Although it is convenient to deal with people in a virtual way, it also has its shortcomings.
We now live in a world of virtual communication. Because of its inherent advantages in some respects, virtual workgroups have been embraced by company leaders. Business school teachers are always doing their best to educate executives full of ideals and aspirations on the benefits of virtual communication. But the way of communication and the wisdom of communication formed by human beings for thousands of years cannot be easily erased. In many cases, direct interpersonal interaction plays an extremely positive role in interpersonal communication.
As a consultant, I have learned a lot on the job, and most of those lessons are from failures, and the one mentioned above is one of them. I used to work as a consulting project manager in an international company. The company asked me to help with the work of other groups. In the past work, I have quite successful experience in this regard. Although I was delighted to have gained the firm's trust, I was deeply apprehensive that the firm's expectations of me seemed a little too high, because although I was a senior consultant at the time, After all, my role in the company is that of a junior project manager.
During the first week of my new assignment, I contacted the project managers of the eight projects that I was co-managing. At the beginning, they were not very willing to accept my help. In order to convince them that my presence was not malicious, it took me several weeks to slowly persuade them to accept me. In the first four months, the work went smoothly and smoothly without any problems. However, it didn't take long for one of my larger projects to go wrong.
Anatomy of a Disaster
According to my work records at the time, the supervisor of one of my project managers received a notice to cancel the project after the summary meeting of the project design stage. Before that, we had spent a month preparing for this meeting. Especially in the last week before the meeting, we had to stay up all night to work every night just to get the meeting right.
The sudden announcement left us wondering what to do. I got through to the project manager's mobile phone. He answered the phone and told me in a weak voice that there was no way to talk to me about it right now. I can only hang up and wait for the answer when I can meet him at the company headquarters next week.
Every day for the next five days, I faced inquiries from my superiors and several VPs of the company, who wanted to understand why and find answers as soon as possible. I can only tell them to wait patiently for a few more days. While they waited, I did my best to find answers to my questions myself, reaching out to many people who had social connections with project team members and gathering information from them.
Finally, in the official work report, I finally learned the real situation of the problem. It turned out that the "senior" architect of the project (who had just been promoted from the junior architect) encountered difficulties in the process of preparing the plan. As he kept trying and groping, he was attacked and teased by a senior engineer in the project team who was technically only a junior. Before the project manager had time to solve the problem, other engineers also joined the ranks to denounce him. As a result, the original meeting was messed up, and the CIO on the client side was naturally convinced that our project team was completely incompetent.
basics of contact
From the above experience, we can draw many lessons. Based on the experience accumulated in my previous work, I quickly turned my attention to conflict resolution. I know that the four engineers and one junior architect on the project have always had a very good reputation on the job, and the problem certainly has nothing to do with their professionalism. There must be something else between them.
I spend a lot of time with the project manager analyzing the interactions between team members. Although the project manager had not paid much attention to this issue before, he also noticed that the atmosphere in the group was quite tense. After some effort, I finally got to the root of the problem with his help. In fact, it was the "senior" architect who distanced himself from the rest of the group first. And the older engineer, who had just taken his place as junior architect after his promotion, hated him. The other engineers also sided with the more charismatic older engineers. When the young senior engineer got stuck at work, the anger of the old engineer made him unable to take into account his professionalism and attacked the young engineer. Subsequent contacts with project team members confirmed our initial analysis and judgment.
Now the question becomes "Why did we ignore this problem?" In my past work, I have encountered a similar situation. Even such a problem has been discovered and solved. The project manager admits that he spends too much of his time in the office, planning for the timing of the project, and ignoring serious problems that already exist. So, how can I justify myself?
I realized the error was in my basic approach to the problem. When I give advice and advice to my project managers, I don't think about their individual needs. More importantly, I've left a leadership vacuum that's just a void until no one comes out to fill it.
However, it takes a certain amount of skill to control the leadership of a working group. At least the following two aspects are required.
There is a leader-to-lead relationship with one or more members of the project team. Ideally, you have established a leadership-led relationship with some members of the group. That way, the rest of the group will have some sort of reference when it comes to accepting your leadership style. However, since none of the members of this project team have had this relationship with me in the past, this does not apply to me.
There are project managers who can exercise leadership in your place. This is also a very ideal situation, allowing you to exercise your leadership through the strength of another leader. This is even more effective if you train him yourself, because then he has the same leadership style as you. In the above example, the project manager under my command focused on the management of the work, not on the leadership of the team members.
Applying rules to build opportunities for leadership. Technicians usually use their own wisdom to establish their leadership, and prove their ability by answering various technical questions. In the above example, I deliberately did not participate in the exchange, in order to let the senior architect prove his ability.
The ability to meet with group members at least occasionally. Personality charisma is a very powerful tool in the process of interpersonal communication, but in order to fully exert its effectiveness, it still needs to be through actual contact between people. In the example above, I did not do that and never had contact with the group members.
Opportunity to demonstrate your interest and ability to influence events. Make sure you are directly involved in the preparation of major project events. In the above example, I was actually involved in the preparation of major project events as a consultant.
The five points mentioned above are obviously from my own preferred leadership style and leadership style. Other leaders may have their own different and even radical other approaches. As the saying goes, the benevolent sees the benevolent and the wise sees the wisdom.
Get back up where you fell
After figuring out what was causing the problem, I worked out an action plan with the project manager. We gave the senior engineer another new assignment. We had a week-long group meeting at the company headquarters. At the same time, I also let the senior architect know that in the future work, I will be more involved in his technical decision-making. Taking these measures strengthened my leadership in the project team, and also allowed me to better understand and master the working conditions of the entire team. In this way, my suggestions to project managers are more targeted and powerful, and I have received more positive feedback.