The Basics of Project Management for Team Leaders

Being a team leader requires you to manage a project successfully, and there are several skills you need to have in order to do that. No matter what the project is, these are the key skills you need to successfully manage any project.

Being a Good Leader

The first part of being a team leader is being good at leading! While you are in charge of managing the project, you cannot be just a manager.

Being a leader means getting the whole team on board with the project vision, and keeping the path clear so that the team can steam on. You are in charge of motivating your team, but you also need to evaluate and negotiate issues.

The bottom line is, as the leader, the responsibility lies on you to ensure the project’s success.

Communication Skills

In any project, good communication can make a huge impact on the final results. If your team aren’t doing something right, maybe they didn’t fully understand the task?

An understanding on both sides is crucial to make sure everybody is on the same page about what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and even why it needs to be done. Good communication can also affect your rapport with clients.

Everybody benefits from receiving regular updates about the project so that there are no surprises. It is useful for information to be shared both ways, so everyone has a clear idea about what is going on.

Planning

While the project may already be going ahead, and many plans are already in place, there is still planning to go into each daily task, and of course planning-ahead for problems that could be encountered.

Having adequate planning in place for risk management will help problems to be resolved with less panic. Planning can be involved in working out your daily tasks, your schedule, and finding the best way to present project progress or new ideas to the team.

Good planning comes into every project and is the best way to keep yourself one-step ahead.

Organization

Going hand-in-hand with planning, organization means keeping everything clear and understood.

Being organized will help with having a clear view of everything that’s going on, being able to find things easily, as well as keeping track of overall progress. While tidiness and self-management can come into this, you can improve organization and clarity overall by having things in all the right places.

If you aren’t sure where to start, there are plenty of tools that can help you with organization, such as these project management tools reviewed by DPM. There are also plenty of apps to help organize all of your data, communications and even to track progress and create time-schedules. Staying organized can be made more efficient when utilizing these tools, and it also helps minimize human error.

Time-Management

Having good time management will help to ensure your project meets deadlines.

It is possibly one of the hardest skills to master if you struggle with it, so make the most of sufficient planning and organization to keep on top. You can utilize Gantt charts to get a clear view of where you need to be from start to finish, as well as daily scheduling and progress evaluations throughout your project to keep everybody on track.

Being a team leader can be an intimidating task, but with a good, strong team behind you, then anything is possible. Ensure you fully understand the project and, with these skills in tow, you can make it flourish.