(PPMP20009) Project Management Talent Triangle assignment on improving leadership skills among managers

Question

Task: how project managers can utilize Project Management Talent Triangle assignment methodologies to identify effective leadership and communication skills?

Answer

Assessment 2 Part 1: Leadership
PPMP20009Leading Lean Projects2022 Term 2 - Individual Submission
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https://www.pmi.org/learning/training-development/talent-triangle
The Project Management Talent Triangle assignment
Review the one-page explanation of what is included under the three areas of the talent triangle which can be located at the following webpage:
https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/certifications/talent-triangle-flyer.pdf
1 PMI Talent TriangleSelf Audit(3marks)
Use the table on the following page to rate your skills against the three areas of the talent triangle.
Use the definitions below to rate the skills from 1 (Not competent) to 5 (Highly competent).

Business Acumen Ways of Working Power Skills

Question 2 (1 mark)
Choose one of the following Power Skills:
Choose ONE of the following Project Management Talent Triangle assignmentskills to answer this question.
• Active Listening
• Influencing
• Negotiation

Definethe skill (ensure you reference the definition) and describe why that power skill crucial for successful project management.

When a person makes conscious efforts to listen and understand what the other person is saying it is known as active listening. Active listening skills help an individual to build relationship with others based on mutual respect and trust (Kourmousi, et.al., 2018). When an individual deals with Project Management Talent Triangle assignmentprojects that are complex or have high level of uncertainties then mindful or active listening is important. This firm of listening can help the members of the team identify risks or challenges within the project. Moreover, active listening can also help an individual achieve needs that are associated with a certain project. Individuals or team members can assess the feedback on the project and focus on improving the project as per the feedback. Active listening can also help project managers to resolve any kind of conflicts while completing the project (Moize, 2016). Furthermore, the business environment has become very volatile. Lots of uncertainties in the external environment has an impact on the project. Active listening can help project managers and other team members get informed and aware about the market regulations. This can help them to reduce the negative impact of the external environmental factors on theproject. This is why active listening skills are highly crucial for successful implementation of a project.

3 Reflective Practice (6 marks)
“Power Skills: These interpersonal skills include collaborative leadership, communication, an innovative mindset, for-purpose orientation, and empathy. Ensuring teams have these skills allows them to maintain influence with a variety of stakeholders - a critical component for making change.” (PMI, 2022)
https://www.pmi.org/certifications/certification-resources/maintain/pmi-talent-triangle-update
Empathy has been defined asconsisting of both cognitive and affective components. Cognitive empathy also known as ‘perspective taking’ refers to the ability to understand the perspectives (thoughts and emotions) of others. Affective empathy refers to feeling the same emotions as another, for example, you might feel compassion,concern, or distress for someone who is experiencing a difficult situation.

(a) Describe a situation you experienced empathy or a lack of empathy. How did the situation made you feel? What insights did this experience give you about how you react in such situations? (3 marks)

When an individual put themselves in another person’s position and try to understand their feelings it is known as empathy. Empathy is highly associated with socio-emotional wellbeing (Weisz and Cikara, 2021). Individuals often encounter situations that are empathetic or non-empathetic situations. There is no exception in case of mine. In recent times, I was working on a project with few of my peers. We all had to attend a brainstorming session. The objective of the session was to find out unique solution to the research problem and focus on accomplishing project objectives with the solution. While I was working with my peers, I was finding it very difficult to come up solutions that are relevant or unanimously acceptable. I was trying to discuss with my team leader and other peers but they were doing their own work and none of them bothered to help me. Thus, it can be said that I have encountered lack of empathy in this situation. Lack of empathy limits motivation (Brown, et.al., 2019). I was getting demotivated day by day and this was affecting my productivity within the team. I was unable t come up with solutions to the problem and was lacking confident while communicating my viewpoint. Thus, from the experiences gained from this Project Management Talent Triangle assignment, I have understood the fact that empathy is one of the important motivating factors in the professional world. Empathy helps to boost a person’s interpersonal communication. The modern world is not at all forgiving. Thus, empathy towards peers, friends and employees can help them feel motivated. In my opinion, empathy is also positively correlated with productivity. With the increase in empathy towards peers and team members, the productivity of them increases. Thus, it can be concluded thatemployees within workplace or students in their learning environment can perform better if they experience empathy from their peers and seniors.

(b) Reflecting on your experience in (a) discuss how empathy is a power skill for project managers. Ensure that you provide an example in your response. (3 marks)

Empathy is marked as an important characteristic that project managers should have. Project managers are primarily responsible for guiding the team members towards accomplishment of the project. Empathy can promote effective communication among project team members (Nadiia, et.al., 2019). It has identified as a power skill because empathetic nature of a project manager can help them communicate efficiently with the stakeholders. Moreover, it can also help project managers to discuss the needs of the project with their team members. In addition to this, project managers who are empathetic can motivate their team members and can share vision along with the employees who are associated with the project. It has been found that empathetic nature of project managers helps them to show their competencies. Thus, empathetic nature of project managers canchange the culture of an organization (Zaki, 2019). In the above section, the importance of empathetic nature of a project manager has been discussed broadly. This can be aligned with the situation that I have experienced and explained in the above question. Empathy from my project manager could have helped me to be an effective part of the brainstorming session. It could have motivated me to perform better, gain confidence and add value to my contribution to the team. Thus, from the above discussion to make a project successful the primary responsibility of the project manager is to show empathy towards the team members. However, an empathetic tendency of a project manager can also bring major disadvantages to the project because there are people who tend to manipulate and exploit this nature of empathy. From the knowledge gained from this Project Management Talent Triangle assignment, managers should be empathetic towards their employees in order to motivate them but they should also focus on analyzing the behavior of employee to avoid any kind of manipulation.

References
Brown, K., Adger, W. N., Devine-Wright, P., Anderies, J. M., Barr, S., Bousquet, F., ... & Quinn, T. (2019). Empathy, place and identity interactions for sustainability. Global environmental change, 56, 11-17.Project Management Talent Triangle assignment
Kourmousi, N., Kounenou, K., Yotsidi, V., Xythali, V., Merakou, K., Barbouni, A., & Koutras, V. (2018). Personal and job factors associated with teachers’ active listening and active empathic listening. Social Sciences, 7(7), 117. Moize, 2016. The Importance of Listening. Retrieved from https://www.projectmanagement.com/contentPages/article.cfm?ID=314943&thisPageURL=/articles/314943/The-Importance-of-Listening-#_=_
Nadiia, R., Boris, K., Sergey, B., & Alina, Z. (2019, September). Role of empathy, emotional intelligence, transformational leadership of the project success. In 2019 IEEE 14th International Conference on Computer Sciences and Information Technologies (CSIT) (Vol. 3, pp. 116-121). IEEE.
Weisz, E. and Cikara, M., 2021. Strategic regulation of empathy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Project Management Talent Triangle assignment25(3), pp.213-227.
Zaki, J., 2019. Making empathy central to your company culture. Project Management Talent Triangle assignment Retrieved from https://enterprisersproject.com/sites/default/files/empathy_culture.pdf