how are you going to react to road blocks?

It has not been easy doing this research garden project in Alaska — but I have a longer-range vision. My enthusiasm attracts and keeps enthusiastic people working with me. Our collective positive energy has an immediate effect on keeping morale high. Yes, people can get down on some element of the project at one time or another. But when you’re all in it together, you carry each other through those times.

You can’t mandate or fake enthusiasm. But you can cultivate it by being enthusiastic, being there for people when times are tough, and having the right tools and the right training, which allows your team members to use their talents to do their best work.

2. Availability
This one seems like a "duh" — but the people who have stayed working on the Alaska Research Garden Project are those that have been consistently available. Yes, we’ve had to make schedule accommodations. The salmon are running, it’s moose hunting season — these are real things up here. People live through the winter by the food they hunt in the summer here.

Being flexible to accommodate their requirements, they work above and beyond to meet my requirements. Winter is coming here, and it comes fast. This is an outdoor project. We have tight blocks of time to work on this project, and we made sure not just the people with the right talents were available, but that we also had the right tools available when they were needed.

3. Active Engagement
That sweet-spot moment of team members’ willingness happened when the outdoor garden project all came together as in a dream: the mason was there, the dirt working guy was there, and our wood chipper had finally arrived. It was raining as if someone had turned on a fire hose. It wasn’t the mason’s job to work the wood chipper, but he couldn’t set up the forms in the rain. So he got right in there with the dirt-working guy, and they made short work of clearing out huge brush piles and filling the 3-foot culture garden beds with wood chips. Both men were in the rain gear they wear on the fishing boats. I was out helping for a while doing what I could do until it became obvious they could work a lot faster without me around. But they appreciated I was right there with them. It was active engagement at its best.

People tend to mirror those around them, so when you show up in your project team with a high level of willingness to get the job done, you are typically matched with the same level of energy in others. When you show up as the Project Manager with the consistent willingness to deliver the best results, you role model what it means to be a successful team member.

If your team feels sluggish and unproductive despite having all the talents, tools, and training needed to get the job done, check in with yourself on your willingness to do the project. Learn more about how to develop greater willingness in your project teams by hiring for talent, and providing the right tools and training so people can do their best work.

Getting the right training to become the best Project Manager you can be is what Cheetah Learning is all about. Check us out at www.cheetahlearning.com.

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About the Author

Michelle LaBrosse

Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP, PMI-ACP, RYT, is an entrepreneurial powerhouse with a penchant for making success easy, fun, and fast She is the founder of Cheetah Learning, the author of the Cheetah Success Series, and a prolific blogger whose mission is to bring Project Management (PM) to the masses. Cheetah Learning is a virtual company with 100 employees, contractors, and licensees worldwide. To date, more than 50,000 people have become "Cheetahs" using Cheetah Learning’s innovative PM and accelerated learning techniques. Michelle also developed the Cheetah Certified Project Manager (CCPM) program based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality profiling to help students master how to use their unique strengths for learning, doing projects, and negotiating. Michelle is recognized by the Project Management Institute as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the world. For more information, visit www.cheetahlearning.com. To read my business-oriented blogs, please visit Cheetah Learning Blog at http://www.michellelabrosseblogs.com/, https://www.facebook.com/MichelleChiefCheetah/posts/956956998493883, and read my columns here in ISE magazine at https://isemag.com/author/michellelabrosse/.