Understanding why people do what you ask

Because personal power is the ability to influence and guide the actions of others, the first step in developing this power is understanding why people choose to do what you ask in the first place. People respond to your requests and directions for many reasons, including the following:

• Rewards: People do what you ask because they want the benefits you can give them. Examples of rewards include raises and recognition.
• Punishments: People do what you ask because they don’t want what you can give them. Examples of punishments include poor performance appraisals and undesirable job assignments.
• Your position: People take your requests more seriously because they feel the project manager should direct team members. You can lose this power if you wield it inappropriately, but you have it initially.
• What you stand for: People do what you ask because they agree with your goals. They know that your requests and actions are attempts to achieve the same results they want to achieve.
• Who you are: People listen to you because they appreciate and respect who you are, as reflected by your compassion, your loyalty to others, your sense of humor, or other positive characteristics of your attitudes and behaviors.
• Your expertise: People listen to you because they respect the skills and knowledge that you bring to your job. They listen to you because they believe you’re probably right.

You don’t have to be the technical expert on your project to command the respect of your team members and effectively lead your project. But you do have to be an expert in the skills and knowledge that your job demands on the project. Because you’re the project manager, these skills and knowledge include your abilities to plan and control the project, encourage effective communication, encourage a positive and productive work environment, and understand the political environment in your overall organization.

Of course, your technical expertise can be a significant asset if you use it correctly. Your praise for a job well done means a lot more to your team members than praise from someone who’s less qualified to assess the work.

Take note that being both the technical expert and the project manager on your project can work against you. If you’re not careful, you can discourage others from accepting responsibilities and performing their work independently for one or more of the following reasons:

• They feel that their work can never be as good as yours.
• You keep the more challenging and important assignments for yourself because you like the work and think you can do it best.
• You resist approaches that differ from the ones you normally take.
• You tend to micromanage people to ensure that they’re performing assignments just as you would (turn to Chapter 12 for details on micromanagement).

Although many factors can contribute to your ability to influence people, your power over your team members is generally one of the following:

• Ascribed: Someone gives you authority to reward and discipline others.
• Achieved: You earn the respect and allegiance of other people.

Achieved power is far more effective and enduring than ascribed power. People who act in response to your ascribed power usually do the least amount of work necessary to get the rewards they want or to avoid the negative consequences they fear. On the other hand, people motivated by your achieved power work to accomplish the highest possible quality of results because they’ve decided that doing so is in their best interests (and yours).

Whether or not you recognize and acknowledge it, you have considerable opportunity to develop and use achieved power. You can choose how you want to influence people’s behavior, or you can inadvertently influence their behavior. Either way, your actions influence other people’s behavior.

Establishing the bases of your power

You can get a sense of the power you have over someone by taking note of the willingness with which they agree to do and then do what you request. If you already get all the cooperation from others that you need, just keep doing what you’re doing. However, if you feel frustrated by people’s resistance and lack of cooperation when you ask for their help, take steps to improve the power you have over them.

Successfully influencing the behavior of others requires, first, that you understand the different types of power you have over them and, second, that you effectively use that power. Your ascribed power over people depends, in part, on their perceptions of the specific authority you and others whom you can influence have over them. Your achieved power is based on people’s perceptions of what you know, who you are, and what you stand for.

Take the following steps to improve your ability to influence your team members and other people in your project environment:

• Determine the authority you have over the people you want to influence. Common types of authority include the ability to give salary increases and promotions, complete performance appraisals, and assign people to future jobs.
• Find out who else has authority over the people you want to influence. If you don’t make the decision about whether and how much to increase a person’s salary but you can influence the individual who does, the person will react to you as if you, too, have some measure of ascribed power over them.
• Clarify for yourself how and why the project’s successful completion benefits your organization, and share those benefits with the people you want to influence. Knowing all the benefits your project is designed to yield puts you in a better position to help others see why helping you complete your project is in their best interests.
• Get to know the people you want to influence; understand, appreciate, and acknowledge their special talents and strengths. Getting to know other people helps you understand the types of rewards and recognition they appreciate most. It also tells them you care for them as people, not just as technical resources for your project.
• Let the people you want to influence get to know your good side. Your achieved power over others is based on their perceptions of your character and abilities. Be mindful not to give other team members the impression of favoritism or partiality.
• Don’t condemn or complain, but do give feedback when necessary. Condemning is making negative judgments about others; complaining is criticizing people or things without doing anything to improve them. Both behaviors entail sharing negative opinions rather than facts, which demoralizes and demotivates people while doing little to achieve high-quality results. Constructive feedback, on the other hand, entails sharing factual information objectively to improve people’s performance. People respect others whom they feel are interested in helping them succeed.
• Become proficient in the tasks you have to perform. People listen to you more seriously when they believe you know what you’re talking about.

