When it comes to leadership in the workplace, nobody likes to work with a team leader who is on the incompetent side. It doesn’t matter how good someone is at their work and how knowledgeable they are about their industry. If their leadership skills are lacking, then this can cause problems.
A leader will have a negative or positive impact on the performance of the members of their team as a result of their attitude, communication skills and also their team management skills. In order to be successful it is crucial to master a number of critical leadership skills. Here, we asked the experts at Parallel Project Training to put together a list of the behaviours that you should be avoiding as a project manager. If you are guilty of some of these, then it may be a sign that a project manager course would be a good idea to help you improve your leadership skills.
Putting Excess Pressure On Your Team Members
It is vital for a good team leader to be ambitious and motivated in order to ensure that the objectives and goals of their organisation are met. However, there are some team leaders who pressure their team members to keep them in a state of excessive productivity in order to achieve this.
Doing this can create feelings of dissatisfaction and anxiety within a team, and this, in turn will have an effect on not only their levels of productivity but also their performance. Not every team member has the capacity to handle the type of stress that results from excessive work, and those that can are only able to do so for a short length of time before it can begin to have a negative effect on their health.
It is important to provide enough time within the project for each element to be completed and also at the end of the project before starting a new on so that the project team have the opportunity to relax and regroup before they start the next project.
Delay When It Comes To Making Decisions
Another sign that you may need to improve your leadership skills is if you delay or are negligent when it comes to making necessary decisions within the project. This type of attitude towards decision-making is difficult and can often result in a lack of confidence in your ability to make decisions or a feeling of uncertainty about the decisions that you have made.
When a leader is weak, then there is a greater chance that they will delay making important decisions until the very last moment, and they will also blame any adverse effects that result from their poor decisions on other things, for example, a lack of resources, information or even time.
Lack Of Effective Communication Skills
Good communication skills are essential in project management, and having communication skills that are poor can be a sign of poor leadership skills. When you struggle with communication, then you are likely to be more concerned about attaining your deadlines and are more prone to neglecting things like offering appropriate support and training to your team members. This can create an air of uncertainty and confusion within the team, where the guidelines that you provide are more likely to be incomplete or poor.
It also provides an atmosphere where the members of your team are more likely to hesitate before approaching you for more precise details on any aspect of the project and are far more likely to attempt to complete the work based on how they interpret the tasks that they have been given. Quite aside from the fact that they may have misunderstood what they were supposed to do, this could also add to some confusion regarding the achieving of any organisational goals.
Criticism Of Team Members That Is Disrespectful And Needless
When you point out professional weaknesses or poor performance from one of your team members in front of the team, you are displaying signs of poor leadership. This is a clear indication that you are not thinking before you act.
A weak leader is someone who hides any professional negligence in the criticism they aim at others. Even in a situation when a team member is genuinely at fault, criticism should never take place in public, and an appropriate time should be found when there is not an audience.
This is the type of attitude that good employees are not likely to tolerate for any length of time, and as a result many team members may prefer to look for employment elsewhere, where their skills and work will be dealt with in a more appropriate and professional manner. Those who do choose to stay may have the confidence to report this type of unfair behaviour to the appropriate level within the organisation and this may in itself carry some penalties for the team leader.
Selective Assigning Of Tasks
When you secretively assign a number of team members to a special project, this may not be as effective as you might hope, particularly if they later all find out about it. If you have asked a number of individuals to work on something with a view to picking the best results, then you will create a very unpleasant atmosphere in the team with rejection and dissatisfaction from those whose work you have not chosen.
If you are assigning the same project element to several people, you are also wasting the valuable resources that you have, and both the skills of the team members and their time could have been put to better use elsewhere. This is something that could hamper you from achieving the desired result from your project on time, on budget, and, of course, within the allotted timeframe.
Inability to offer feedback that is constructive
Feedback that is both honest and constructive is essential if you want to ensure that all of your project team know exactly where they stand. A weak leader is one who avoids giving any form of feedback, particularly that which is necessary.
Not giving feedback can lead to feelings of uncertainty, particularly for those team members who are looking to take the next step on the career ladder. If team members do not know that they have performed poorly, they will be unable to make improvements.
A leader who is strong needs to be able to give feedback that is honest and constructive in order to allow team members to upgrade their knowledge and skills and also be an asset to the company they are working for.
