Enjoy this video of my free online PMP Exam Preparation training course and prepare to sit and pass the PMP certification exam from PMI. This PMP training video is based on PMBOK6 (PMBOK Guide) and covers the role of the project manager, leadership styles, personality, and integration.
Hello and welcome to my PMP video series this is the sixth video in the series today we’ll talk about the role of the project manager as you probably know the role of the PM is to make sure that the project achieves its objectives and achieves them within the timeframe given and within the budget that was allocated for it the main goal of a project manager is to deliver the scope that was in the Charter or in the requirements or in the scope statement now that scope could vary between one project and the other a small project will take less effort than a larger project the role of the PM is quite different from the role of functional managers such as like head of engineering or head of HR and from operations managers operations managers are focused on fiscal or quarterly targets and they may focus on things that are repeatable functional managers likewise focus on repeatable tasks the engineering team could be tasked with similar things on a daily basis or weekly basis PMS on the other hand are focused on tasks that once they’re done they can cross off their list and it brings them closer to completing the project so we say that the project manager’s job is to complete a one-off target and put it to rest okay so this p.m. is going to be assigned by a sponsor to lead a team that is going to help that p.m. achieve the project objectives many people are quite confused when it comes to the role of the PM and I hear it from a lot of people who attend my courses that they are engineers and the organization expects them to be doing engineering as well as leading the project in in an ideal world that p.m. should not really be taken on engineering or other tasks because that makes them biased in a way because they will be more focused on getting their technical work done and if mistakes were to happen they are less likely to report those because that conflicts with their image so it is best that a PM is assigned to oversee to direct and manage the delivery of the project through the work of the engineers and technical resources this way if there are any problems or if there issues that arise that PM is not going to be biased and there’s nothing to conflict with their interest because the work is not being done by them so I don’t know if I explained it well the PM’s should not really be holding on to any tasks or should not be assigned to specific technical tasks on the project what the PM should really be doing is meeting with stakeholders understanding their requirements confirming that what has been delivered met their expectations listening to issues or problems that are being raised by the stakeholders or by the team facilitating the acquisition of the needed resources to get the project done dealing with changes as they come up dealing with conflicts that may happen within the team within the team internally and externally and dealing with crisis whenever it hits and at the same time being able to respond to the sponsors request for up to date information and ad hoc meetings so the PM if they’re doing things right the PM would be typically too busy to be able to take on any specific technical tasks in the project so on this slide here you’ll see that the PM leads the project team to meet the objectives and stakeholders expectations and that is an ongoing thing right so there is nothing that says that today if you met their needs that tomorrow nothing changes right and the PM needs to work to balance the competing constraints on the project with the resources that are available you will find many times as a p.m. that you’re being you’re being pulled in different directions that stakeholders want something today they want something different tomorrow your deliver they ask for more your resources are being taken away from you sometimes or you don’t have enough and you’re trying to balance those resources to make sure that the highest priority items are being addressed communication sits solely I won’t maybe not solely buts communication between the team and the sponsors usually is done by the p.m. so you sit right in the middle there and you communicate upwards and you communicate downwards you communicate upwards to give project status updates and you communicate downwards to relay what senior management or the sponsors would like the team to know all right if you are within a program then you’re most likely going to interact with other PM’s that are in that one program you need to make sure as a p.m. that you’re staying up-to-date about what’s going on in the industry so if you’re an oil and gas project and you know something is happening with the price of oil or if you are an IT and some new invention or some new that’s a algorithm is figured out that may have an impact on what you’re working on or maybe a regulation is changing that affects your project you need to know what’s going on so that by the time you deliver the project you’re delivering something that is not already obsolete right you also as a p.m. need to make sure that you are integrating all aspects of the project and considering all areas so time cost scope quality your resources the risks and so on right so you have to integrate all aspects of the project nobody else is going to do that that’s the job of the p.m. and you need to constantly make sure that knowledge is being transferred to the right people so documenting as best as you can doing lessons learn archiving letting people letting people know where the archived information is so that they can access it in the future along with all of their you’re going to play teacher right most of the sponsors and most of the functional managers are not always going to be educated to educated about project management and you as a p.m. needs to inform them how projects operate what to expect what you need from them what you can provide them so that you guys can collaborate together on making sure that the project is successful okay as a p.m. you need to have diverse skills right and the diversity is actually according to PMI they’ve shown three different areas that you need to have talent in right or competencies in so number one you need to know what we’re covering in this course and that’s the technical project management everything that is in the pin book you need to know it inside out these are things or these are guides or processes that you would use in managing your project along with that you need to be a