Top 10 Qualities of a Project Manager

• Top 10 Qualities of a Project Manager
• Refusing a ‘diminished self’
• Keep your eyes on the prize
• Høy temperatur på Etiopia-debatt

Top 10 Qualities of a Project Manager Posted: 16 May 2013 09:10 AM PDT By Timothy R. Barry http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/role-of-the-project-manager.html What qualities are most important for a project leader to be effective? Over the past few years, the people at ESI International, world leaders in Project Management Training, have looked in to what makes an effective project leader. With the unique opportunity to ask some of the most talented project leaders in the world on their Project Leadership courses ESI have managed to collect a running tally on their responses. Below are the top 10 in rank order according to frequency listed. Inspires a Shared Vision An effective project leader is often described as having a vision of where to go and the ability to articulate it. Visionaries thrive on change and being able to draw new boundaries. It was once said that a leader is someone who "lifts us up, gives us a reason for being and gives the vision and spirit to change." Visionary leaders enable people to feel they have a real stake in the project. They empower people to experience the vision on their own. According to Bennis "They offer people opportunities to create their own vision, to explore what the vision will mean to their jobs and lives, and to envision their future as part of the vision for the organisation." (Bennis, 1997) Good Communicator The ability to communicate with people at all levels is almost always named as the second most important skill by project managers and team members. Project leadership calls for clear communication about goals, responsibility, performance, expectations and feedback. There is a great deal of value placed on openness and directness. The project leader is also the team's link to the larger organisation. The leader must have the ability to effectively negotiate and use persuasion when necessary to ensure the success of the team and project. Through effective communication, project leaders support individual and team achievements by creating explicit guidelines for accomplishing results and for the career advancement of team members. Integrity One of the most important things a project leader must remember is that his or her actions, and not words, set the modus operandi for the team. Good leadership demands commitment to, and demonstration of, ethical practices. Creating standards for ethical behaviour for oneself and living by these standards, as well as rewarding those who exemplify these practices, are responsibilities of project leaders. Leadership motivated by self-interest does not serve the well being of the team. Leadership based on integrity represents nothing less than a set of values others share, behaviour consistent with values and dedication to honesty with self and team members. In other words the leader "walks the talk" and in the process earns trust. Enthusiasm Plain and simple, we don't like leaders who are negative - they bring us down. We want leaders with enthusiasm, with a bounce in their step, with a can-do attitude. We want to believe that we are part of an invigorating journey - we want to feel alive. We tend to follow people with a can-do attitude, not those who give us 200 reasons why something can't be done. Enthusiastic leaders are committed to their goals and express this commitment through optimism. Leadership emerges as someone expresses such confident commitment to a project that others want to share his or her optimistic expectations. Enthusiasm is contagious and effective leaders know it. Empathy What is the difference between empathy and sympathy? Although the words are similar, they are, in fact, mutually exclusive. According to Norman Paul, in sympathy the subject is principally absorbed in his or her own feelings as they are projected into the object and has little concern for the reality and validity of the object's special experience. Empathy, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of the object as a separate individual, entitled to his or her own feelings, ideas and emotional history (Paul, 1970). As one student so eloquently put it, "It's nice when a project leader acknowledges that we all have a life outside of work." Competence Simply put, to enlist in another's cause, we must believe that that person knows what he or she is doing. Leadership competence does not however necessarily refer to the project leader's technical abilities in the core technology of the business. As project management continues to be recognised as a field in and of itself, project leaders will be chosen based on their ability to successfully lead others rather than on technical expertise, as in the past. Having a winning track record is the surest way to be considered competent. Expertise in leadership skills is another dimension in competence. The ability to challenge, inspire, enable, model and encourage must be demonstrated if leaders are to be seen as capable and competent. Ability to Delegate Tasks Trust is an essential element in the relationship of a project leader and his or her team. You demonstrate your trust in others through your actions - how much you check and control their work, how much you delegate and how much you allow people to participate. Individuals who are unable to trust other people often fail as leaders and forever remain little more that micro-managers, or end up doing all of the work themselves. As one project management student put it, "A good leader is a little lazy." An interesting perspective! Cool Under Pressure In a perfect world, projects would be delivered on time, under budget and with no major problems or obstacles to overcome. But we don't live in a perfect world - projects have problems. A leader with a hardy attitude will take these problems in stride. When leaders encounter a stressful event, they consider it interesting, they feel they can influence the outcome and they see it as an opportunity. "Out of the uncertainty and chaos of change, leaders rise up and articulate a new image of the future that pulls the project together." (Bennis 1997) And remember - never let them see you sweat. Team-Building Skills A team builder can best be defined as a strong person who provides the substance that holds the team together in common purpose toward the right objective. In order for a team to progress from a group of strangers to a single cohesive unit, the leader must understand the process and dynamics required for this transformation. He or she must also know the appropriate leadership style to use during each stage of team development. The leader must also have an understanding of the different team players styles and how to capitalise on each at the proper time, for the problem at hand. Problem Solving Skills Although an effective leader is said to share problem-solving responsibilities with the team, we expect our project leaders to have excellent problem-solving skills themselves. They have a "fresh, creative response to here-and-now opportunities," and not much concern with how others have performed them. (Kouzes 1987

