11 September 2009

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To Remove Barriers, Think Servant First

By Bob Tarne, PMP, CSM, CSSBB

As project managers, you must perform a number of management and leadership tasks to ensure successful execution of your projects. These tasks include everything from tracking the budget to keeping key stakeholders involved.

One critical task is removing barriers that may be preventing the team from succeeding. You can best accomplish this with a technique called servant leadership.

Servant leadership is not a new concept. Lao Tzu, in the Tao te Ching, wrote about this idea 2,500 years ago.  The concept gained popularity with the work of researcher and author Robert K. Greenleaf, who is credited with founding the servant leadership movement. In his 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader, he coined the term “servant leader” and brought the idea to mainstream leadership circles.

The servant leader is someone who recognizes that they are a servant first. Using such skills as trust and empathy, they lead their team not through a command-and-control approach, but through activities like coaching and listening.

A servant leader focuses on the development of their team members and building a sense of community among the team. The difference between this approach and other similar ones, such as emotional intelligence, is the emphasis on the leader as someone who is there primarily to help the team.

As project managers, you are in the perfect position to act as servant leaders. Whether you are following traditional or agile project management techniques, there are always obstacles that the team will require assistance in overcoming.

For example, the team may determine they need the assistance of someone with a specific skill that is lacking from the team. Or, in another common situation, one or more of your team members might be called on to do other work outside of the project, such as a pet project of another executive, or fixing bugs in production.

So, how do you use servant leadership to remove these barriers?

The first step to remove barriers is to identify them. This is where the listening skills come in. You will need to be on the lookout as the team may not always be direct in their request. You will have to look for opportunities, such as the daily stand-up meeting, to identify obstacles the team may be facing.

Then, working with the team, determine what steps need to be taken to overcome the obstacles. You may need to work with senior management or the project sponsor. Additional funding may be required. Or it could be a case of giving the team some isolation to allow them to work in peace. In this case, you may be acting as a buffer for the team, protecting them from outside distractions, such as senior management.

Servant leadership requires a change in approach. But with it, you, as a project manager, can identify barriers to your team’s success and work to remove them so your team can do their jobs. The key is to think as a servant first.

Bob Tarne, PMP, CSM, CSSBB is senior program manager with Lombardi Software, where he implements business process management software and leads process improvement initiatives following Agile project management techniques. Mr Tarne will be presenting at the Projects to the Point Conference in Cairo, Egypt on 3-5 November. He has advised clients across the globe, and worked previously at PM Solutions, Sprint and for the United States Navy. He has been an instructor in project management at Boston University and is a past chair of the PMI IT & Telecommunications Specific Interest Group (IT & T SIG). See his blog on zen-pm.blogspot.com and contact him at btarne@yahoo.com.