good leader to be a good leader you need to know how to work with people motivate them direct them otherwise you’re going to end up doing all the work yourself and be able to help the organization achieve its business goals that means and that takes us to the third one you need to understand strategy you need to understand what the business is about if you’re working for a private business and you’re constructing anything or you’re implementing some IT rollout project you need to know what that business where the business makes its money from you need to know how your work fits into that business strategy even if you’re working for government and nonprofit you still need to know why this project is strategically important for them otherwise you could make some damaging changes along the way so altogether you need to have talent in all three different areas and this is called the I believe talent triangle right you need to be technically knowledgeable about project management you need to know quite a bit about leading a team and you need to also be in touch and in tune with the that the organization is trying to implement alright what you will see on this one slide here is a comparison between management and leadership so on the left here we have management and what you see below are things that we do basically when we’re executing so when you’re on the floor on the site when you’re getting things done on at that time that’s when you need management right in other instances we will need leadership but let’s just focus on management take a look at what’s in there right you focus on system and structure you focus on near-term goals so it’s what’s in front of you how and when the bottom line the status quo doing things right this is you being there with the team executing on the specific activities that need to be done this is you delegating responsibilities to the team checking on their output at that time on the right-hand side is leadership leadership is a little more is a little bit different it is focused on long-term right we’re looking at getting results in the long run and that means we need to motivate we need to inspire we need to innovate we develop we ask why are we doing this we focus on the horizon not just what’s in front of us and we’re focused on doing the right thing see this year we’re focused on doing the right things but if you look at the management side you’re doing things right this is when you’re standing there and they digging up a trench and you’re making sure your engineers are doing the right job on the right hand side doing the right things this is you’re looking at you know whether what you’re doing is going to lead you to the the organization’s strategic objectives so you focus on long-term vision right making sure that everything is aligned right so this is what we call leadership on the right-hand side and for you as a p.m. you’re gonna need to do both unfortunately you have to do both management and leadership there are times when you need to inspire but there are times when you need to act quick so there are times for management when things need to be done in the near term and there are times or when you need to exercise leadership when we need to build for later so speaking of leadership there are different leadership styles that a p.m. could use right and there is no one style that supersedes the rest and there is no one style that you should stick with that will be permanent for you instead what you need to do is determine based on four different factors that you see here what would be the right leadership style to use so number one you have your own characteristics as a person you have your own attitudes your moods needs values etc right but then the team has its own attitudes moods needs and values and ethics right and you need to make sure that when you work with that team that you’re able to work well together you also need to look at the organization itself the way it is structured its purpose like its mission and vision the type of work that they do and make sure that you are managing to that that your leadership style is suitable for that you can easily think of the difference between managing in a retail business and then managing in a military-type environment right I think you can get the picture of this you know each organization is completely different you know a lot of the IT or technology companies are more relaxed contemporary modern and they’re more about innovation right whereas you find in other industries they’re very risk-averse they take things very seriously they take a lot of precautions right so that organization has that characteristic and you need to make sure you are managing to along with that the environment itself right the economic state you know things change things change quite a bit from year to year social situations between one place and another between one time and another will vary the nature of the project the environment in which you need to operate outside of the organization right which industry you’re in that has its own impact on what would be the right leadership style now speaking of leadership styles there are some you know documented or well-known styles that people talk about so let’s talk about you know I like to start with this one here charismatic right what is a charismatic leader a charismatic leader is someone who has charm right they’re very confident they’re likable they say things people listen to them a good example of that would be hopefully you don’t hopefully you’ll like them bill clinton right bill clinton was charismatic people love them and when you talk people listen so if you have charisma people would listen to you and so you might be a charismatic leader if you’re one of those there’s also the transformational leaders right transformational leaders are looking for long term transformations or changes and therefore what they tend to do is that they inspire and they motivate people and they lead them towards that big change that is coming up in the horizon servant leaders are those who serve and put other people first we would like our presidents to be servant leaders you know consider people to be more important so a PM who is a servant leader is someone who listens to their team and it’s very concerned about their needs and wants it does not mean that if your servant leader that you became a servant and you’re not necessarily a good leader it means that you are concerned about what your team wants transactional leaders are the are focused on counting you know so rewards counting how many goals or objectives accomplishments so they want to make sure one two three four things on the checklist they’re