You must reestablish your bases of power for each new project you perform because you may be dealing with different people on each project and because your power bases depend heavily on the specific details of the project itself. Further, even on the same project, your bases of power can diminish over time if you don’t consistently reinforce them. Meeting with team members at the start of your project can help them appreciate your style and recognize that everyone wants to accomplish similar goals. However, if you don’t have any more contact with your team members for six months, their initial positive impressions can fade — right along with your ability to influence their commitment and performance.

Increasing commitment by clarifying your project’s benefits

Although some people commit to completing an assignment because someone tells them to do so, you get a much more serious commitment when a person recognizes and appreciates a project’s benefits. When discussing your project’s benefits with your team, consider those benefits that are most important to your organization, its employees, and its clients, such as:

• Improved products and services
• Improved internal processes and procedures
• Increased sales
• Improved productivity
• A better work environment

Also consider potential benefits to each team member, such as:

• Acquiring new skills and knowledge
• Working in an enjoyable environment
• Expanding business contacts
• Enhancing career potential

When you help people realize the personal benefits they can get from participating in your project, you increase their commitment to the project and, therefore, the chances that the project will succeed.

Occasionally, someone reminds us that their team members receive salaries for doing their jobs. In other words, this person is suggesting that they don’t have to worry about whether their team members realize personal benefits from doing their assigned tasks. As far as they are concerned, people will perform their assignments because they want to receive their paychecks. Unfortunately, however, this type of reward power encourages people to do the least work necessary to ensure they receive their next paycheck rather than to work toward the highest quality results.

I’m not suggesting that your main concerns on a project are your team members’ personal benefits. However, people are more committed if they feel they can accomplish their personal goals while helping their organization achieve its goals.

Do the following to help your team understand and appreciate the benefits your project can achieve for the organization:

• Identify the situation that led to your project.
• Identify your project’s key drivers and clarify their hopes for the project (see Chapter 4 for more about project drivers).
• Encourage team members to discuss the expected benefits and the value of those benefits.

Do the following to encourage your team members to identify the personal benefits they may realize from participating in your project:

• Discuss their personal interests and career goals and relate those interests and goals to aspects of the project.
• Discuss past projects they’ve enjoyed and the reasons they’ve enjoyed them.
• Discuss some of the benefits that you and other people hope to realize by working on this project.

Encouraging persistence by demonstrating project feasibility

A project is feasible if it’s possible to accomplish. No matter how desirable you may feel a project is, if you’re convinced that nothing you do can lead to its success, you’ll give up more easily when you encounter the slightest of difficulties (and so will your team members). You don’t need a guarantee of success, but you must believe that you have a reasonable chance at it.

Feasibility is a subjective assessment. What seems impossible to one person can appear feasible to another. Further, your assessment of feasibility can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think an assignment is feasible, you work hard to complete it; if you encounter problems, you try to work them out. However, if you really believe you have no chance of succeeding, you give up at the first sign of difficulty. Any problems you encounter just confirm what you already knew — the project was doomed from the start. Of course, as soon as you give up, you have no chance of succeeding, so you’ve confirmed your initial belief that the project wasn’t feasible!

Help people believe a project is feasible by working with them to define what the team will produce, when, and how. Specifically, do the following:

• Involve team members in the planning process.
• Encourage them to identify potential concerns so you can address them.
• Explain why you feel that your targets and plans are feasible.
• Develop responsive risk management plans (see Chapter 10).

Letting people know how they’re doing

Getting your team members to appreciate your project’s value and feasibility helps you motivate them initially. However, if the project lasts longer than a couple of weeks, the team’s initial motivation can die out without continual reinforcement from you. In general, people working on a particular task need to know how they’re doing over time for three reasons:

• Achieving intermediate milestones provides personal satisfaction.
• Recognizing their successes confirms they’re on the right track.
• Successfully completing intermediate steps reinforces their belief that they can accomplish the final goals.