Refusing a ‘diminished self’ Posted: 16 May 2013 02:42 AM PDT Informed by prison experience, activist-scholar imagines a more open Ethiopia   By Corydon Ireland "I was in prison because I spoke," said Birtukan Midekssa, a Harvard Scholar at Risk who spent 41 months of her life in Ethiopian prison. Four years ago this spring, Birtukan Midekssa was in solitary confinement in an Ethiopian prison. Her cell was 13 feet wide and 20 feet long and had no window. She was allowed only two visitors: her elderly mother and her 3-year-old daughter. Midekssa left Ethiopia in 2011, after two imprisonments that consumed 41 months of her life. She stayed first in Washington, D.C., and then at Stanford University. Today — grateful, happy, and energized — she has an office (with a window) at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, where she is a fellow this year. (A lawyer by training, Midekssa is also a Visiting Fellow with Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program; starting in the fall she’ll pursue a one-year mid-career master’s degree in public administration through the Mason Program at Harvard Kennedy School.) Most apt of all her local connections, perhaps, is her role as a Harvard Scholar at Risk. The program — based in New York, with dozens of affiliates at universities across the world — guarantees a year or more of refuge for scholars, writers, and scientists who in their native lands are under threat of death, imprisonment, or harassment. "I was in prison because I spoke," said Midekssa. She was first sent to prison in 2005 — entering when her daughter Halley was 8 months old — and then again in 2008. Both times she was sentenced to life (the second time her original sentence was death). Both times Midekssa was pardoned because of pressure from international human rights groups. But she was ready to live her whole life in a cell. "I was being imprisoned for a right cause. What else could I do?" said Midekssa. "If you restrain your self-expression, you are left with what? Your diminished self." Midekssa had entered Ethiopia’s political arena in 2002 after serving nearly six years on that nation’s federal criminal bench. "Most of my years were full of challenge," she said of being a judge — a struggle to "keep my independence and professional standards." While she was on the bench, Ethiopian officials routinely tried to influence her decisions, she said. But she refused to go along, despite pressure that sometimes ratcheted up to threats of death. Her most notorious act of defiant honesty was to free a former defense minister, Siye Abraha, who’d been accused of corruption on dubious grounds, charges that had already cost him years in prison. (Abraha himself was in the Mason Program at Harvard Kennedy School, from 2011 to 2012.) From girlhood, Midekssa had been enthralled by the idea that Ethiopia one day could be an open democracy, despite the fact that such a concept remained entirely theoretical during her early life. She was born in 1974, the last year of a dynasty of Ethiopian emperors that had started in the 13th century, and grew up in the capital city of Addis Ababa during a military dictatorship that lasted 17 years, ending when she was a senior in high school. Before the next dictatorship took hold, Ethiopia enjoyed a brief Golden Age of open political discussion, said Midekssa. "Naturally, I aspired to see a country in which individual liberty is protected — in which nobody is killed for their views." Midekssa knew that such killing was possible. In the mid-1970s, university students and others had rallied behind the idea of a Marxist-Leninist utopia for Ethiopia — an opposition movement that led to the death and disappearance of thousands. Her uncle, a promising student headed for university studies, was one of them, and his disappearance hovered over young Midekssa’s household. Her uncle’s story was both a warning and an inspiration. Her mother often told Midekssa how unwise it was of her uncle to be in politics, she said — but "if I were his age I would have done the same thing." Her childhood contained another influence that could be called political: her neighborhood. "The community life was very fervent," said Midekssa. "I grew up in a big family of small families." Mutual support, collective trust, and affection were the norms, she said, and the egalitarianism of her childhood "was an inspiration for a fair and democratic society." Her mother was a housewife; her father a soldier. Both were illiterate, she said, but intensely interested in education, and proud of the acuity their daughter displayed in the classrooms of her youth. By age 25, Midekssa was a federal judge specializing in criminal law — just one young face in a wave of young judges who replaced those associated with the deposed military regime. "I was full of enthusiasm from what I learned in law school," she said, "but the experience in court was entirely different." It was her struggle with maintaining the rule of law while on the bench, and her close-up view of official corruption, Midekssa said, that finally propelled her into politics. During the 2005 national elections, her Coalition for Unity and Democracy party won every parliamentary seat in the capital, and scored other big wins over the ruling front of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. But within days of the results she was in jail, along with other party members and a raft of independent journalists — all charged with treason. The arrest set her on a path to becoming Ethiopia’s most famous opposition figure. In 2010 she became the first woman in Ethiopian history to chair a political party, Unity for Democracy and Justice. At Harvard, in her law school setting, Midekssa has studied how the judiciary in closed societies can remain independent. But at the Du Bois Institute her focus has been investigating how Ethiopia can achieve democracy. There is a strong appetite for democracy there already, she said, along with a tradition of Christian-Muslim religious tolerance that suggests to her that democracy would thrive. But along with bedrock values there are also bedrock problems. For one, Ethiopia’s new constitution, in 1995, redrew the nation of 85 million along ethnic lines, fragmenting the overarching national identity into 80 ethnic identities within nine member states. That left Ethiopia "hollowed out," she said, "deprived of its national symbols and emblems." Meanwhile, the federal government has ruled with a strong hand, sometimes by regional proxies. Midekssa called the arrangement "an unholy marriage between authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism." Ethiopia’s aggressive central government and its weak regional states, she said, undermine "the virtues of federalism" and make the practice of democracy very unlikely. Leaders have also tightened their hold on the judiciary, the media, and the electoral process — a further "narrowing of the democratic sphere," Midekssa said. So what is to be done? The first step is to "recast the past," she said, to reclaim symbols and a national narrative that would make Ethiopia one again. Also, re-imagine the future, said Midekssa, by promoting the shared social values that, for instance, her own childhood represented. Then there are the practical steps, she said, including an official language, an independent supreme court, nationwide political parties to supplant those drawn along ethnic lines, and multicultural education to "help Ethiopians to imagine democratic Ethiopia, with all her mosaic."

Keep your eyes on the prize Posted: 15 May 2013 12:13 PM PDT by Yilma Bekele