How to Be a Successful Project Leader

A project leader or project manager is someone who leads a team through a project’s journey until its destination is reached. They are the people who have to keep the team motivated, help the team solve problems, keep things on schedule and of consistently high quality. There is a lot of responsibility on the project leaders’ shoulders. Yet, it is a fulfilling job as you see staff rise to the challenges and projects completed successfully. 

That isn’t to say all projects are completed successfully. Projects can fall through or fail without the correct leadership. The following top tips will help you to know how to be a successful project leader.

Know Your Goals

What is most important for a project leader is to know what they are aiming for. Take the time to understand what the project is about, what it is trying to achieve. It is your responsibility to know everything there is to know about your project. This can help you by:

• Enabling you to set accurate and useful milestones.
• Answer questions posed by your team with fluent accuracy.
• Speak with confidence about the subject matter.
• Make informed decisions when problem-solving.

In 2013, a bus driver in Wales was asked to drive some school kids to Tywyn. He did as he was told without looking into the project. That’s how the trouble started. Wales is home to three Tywyns and he had taken them to the wrong one.

Moral of the story. If you do not understand your project you can easily take it in the wrong direction.

Know Your Team

Without knowing your team, you are not going to be able to fully comprehend how to communicate with them. Different people require different methods of communication. Take time to get to know everyone on your team, even the quiet ones who hide in the corner and work. Understand the project from their point of view. 

Once you have gotten to know your team well you will be able to align your goals with theirs. This will increase the morale of the project and produce better project results.

One young woman wanted nothing more than to work in an ambulance, saving lives. She found herself working in a hotel. Her efforts were minimal, and her morale was low. Once the manager explained to her how a supervisory role would increase her prospects as she would be learning leadership skills, her work improved. She put in extra effort to get that supervisor job, fulfilling her dream of being accepted onto the ambulance course she’d been after a year later. 

Moral of the story. If a member of your team can see how they will benefit from doing as you encourage, they are more likely to give it everything they have got.

Know Your Strengths

You need to know your own strengths and limitations to be a successful leader. The project leader has so much on their shoulders, they cannot assume they will be good at every aspect. Chances are there are things that they are not great at and need help with.

Knowing your strengths means you can play to them. Strong organizational skills? Use that. Effective feedback skills? Be sure to give your team great feedback. But in knowing what you are good at, you must also know what you are bad at, and not be afraid to get help with those. 

If your ability to use empathy is low, look at your team. Who has the strongest empathy skills? Ask them to help you. Are you great at making goals but not great at being organized? Build up your organizational skills or ask someone to help you keep organized. Great communication skills but a strong ability to talk for hours (bad time-keeping) get your team to set you a timer and cut you off when need be. 

One woman was running a project on improving a client’s journey. She was excellent at getting everyone thinking creatively. Passionate about her topic. She had a fantastic way of speaking and was easy to listen to. However, she could talk for hours and nearly always ran overtime. After approaching one of the men on the team who frequently complained about her timing an agreement was made. When she ran overtime, he would place his hand in the air, like a lad in a classroom. When he did this, she would finish her sentence and wrap up the talk. Then she would always thank him for keeping her on track and ask that if anyone still had questions that they go to see her afterward. 

Moral of the story. If a team member thinks you can improve on a skill, discuss it with them. It could vastly improve your leadership.

Know Your Ground Rules

From the start, you need ground rules for all to follow. These can be really simple rules like Be Polite. Be on time. Or Believe in yourself. Or there could be more specific and strict rules. Work must be completed on time. Always stick to the schedule. Or Quality must be high, low-quality items are unacceptable. 

The point is to make sure you set some rules at the start and then stick to them throughout the project journey. 

It is recommended that you have the first meeting as a project leader with your staff as the meeting you set your ground rules. These could be already prepared and well thought out, or they could be made as a collaboration. Rules made by all the staff together are most likely to be adhered to if everyone believes they are relevant. Make it clear that the rules are there to improve their environment and the project’s success. 

Think of school. The first class in every class. Copying rules off the Whiteboard. Teachers would stick to those rules and they expected you to do the same. It was no good telling you the rules halfway through the year after you’ve been in trouble. Knowing them ahead of time solves issues before they arise.

Bottom Line. Setting the rules at the start of the project ensures that everyone is on the same page and knows what is expected of them.

Know How to Be Organised

The organization is vital to any project. As a project leader, it falls to you to keep things organized. You need to know:

• Dates and deadlines.
• Timelines.
• Goals and milestones.
• Any side projects that are helping the big picture.
• The amount of staff you have.
• Who is working on what?
• What has been completed and what still needs to be done. 

The bigger the project the more you have to work on. If you are not organized, you are going to get buried under a mountain of chaos.  

Some practical tips.

