Frequently Asked Questions

What is this course about? In this course, you gain the skills to transition into a leader who can inspire a diverse team to work together and keep projects on track. Through guided discussions and practical workshops, you learn how to build and sustain high-performance project teams. You also learn how to diagnose and reduce potential team conflict situations. What is high-performance teamwork? Today's project leaders face a range of growing demands-time-to-market, rising customer expectations, global competition, increasing regulation and others-all increase the pressure to deliver. Modern projects also typically involve coordinating work across time zones between different national and company cultures and among teams that are geographically widespread. Use of virtual collabourative tools is now universal. However, these tools create a new set of potential problems. High-performance leadership recognises and works with the constraints that these conditions impose and builds team spirit, involvement and ownership to deliver and exceed customer expectations. How practical is this course? The course is intensely practical, while including some theory. Concepts such as team development stages, impacts of changes in project constraints/conditions on team performance, establishing productive team cultures and handling conflict are explained. Each concept is reinforced with workshops and opportunities to practise related skills. The course culminates in a project simulation that brings together everything learned. You are able to immediately apply what you learn in class. What background do I need? There are no formal prerequisite requirements for this course. Familiarity with the concepts of delegation, motivation, vision, and emotional intelligence is helpful. Course 290, Management Skills, provides this background. Who will benefit from this course? This course benefits anyone involved in building and managing a team of people in a project environment. Those who already manage a team and want to move it to a level of high performance also benefit. I'm an experienced project manager. Why should I take this course? This course provides skills and techniques that go beyond the foundation of project management skills. In particular, you learn how to build a leadership style that works in today's global project-based organisations, handle conflict productively, build productive team environments, and manage virtual project teams. This course is the ideal next step for project managers who want to progress in their careers. Why is leadership training important? Leadership is a key component of management and the source of high performance. Leadership is increasingly recognised, both in research and in practise, as what makes the difference between average and outstanding teams and organisations. Leadership skills have been shown to be learnable, not innate, characteristics. This course presents techniques to help participants build their skills as a leader. How is conflict resolution covered? Conflict is inevitable in every project. It doesn't go away by itself. When ignored, it escalates and gets worse. In order to deal with conflict directly, we need to analyse it to find the best solutions. In this course, you learn when it is necessary to force a resolution and when to give people space then bring them back together at a future time to work through the conflict. How is this course different from Course 222? Course 222, Leadership Skills: Building Success Through Teamwork, is geared toward developing the leadership abilities of service delivery team leaders. You learn how to optimise organisation and work design for success in service delivery teams and motivate your team with effective performance measurement. Coaching and feedback are also covered. Course 346 focuses on developing your leadership abilities as a project leader. You gain the skills to build and empower effective project teams to ensure project success. You also learn how to align leadership behaviors with the project management life cycle. How much time is spent on each topic? Content Hours Introduction 1.0 Adopting leadership as a service 2.0 Focusing on team identity 1.5 Actively managing communication 3.0 Controlling resources 1.5 Creating a positive team environment 3.0 Setting personal leadership standards 3.0 Maintaining high-performance throughout the project life cycle 5.0 Transitioning to high-performance leadership in your projects 2.5 Times, including the workshops, are estimates; exact times may vary according to the needs of each class. How much time is devoted to workshops? Approximately 70 percent of class time is spent in interactive workshops. You gain practical experience developing your project leadership skills. Workshops include: Diagnosing the components of team effectiveness Developing team ground rules Mapping team and stakeholder communication needs Pinpointing and overcoming virtual communication barriers Applying conflict style analysis to minimise project disruption Mitigating the effects of conformity and "groupthink" Analysing power bases and pressure points Identifying what teams need to transition to high-performance Creating your project leadership action plan I follow a life-cycle model approach in my projects. How is high-performance different throughout the life cycle phases? A life-cycle model uses phases, activities and tasks to approach a project in a systematic, disciplined and measurable way. This approach presents many unique challenges for project leaders. An effective project leader knows how to bring the team together throughout the project management life cycle. In this course, you learn to recognise the team stages and how they affect power bases, team difference and communication. You learn how to use the right amount of power, embrace individual difference, apply emotional intelligence and communicate productively in each phase of the project. Is this course applicable to a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification? Yes. Although this course is not designed as preparation for the exam, it is beneficial to anyone working toward PMI's PMP certification. For those who are currently certified, completion of this course counts as 23 professional development units (60 units must be completed every three years to maintain certification). For more details, please see the Learning Tree PMI Registered Education Provider Q&A. How does this course relate to other Learning Tree courses? While the emphasis of this course is on improving your leadership skills, Learning Tree offers other courses in communication, management and planning. These include: 290, Management Skills provides new and experienced managers with the practical skills needed to manage effective teams of technical professionals. 296, Project Management: Skills for Success offers the skills needed for planning, organising, implementing and delivering successful projects. Workshops teach you to use paper and PC-based planning techniques, and when each is most effective. 287, Strategic Project Management: Achieving Organizational Goals presents the skills needed to perform cost and schedule estimating so as to successfully implement projects and programs throughout life cycles. You develop a descriptive and functional architecture of project management that enhances your effectiveness in planning and executing projects. 292, Communication Skills: Results Through Collaboration emphasises specific tools and techniques for improving listening skills, delivering effective messages and bridging different communication styles. 294, Influence Skills: Getting Results Without Direct Authority focuses on the specific behaviours and attitudes that enable you to achieve desired results without relying on the use of authority. 288, Change Management: People and Process identifies the principles and processes that help technology professionals at all levels of an organisation optimise the benefits of change. 299, Microsoft® Project Comprehensive Introduction offers experience with using Project 2002 to plan, budget and run projects, schedule resources, optimise project plans, track and analyse project progress and create status reports. 177, PRINCE2™: Achieving Practitioner Certification provides the knowledge you need to take both the PRINCE2™ Foundation Exam and the PRINCE2™ Practitioner Exam.

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