Project leadership

Hello. My name is Mike Clayton and I am the founder of OnlinePMCourses, which is both a website selling project management courses and also a YouTube channel. In today's talk, we're going to look at project leadership and understand how that fits into the project management life cycle.

There are three things we're going to cover in this talk. The first, we're going to look at why you always get the project team that you deserve, and we're also going to look at what you need to do to deserve the project team that you want. Second, we'll look at the leadership priorities that you will have at each stage of your project. Finally, we'll take a brief look at three project leadership challenges that we encounter when things get tough.

A fundamental principle that I've discovered in my working life is that you get the team that you deserve. Which doesn't mean that if you're a good person, the universe will reward you with a good team, nor that if you're a bad person, the universe will punish you. It would be nice if it were that simple. What I mean by this is that if you assume that the team you've got is a poor team with people who aren't committed and the people you've got are not the ideal people and you treat them like that, then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will under-manage them. You will look for the mistakes, and you will almost celebrate those mistakes as proof that you are right, and of course, your team will work down to your expectations and you'll get the team that you deserve by not treating them well. But on the other hand, if you take whatever team you get, and you are determined that this is the best team that you could possibly have had given all the circumstances, and you're prepared to invest your time, your effort and your commitment into working with them to develop and support them, then they will recognise that investment in them, and they will reward it. In that way, by putting in the work, you'll get the team that you deserve.