• Keep a wall calendar. Something you can always see with major dates highlighted.
• Use an app or a diary to take note of all deadlines, dates, and milestones along with everything these dates need.
• Use project management apps or software to keep track of what everyone is doing. 
• If you are all working in one room, have a wall dedicated to keeping your team updated. Here everyone can tick off what has been done, write what they are working on, and look at what still needs to be done.
• Have a to-do list on your desk on a daily basis and use it.

Know What it Means to Lead

A project leader is a leader. This means they need to be using an array of leadership skills to keep everything, and everyone, moving in one direction. There are 2 ways to be a leader. 

1. Through title.
2. Free of title.

Those who lead through title are those who have been given the job but have not earned the respect of any of the team underneath them. Those who lead-free of title are those who have shown leadership skills and traits time and time again, earning a reputation of a good leader. It is the leader who leads Free of title that is more likely to be respected and listened to when they lead a project. 

The rest of us need to consistently work at building out our leadership skills to reach that point. Here are some of the more important skills you will want to concentrate on as a project leader. 

Know How to Delegate

It has often been said: if you want something done right, do it yourself. This is the wrong attitude to take when you are leading a team on a project. Many people prefer to do things themselves rather than delegate because; they don’t want to bother anyone else, they feel like asking others to do it shows weakness on their part or the reason that it won’t take them long. There are several reasons you need to delegate as a project leader:

1. You are the project leader. You have enough to do. Delegating frees up your time for the more important things like quality checking. When a leader has too much to do, quality checking is one of the first things to suffer.
2. It shows confidence in your team. Keeping the jobs to yourself is quite a selfish move. If you delegate a job to someone you are telling them that you believe in them, you believe they can accomplish this work and accomplish it well. It is a vote of confidence and shouldn’t be missed. 
3. Improves the relationship of trust. Many leaders think they have to be Gods. Unflinching, all-powerful. But studies have shown that teams respond better to leaders who acknowledge that they are only human. By delegating tasks, you are asking your team for help, showing that you cannot do it on your own. This improves relations and builds up trust and respect within the team. 

Know How to Give Feedback

Well-given feedback can turn a good team member into an excellent team member. Every project leader has the ability to go through an entire project without giving any feedback. Think about that for a second. That project leader will have never said, you did a good job, nice work, or if you do this it can turn out twice as good.

Such little comments improve the morale of the team, but it also prevents a team from becoming stagnant. They can keep improving their skills, they can keep the passion and the motivation high. Feedback, good and bad, can help a team feel like they are accomplishing something. 

Giving feedback to your team also shows that you have been paying attention to them and their actions. It shows that you care about who they are and what they do. It shows them that you have confidence in them, a leader would never give constructive feedback if they did not think that the employee had the potential to improve. 

Know How to Set Meaningful Milestones

A goal will ensure that the project gets reached, but that can be a long way off. Milestones help a team to see the progress over a long stream of time. 

For example, if you had a project to create a new holiday booking system in a year. Your team can spend the entire year working on it going through phases of it’s a long way off, or not sure which part to work on next. A milestone in this situation will give smaller goals for your team to reach on a regular basis. One small project after another leading to the completed piece.

This method will:

• Keep your team feeling motivated.
• Help your team see the progress and be empowered by it.
• Give you and the team something to celebrate as you aim for that goal.
• Maintain strong organization throughout the project term.
• Prevent any last-minute rushes to get the work complete as the goal draws nearer.

Know the Importance of Showing Appreciation

A final point for all project leaders to remember is to show appreciation to the team. Here we are not talking about the end of the project, we are talking about consistently showing your team that you appreciate the efforts and the work that they put in.

How much a team member feels appreciated is directly related to job satisfaction and morale. The better these feelings are, the more likely they are to present better results to you. Good appreciation also has a bearing on mental health, so it is important to ensure your team knows that you value them. 

There are many small and practical things you can do to achieve this:

• Feed them. Everyone loves food. Order a pizza on a random occasion or buy loads of ice cream on a hot day. Even providing coffee and biscuits is enough to lift the spirits and help someone feel more valued. 
• Hold reward ceremonies. The company Recom hold regular reward evenings where the staff gets to vote on the hardest-working member of the team, also the management votes on the member of staff they appreciate the most. The way they hold it is with everyone writing why they voted for that person on a slip of paper. All votes get a readout, so people hear all the good things others have to say about them and a prize is given to the one with the most votes. This system improves morale and encourages people to work their hardest before the next ceremony (monthly).
• Send out a survey. Ask your team what they would like to see happen to improve their surroundings, then act upon it. 
• Use thank you notes and cards. They are small and mighty. People will always appreciate feeling appreciated and a thank you note could be the lift they need.
• Notice the staff. Take note of what they do and thank them for it. Do this on an individual basis, or stand in front of them all and tell them how much you have appreciated them that day. 

If you think about it, you will find many more ways to thank your team for their hard work. Be sure to do what you can to show them appreciation.