Project Management Soft Skill Tip #2

This is the time of year we typically set our goals for the new year.  The most common is the single digit goal of losing weight (i.e, drop 10 pounds in 2015).  A huger percentage of the goals we set and face in life are single digit goals.

All projects have goals that project managers and team members are responsible for.  As a project manager, keep in mind that two factors can have an influence on your team members when pursuing a goal - challenge and attainability.  Engineers should feel sufficiently challenged by a goal, because that will contribute to their feeling a sense of accomplishment, but only to to the extent that there is a realistic possibility that the goal can be attained.  Just like picking the goal of 10 pounds, project managers and those above project managers typically will pick a single digit goal for a host of project performance metrics.

Unlike single-number goals for you project team, wherein someone may have to pick a number that is relatively easily attainable, relatively challenging, or a compromise somewhere in between, high-low range goals have the advantage of engaging both factors of challenge and attainability.  In essence they influence goal engagement from your team members by providing feelings of accomplishment driven by these two key factors.

One of the key leadership goals of a project manager is changing the way engineers and team member reconnect to their goals.  Consider the setting of high-low range goals and losing between seven and thirteen pounds in 2015!