Coaching and teaching roles of a good Project Manager

This morning I am grading twenty midterm graduate student examinations.

One of the scenarios was " how you would go about staffing, organizing and controlling a project that is mostly labor related". Mostly the answers were as expected, derived from the readings and the students' own professional experiences. The work was solid, but not very inspiring, with a couple of exceptions. I am, by nature, self questioning. I didn't find fault with the students. I wondered if I had been pointing them in the right directions in my lectures.

Maybe I had better go back and check.

A long with Stephen Covey's traits of highly effective people I provide the following list for Great Project Managers

Seven Traits of Great Project Managers

Great Project Managers are:

Organized: keeping track of things in an orderly manner.

Not easily distracted: being able to stay focused on the task at hand during times of confused demands.

On time: not procrastinating, meeting deadlines and being where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be.

Empathetic: being able reading other people's emotions without their having to tell you what they are feeling.

Results oriented: focusing on non-personal problem solving rather than blame casting and fixing people's personalities.

Highly internally motivated: not needing lots of outside "ataboys" to get the job done, being satisfied with a successful job without external praise.

Honest and ethical. How can people work on projects with you if they cannot trust your statements and your ethical behavior.

Well, there is another one that I left out.

Great Project Managers are good Coaches and Teachers.

In my work I seldom, if ever, get to pick my team. I am given what was a"available" or what I could hire. So I was often forced to train people or coach them to improve. I always was a teacher, mentor and coach so it was easy for me to move from industry to teaching.

I seldom was assigned superstar technicians,but I was often assigned superstar people, people. so I mark myself as truly lucky. Don't get me wrong, I got my share of lulus, including the pathological liars among others, but overall I worked with hundreds and hundreds of great people, and the loosers really stick out.

Back to coaching and teaching.

I am reading a book titled Giants Among Men by Jack Cavanauh. Its about the NY Giants of the 1950s and early 1960's. In the middle 1950's the Giants were coached by Jim Lee Howell and the assistant coaches were Tom Landry (defense) and Vince Lombardi (offense). Pretty good assistants would you think?

No two men could be more different in approaches than Landry and Lombardi, but they were good friends and colleagues. Both knew that teaching, preparation, and training were key to success on the football field. When game day came, neither man could do more than sit back and let his team do what they were prepared for. Landry never showed emotion and Lombardi showed too much. In fact one of his players opined that "on game day he (Lombardi) was pretty much useless." waving his arms and shouting. But the team was prepared, as were Landry's teams.

So, back to teaching and coaching as PM attributes. If you are given your project staff you can do it yourself or delegate. If you have no one with the needed skills to delegate to you need to teach the skill,or go outside the team (which i suggest is done occasionally, as most project skills are not that difficult. (except maybe writing computer code)

If you have the people with the skills for the project, then coaching makes all the difference.

Practicing and drilling skills, reminding folks about their important role in the team's success, checking off the needs and then providing feedback.

If we rely on our EQ we will know who and when to either pat on the back, or kick in the butt.

Next semester the list will change to add coaching and teaching.