What is the main message of The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management?

The main message of The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management is the key interpersonal skills needed for successful project management.

How long does it take to read The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management?

The estimated reading time for The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management is a few hours. The Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Is The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management a good book? Is it worth reading?

The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management is worth reading for its practical insights and tips on improving interpersonal skills in project management.

The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management Summary of Key Ideas and Review

Name: The Eight Essential People Skills for Project Management
Rating: 4.2 (194 reviews)
Author: Zachary Wong

Introduction

What’s in it for me? Push past people problems with this hands-on guide to project management.

Leading a team can be a psychological minefield. If you want to bring your project to completion, you’ll have to motivate the unmotivated, inspire shirkers to pull their weight and deal with uncommunicative superiors who expect you to read their minds. In short, people problems are everywhere.

Solving them isn’t an easy task. Today’s workplaces are more horizontal than ever before, and old-school, command-and-control management techniques are distinctly passé. That means you’ll have to tread a fine line if you want to maintain your authority without alienating your employees.

Luckily, you’re not alone. World-renowned management consultant Zachary Wong has crafted the ultimate hands-on guide to navigating this hazardous terrain. Built around eight core people skills, these blinks will show you how you can start aligning individual psychology with your organization’s key objectives. Along the way, you’ll learn:

why today’s businesses resemble a wedge rather than a pyramid;
how to manage employees’ attitudes and why they matter; and
why you should be friendly, not friends, with your team members.

Key idea 1 of 9

The role of team leaders has changed as companies have become less hierarchical.

Whether it’s a general casting his eye over the battlefield or a manager analysing the business environment, successful leadership is all about adapting strategy to the facts on the ground. And when the facts change, it’s vital to change your approach. That also goes for project management – after all, the world of business has experienced dramatic changes in recent decades.

In the old days, corporations resembled pyramids. At the top sat a small number of powerful executives. Below them were the senior managers who relayed instructions to middle managers, who, in turn, oversaw the largest and least powerful group: employees. It was a top-down model; responsibility, pay and prestige increased the further up the pyramid you went. Rising through the ranks was a steep and difficult climb.

Today, that model seems increasingly passé. The idea that the workers at the base of the structure are laborers requiring an autocratic, command-and-control approach is outdated. Modern businesses are increasingly becoming more democratic structures. The contemporary workforce is more educated, skilled and tech-savvy than ever before, and employees expect to see that reflected in their roles. What they want, in other words, isn’t just a paycheck but an opportunity to realize their potential.

Businesses have responded to this new reality by shifting from a pyramid model to a wedge structure. Imagine cutting a pyramid in half and laying it on its side. It now looks like a doorstop-shaped wedge with three sections interacting on a horizontal rather than a vertical axis.

At the smallest end are individual contributors – employees whose unique contributions are essential to the organization’s overall success. In the middle are work teams – groups of contributors working toward a common goal. Finally, there’s management. The size of their section doesn’t reflect their absolute numbers, but rather the amount of power and resources at their disposal.

This model requires project managers to play a new role. As a team leader in this structure, your job is to work fluidly between all three sections, connecting individual performance to your organization’s strategic aims. Call it organizational alignment, which is essentially about understanding the way the small details of managing relationships with individual contributors affects the success of the company as a whole.

In the next blink, we’ll look at the first key skill: using the wedge model to manage performance and people problems.

Key idea 2 of 9

The wedge model is a great tool to visualize and manage team performance.

Today’s project managers play a vital coordinating role, and it’s your job to make sure all three sections of your company’s wedge structure are working together. So what do you do when things go wrong? Well, like a doctor, you’ll need an accurate diagnosis before you can prescribe a course of action. The wedge model is a diagnostic tool that helps you do just that.

Let’s stick with our medical analogy for a second. When you visit a doctor, he’ll usually do two things: first, locate the problem – is it, say, a back or a heart problem? Second, he’ll determine whether he’s competent to treat the complaint or if he needs to refer you to a specialist.

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Key idea 3 of 9

Effective team leaders understand the difference between friendship and friendliness.

We’ve seen that the modern workplace emphasizes horizontal rather than hierarchical relationships. This means that boundaries between different roles are more porous, and leaders are often on friendlier terms with their subordinates than they used to be.