Have you ever seen a 12-month project in which all the major milestones occurred in months 11 and 12? When do you think people got serious about this project? Months 10, 11, and 12 (if they were still around by then)! Obviously, you want your team members to stay interested and motivated throughout the life of your project, not just at its climax. Do the following to help keep people on track and excited about your project:

• Establish meaningful and frequent intermediate milestones.
• Continually assess how people are doing.
• Frequently share information with people about their performance.
• Continually reinforce the project’s potential benefits.

See Chapter 15 for ways to inform people of your project’s progress.

Providing rewards for work well done

Rewarding people at a project’s conclusion for their effort and accomplishments confirms to them that they accomplished the desired results and met the stakeholders’ needs. It also reassures them that team members and managers recognize and appreciate their contributions. This recognition, in turn, makes it more likely that they’ll welcome the opportunity to participate in future projects.

Post-project rewards can take several forms, including one or more of the following:

• You talk with each team member and express your appreciation for their contribution.
• You express your appreciation in a written note or email to the person.
• You express your appreciation in writing to the person’s supervisor.
• You formally submit input to the person’s performance appraisal.
• You nominate the person for a future assignment they want.
• You nominate the person for a cash bonus or some other award.
• You issue the person a certificate of appreciation.
• You take the person out to lunch.

Rather than guessing which form of reward your team members will appreciate most, ask each of them directly.

To make the rewards you offer the most effective, do the following:

• Be sure your acknowledgment and appreciation are honest and sincere.
• Note the specific contribution the reward recognizes.
• Respect the person’s personal style and preferences when giving the reward:
  • Some people enjoy receiving acknowledgments in front of their co-workers, while others prefer receiving them in private.
  • Some people appreciate receiving an individual award; others appreciate receiving an award presented to the entire team.

Diversity is an asset worthy of inclusion

Team members with different backgrounds, different experiences, and different outlooks typically mature into a more enriched team, with a significantly larger knowledge base of diverse experiences and ideas from which to draw, than a homogeneous, uniform team. This maturation does not spontaneously occur on its own in most instances though. Be deliberate and emphatic in your acceptance of diversity and the inclusion of these diverse qualities and your project team will follow suit. It can be intimidating to join a diverse team, as many people tend to focus more on the differences they see than the more subtle similarities that exist beneath the surface. Establish a welcoming and respectful framework for your project team. Newcomers will feel like productive, equal members of the team much faster than if they are made to feel like an outsider.

As a project manager, you’re accountable for the successful execution of project activities to yield an acceptable output for your stakeholders. Your team will be more likely to solve a problem (and may solve it faster and more efficiently) if people on your team have encountered similar problems in the past and feel comfortable sharing those past experiences with the team.

It is not enough to simply have a diverse team; diversity without inclusion will lead to an environment where team members are reluctant, or unwilling, to express their ideas and beliefs for fear they will be treated disrespectfully if other team members do not share the same backgrounds and perspectives that resulted in those ideas and beliefs. The success of your project relies on project team members working together in a respectful and collaborative way to accomplish your shared goal.

Leading by example is very powerful when leading any team. Inclusive leadership is contagious; others will follow your lead if they believe you value and respect your team members and foster a meritocratic team dynamic, where people are evaluated and rewarded on the merits of skill, talent, effort, and achievement.

Equity is a choice – choose it

As discussed previously, equity is not the same as equality. Let’s say you are managing a four-month long project to refresh your company’s intranet site. You have three project team members who all require a laptop (don’t worry, you planned ahead and budgeted for this equipment) to perform the majority of the tasks they are each assigned. One of your team members, Diego, happens to be legally blind and has been for most of his life. If equality is your primary goal, you would procure three of the same mid-level laptops, all with the same features and specifications and distribute them to your team. You’ve treated each member equally by procuring the same laptop for all of them; however, this is approach is not equitable.

Diego requires a specialized computer that narrates aloud all of his actions, button clicks, mouse moves, and so on, and a keyboard with Braille on each key. Without this specialized computer and keyboard, Diego will require significantly more time to complete the same tasks as the other team members and will most likely miss the project milestone dates. You could have avoided this predicament had you pursued an equitable solution rather than an equal one. The equitable solution is to provide Diego with the specialized computer and keyboard he needs so he can begin the project on the same footing as the other two team members, both of whom can be successful with the mid-level laptops. Even though Diego’s laptop costs $3,000 more than the other team members’ laptops, this is the equitable solution because it renders Diego just as capable of performing the tasks assigned to him as the other team members.