Seema Sonkiya: Handling Project Team Personal Problems

Article based on PMBOK 4 recommendation of project team management; this article gives insight about how to solve team members personal problems.

Often project managers needs to deal with project team member’s personal problems. Sometime it becomes a good challenge to deal with personal problems while maintaining balance between personal troubles and project goal.

It is very important to deal with problem efficiently and effectively, key is to how we handle the problem. Efficiently means our emphasis is to show that there needs are taken care by showing empathetic attitude rather than sympathetic. Problem handling should be effective means it should leave a right impact to other team members and should not contribute to any hindrance to project goals.

General Steps to solve personal problems:

1.       Whenever a team member comes to project manager with personal problems, we should try to listen it carefully. Initially when team member start to come they often think that the position we are in, we will not care. We need to build trust among team members to promote open and free communication. It is very important and may help to discover problems which may be considered project risk or issue.

2.       when a team member comes to us with a personal issue the first thing we should do is bring them to a place where their privacy is secure and once they feel comfortable let them tell the situation.

3.        While listening, we need to identify any connection with work or affecting other team members. May be person having a conflict within or outside the team in the company. We need to understand the problem fully.

4.       Sometime problem is related to outside of the work, we need to work on different options, Sometime we need to deal with emotional issues, or other personal problem that are related to their home.

5.       So simple tip is listen problem carefully, identify the source of problem and get the right people involved. Like for other team related problems, we may need to involve human resource manager i.e. harassment by other employee outside of the team. In case of other problems we may refer to employee assistance program like day care facility for their kids, late night drop facility to home in case of night client call especially for female staff members. Sometime we may need to suggest a way how they can find solution outside of work.

6.       In case of giving advice for personal problems related to their home, we should avoid direct advice. This can lead to major problems. Advice team members to analyze the situation and find solution for the betterment of his/her and family life.

7.       Personal problem that occur due to same project team then project manager is accountable to solve them, for example some team members do not want to work together due to personal conflicts. If possible we can put them on different modules, in case it is not possible then we need to counsel them and need to use appropriate conflict resolution techniques like smoothing, compromising as per the situation. I am remembering a Hindi movie ‘chak de india’ in which coach Shahrukh khan found during hockey match that two team members were not use to pass ball and Australian team was planning for taking advantage of it. Shahrukh confronted both of them and advice how their personal issue affecting to country and  if  both of your motive is to give value to your personal rather than playing for country then only repeat this situation. Problem confronted easily and India won the world cup. Of course, team was in performing stage so it worked, otherwise he could use other strategy like ‘forcing’ in which one of team member could be removed from the team as country has higher priority than team members personal problems that are not easy to resolve. Similarly for a project manager he/she need to balance between team member personal and project goals.

8.       In conclusion problem can be categorize as following:

a.      Problem within team

b.      Problem outside of team

c.      Team member need help from employee assistance program

d.      Team member having problem related to his/her personal life like quarrel with husband, life partner living in different city. In these cases project manager need to analyze how much these problems affecting to other team members and hence to project.

These problems are extremely difficult to solve than others as it is outside of the project manager domain and he/she need to be involved to show empathetic rather sympathetic and to ensure project suffer little.

9.        Project manager should make sure that team members not start to take advantage of being empathetic so he/she should also emphasize to develop decision making skills and educate how to deal with problems. If problems inside the control of team member then he/she should be involved actively to resolve the issue and finding solution.

As a project manager our ultimate job towards human resources is to make our team members feel comfortable so they can be productive and we need to be involved to achieve that goal.

Seema Sonkiya