being completed they love transactions right so they want to count how many things are being done less their fare a French word here is a leadership style that allows the team to make their own decisions it means their consultative in nature they listen really well to what the team wants there are there is some harm in being overly les affair where you allow the team to make the decisions in instances where you should be making those decisions so it is nice to have a balance between all of these leadership styles the last one interactional interactional is the combination of transactional here right it’s a combination of transactional and transformational and charismatic right so this is someone who is able to interact no matter what the situation is realistically as a leader you should be able to practice any or all of these leadership styles depending on what the situation requires personality is going to play a big role in you being a successful PM if I always tell people in my trainings that if you don’t have the right personality to be out there working with a group of people who may not belong to us you know organizationally they may not belong to you if you can’t work with them and inspire them to get things done and be a likeable person and be able to direct people to get things done and respect and listen to what they have to say and be able to make decisions when situations call then if you can’t do any of these then you’re not gonna succeed as a p.m. just because you study the pin book and get your PMP certification will not necessarily mean that you can manage a team to manage a team you gotta have the right personality you will see a list of different characteristics that a p.m. needs to have one of these is creativity right creativity some every situation calls for a different response so you got to be creative and how you respond to specific issues you need to be very socially smart right intellectual emotionally well this is emotional intelligence so you an issue you need to be intelligent emotionally you need to know how a person is thinking you need to know what motivates other people you need to be able to instill a sense of trust with the people that work with you people who feel that they can they can rally behind you right so I think a little bit of maybe sincerity it’s not here but you need to be sincere you need to be authentic and you need to be genuine and you also need to be what’s the word I’m looking for here you need to be passionate about what it is that you’re working on you need to be one that doesn’t appreciate failure specifically right or doesn’t count failure as anything that hinders you your passion drives you to go past the failure and look for ways to get out of a mess the team needs to feel that they’re in good hands and if you don’t have that kind of personality I’m afraid that it will be very hard for you to work as a project manager all right so as a p.m. you are expected to pull this project together and by that we means we mean integration right so what do you need to integrate two things you need to integrate you need to make sure that what the sponsor is looking for yeah the strategic objectives that they want are being aligned with when you’re working on the project so make sure that you are contributing to the integration and execution of the strategy by making sure that the project and its and its activities are all aligned all aligned with the strategic goals of this one project the other thing that you need to do is be able to integrate the internal workings of project management ask for the pin book so there are processes like scope and schedule and WBS and so on and you need to make sure and like risk and procurement and so on you will need to make sure that all these processes being integrated well so that you can deliver a successful project okay when you integrate you integrate at three different levels number one you integrate at the process level yes as I was saying these are the 49 processes that we currently have in a pin book you will need to integrate all these pieces and most of them kind of like connect in a certain way so you need to integrate them the other way that you need to integrate is at the cognitive level and the cognitive level says that you need to find the most suitable way to manage a project depending on its specific characteristics so how big the project is who the organization is how complex of an environment it is that you’re working in and these are things you have to consider at the context level you need to consider implications of the technology the social media and the the reason why the project is being run so you need to look at it from it you know what the context is you have to look at the specific characteristics and you also need to consider those 49 processes that are in the PIM book you need to integrate all these aspects so you’re a busy person as a p.m. don’t ever estimate the role of this p.m. you have a lot on your plate and speaking of a lot the more the more the stakeholder is the more than the pieces to the project the more complexity there will be in a project complexity within the project as a result of the organization’s overall behavior human behavior and the uncertainties that lie ahead on this one project because there are many moving parts in a project and because the details of the project tend to expand or elaborate or get enhanced along the way and because of the constant changes that you can expect and because there are humans behind these requests that result in the changes you can imagine that there is a level of complexity that you’re going to have to work with nobody should be a p.m. if they cannot deal with complexity and I think complexity is a part of the game of being a project manager so there you have it that’s the role of the PM after all this if you feel you still want to be a PM then look for my next video if you feel this is not really for you you’d rather have a very stable consistent day to day type operational type work then maybe this is the time to consider your options not trying to scare you I personally believe that projects are very interesting they bring up challenges that would make every day different from the rest and that’s probably what makes project management interesting and if you can live with that and see it as an interesting challenge and consider your daily when’s your small wins as exciting then I think project management is for you we will stop here for now hope you enjoyed this section of the PMP training and I will see you on the next video which will be on integration management thank you for watching and see you on the next video take care bye-bye