That can put you in an awkward situation. After all, friends are equals; they do each other favors, make exceptions and let mistakes slide. But that’s the last thing you can afford to do as a leader tasked with making tough calls. So how do you square this circle?

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Key idea 4 of 9

Successful teams are defined by their emphasis on inclusiveness.

The most effective teams are greater than the sum of their parts. They share a sense of purpose, champion collaborative work and regularly exceed performance expectations. Whatever their differences, they all share one thing: they espouse inclusiveness. That’s all about involving employees in day-to-day processes and keeping them in the loop.

Making people feel like they’re in the loop is one of the most important human factors when it comes to building successful teams. Why? Well, “the loop” is a place of safety, trust and support that makes the workplace feel like a second home. Most importantly, it fulfils a hardwired human need: the desire for a sense of purpose and acceptance.

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Key idea 5 of 9

Attitude matters, and there’s an art to managing it.

As we’ve seen, people expect more from their work today than they did in the past. They don’t just want a paycheck and camaraderie – they also want job satisfaction. That’s something you’ll have to give them as a team leader, especially if you want them to go the extra mile that gives your company an edge.

To do that, you have to start managing people’s attitudes. Take the hypothetical case of Charlie, a young kid whose mom takes him to an ice cream parlor when he does well in school. One day, his mother tells him to get a napkin before eating his treat. As he reaches for it, he drops his ice cream cone.

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Key idea 6 of 9

Tackling poor performance is tricky, but it can be done by using the Past-Present-Future Model.

Sometimes, the promise of ice cream just doesn’t work. The truth is that you’ll come across employees who shirk, whine, procrastinate, make excuses and – worst of all – claim that they’re actually doing a great job, even as they fail to hit their targets. Dealing with them will be one of your toughest tasks as a team leader.

In fact, it’s so tricky that lots of managers will do anything to avoid tackling it. Why? Well, take a survey of 68 local government supervisors carried out by E. L. Perkins of the University of North Carolina in 2012. When they were asked what stopped them dealing with underperformers, 59 percent cited their fear of confrontation, 49 percent their inability to handle awkward conversations and 41 percent their unwillingness to get people in trouble. It’s a great example of the author’s maxim that people problems are like minefields – no one wants to go there.

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Key idea 7 of 9

Ends don’t justify means, and sustainable success means focusing on team behavior.

Do the ends justify the means? Marty thought so. He was a bullish manager hired to oversee a telecommunications company’s expansion into a new regional market. He had a gung-ho attitude to winning new contracts.

A couple of years in, things were looking great: the firm was seemingly well-established and had a ton of new clients. Then came the audit. It turned out Marty’s team had been offering such generous terms to the clients in the new market that they’d basically bankrupted the new branch office.

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Key idea 8 of 9

Risk-takers understand that you can’t beat fear, but you can manage it.

Business is all about taking risks. But no matter how much time you put into analyzing the market before taking the plunge, there’s always a degree of uncertainty. That’s both normal and unavoidable, but it can also undermine effective project management. Why? Well, uncertainty generates fear and anxiety, which, in turn, affects your willingness to take the risks that are essential to success.

Call it the Black Box Effect. However carefully you inspect what’s in front of you, there’s no telling what’s inside the box. It could be a trick, a trap or a treat – there’s simply no way to know before you open it. The problem, however, is that humans have a hardwired survival instinct that makes them innately cautious. That’s pretty handy when you’re out on the savannah facing down lions, but it can be a problem in the boardroom.

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Key idea 9 of 9

Effective team leaders understand the importance of managing their bosses.

Your role as a team leader is full of tough calls and awkward situations. Dealing with difficult employees is hard enough, but that’s nothing compared to your relationship with your boss. In this blink, we’ll take a look at one of the most important people skills you’ll ever learn: getting along with superiors.

It’s a vital bit of know-how. After all, your health and happiness depend on it. Take it from a 2014 Harvard Business School survey of 20,000 employees working across a broad variety of industries. According to the survey, people who felt respected by their managers were healthier and more satisfied with their careers. Meanwhile, a 2015 Gallup survey of 7,272 American adults found that one in two had quit a job at some point to escape difficult bosses and improve their quality of life!

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