The Role of Change Management in Project Team Development

In the first change management models of the nineties, project team development was essential to change management work.

But today, most change models don’t include team development work.

Rather, we try to adjust to organizational change management in the age of disruption.

The negative impact of this is teams crying out for a sense of culture, collaboration, and togetherness, with 78% of employees wanting a more supportive workplace culture.

Improving culture at the organizational level can improve the project team development process.

However, with no one responsible for helping the project team stay on track in their work together, avoidable risks enter the project.

One solution is to add a Team Coaching International (TCI) certification to the role of the change management professional.

Paul Sherman, CEO of TCI says that team coaching is one of the most effective methods of strengthening project implementation teams.

Coaching skills can reduce risk and increase efficiency, collaboration, communication, and project success.

Let’s look at each of these in detail.

3 Ways Change Management is Essential to Project Team Development

Change management is crucial to your change development process in three main ways.

Only 33% of organizations hold team-building exercises that would enhance team projects.

As a result, organizations are missing a huge opportunity.

The first way change management fosters project team development is by reducing project risk.

Reduced Risk

Change management helps project managers identify potential risks and issues arising from the people side of change.

Often unexpected resistance and unplanned political challenges can induce significant risk into an initiative.

This means increasing adverse impacts on the project, usurping time and resources, and increasing team frustration.

On the other hand, anticipating how the project team may handle these factors in the future.

This occurs by defining project team working agreements will increase your chances of success, as unchecked risk can lead to failure.

Improved Communication

The success of any change initiative effort is clear and consistent intra-project team communication.

Doing this involves cross-functional members, project and program managers, change managers, and vendors.

Therefore, the team must understand the strategic intent of the project final outcomes.

They must also understand that ollaboration and conflict resolution agreements should be at the beginning of the team working together.

Working only from project plans, schedules, and change impacts does not guarantee a smooth implementation experience for the team and the supporting client organization.

Clear communication protocols within the team are imperative to ensure project team success.

Enhanced Efficiency

Sole focus on the project business case, project implementation strategy and plan does increase explicit efficiencies with good analysis and planning.

However, the quality of the project team’s effectiveness and health are usually not foreplanned.

This is where the aforementioned shift in change management methodologies of the nineties fell apart.

Suddenly, project team development and organizational design were not included in the overall change management methodologies in order to slim down project costs in client proposals.

As a result, team development work falls on the role of the project manager.

Unfortunately, project and program managers focus mostly on enhancing efficiencies in schedule and resources.

This comes at the health and effectiveness of the project team.

Change professionals can add a lot of value and reduce a significant amount of project risk.

They can do this by owning and coaching project team development work throughout the project lifecycle.

Implement Project Team Development Within Your Project Team Today

Implementing project team development for  your project team is crucial for navigating the change journey as an agile and strong team.

By fostering adaptability, communication, and strategic planning, you equip your team with the tools to tackle challenges head-on.

Do so by looking to how in the past organizations used team development skills to build dynamic, supportive teams that completed projects successfully as an unbeatable force within the organization.

Investing in project team development

• sets your team up for success at the get go,
• restabilizes a team in crisis in the middle of a stressful initiative, and
• realigns the project work to get back on track.

Sometimes it is easy to look out at the stakeholders’ dynamics while suffering on your own project team.

Stop the madness and address the issues within so that you can build a sense of team pride.

When you do this, you will get the benefits of achieving more results as a team rather than individuals.