Managing a Project with Your Team

Negotiation, Facilitation and Team Management: Acquiring Project Resources, Building Consensus, and Creating a High-Performing Project Team

2 days

Overview:

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the only skill set more important to project managers than communicating effectively is negotiations and conflict resolution.  Those skills can make the difference between a project that fails amid acrimony and resentment and a project that succeeds and builds great relationships within the team and across the organization. 

This two-day workshop is designed to introduce participants to proven techniques for negotiating with project stakeholders to:

• Acquire the necessary project resources
• Build consensus on project scope and requirements
• Create solid and clear understanding of the duties of team members and vendors

In addition, this workshop extends the application of those skill sets to the creation of an effective and highly functioning project team.

Objectives of the Workshop: 
By the close of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Apply proven techniques for negotiating for both internal and external resources and achieving consensus on project goals and requirements
• Facilitate the development of a high-performing project team that is cohesive, clear on its goals, and able to work together to accomplish project goals

Each day of this workshop will engage the participants in a day-long effort that, mixed with the presentation of content, will require them to apply the concepts and tools they have learned to a real-life project problem.

On Day 1, participants will be engaged in the negotiation of a project charter and be required to manage the interfaces between customer groups and product developers.  As is the case in real-world project, those groups will express different positions with regard to the project and be driven by different interests.  The course content will present participants with tools and strategies that will allow them to engage in a problem solving and negotiations exercise based on interests and principled negotiations strategies.  In addition, participants will be provided tools for managing their emotions and those of their stakeholders to create solutions that optimize the critical needs of project participants, which include appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status and role.

On Day 2, participants will use those tools, and additional tools, to build a project team.  Again employing a project case study, participants will be required to build ground rules for team operations, the role of each project participant, and a plan for continuing to manage the conflicts inherent in team operations.  Participants will be required to recognize and build on the competing interests of the team members and optimize the same five critical needs that were addressed on Day 1.

Those case studies will provide the opportunity for participants to employ the skills and methods they are learning and consistency for the workshop.  The combination of participant activity and instructor presentation is designed to provide a rich learning experience that will enable them to leave the workshop with skills that they can immediately make use of on their own projects.

Who Should Attend this Workshop?
 This workshop will be of value to:

• Project managers
• Project team members
• Project stakeholders
• PMO managers
• Other organizational managers
• Business analysts

Outline of the Workshop:

Day 1:

• Module 1: Introduction to the Workshop
  • Identification of the goals of the workshop and its schedule, requirements for participation, student introductions and expectations
• Module 2: Introduction to conflict management and positional negotiations
• The “old” model of conflict management, positional negotiations, the challenges and limitations of positional negotiations, positional negotiations strategies, introduction to Case Study 1, application of positional negotiations
• Module 3: Introduction to interest-based negotiations
  • The “new” model of conflict management, interest-based negotiations, application of interest-based negotiations, strengths of interest-based negotiations
• Module 4: Crafting a strategy for interest-based negotiations
  • Preparing for the negotiations, identifying interests, identifying issues, crafting solutions, application of interest-based negotiations to the case study

Day 2:

• Module 5: Advanced topics in interest-based negotiations
• The implications of emotions, optimizing the five core concerns, creating a strategy for addressing the concerns and improving the negotiations, crafting dialogue, application of the advanced strategies to the case study, Case Study 1 wrap-up

• Module 6: The challenges of building the project team
  • Stages of team formation, the interests and positions of potential team members, team ground rules, introduction to Case Study 2
• Module 7: Negotiating with the team and creating roles and responsibilities
  • The application of principled negotiations and advanced concepts to building a project team and ensuring that the interests of team members are adequately met and that the team is structured for project performance, Case Study 2 and creation of roles and responsibilities
• Module 8: Creating high-performing project team
  • Analysis of the characteristics of high-performing teams, building a plan for the enhancement of team performance
• Module 9: Workshop wrap-up
  • Concluding comments and questions, workshop evaluation