Project management is certainly not an easy role, but it can be a highly enjoyable and rewarding one. As International Project Management Day is just around the corner, we thought we’d provide you with some of our top tips on how to be an effective project manager for your team.

There are many ways that you can enhance your skills as a project manager, including investing your time in home learning.  Read on to find out more:

Identify the project plan and goals  

Before you embark upon a project, you need to ensure that you are kicking off with a really solid foundation. Having a strategic project plan and setting clear goals in place is important. What is equally important is ensuring that this plan has been signed off by all the key stakeholders. You don’t want to go down a road that important members of your leadership team have not brought into.

With regards to the goals, make sure that these are easily measurable so you can track the success of your project as it develops. If you need help with implementing goals or project planning, there are plenty of courses or home learning resources that you can look into.

Assemble a strong project team with a varied skillset

 A successful project manager realises the importance of bringing together a good team of individual players that can bring an assortment of varied skills to the table. You need a team that can work together harmoniously, and communicate openly to achieve the goals of the project. Once your project plan has been signed off by all the key stakeholders, put together a team which will be able to fulfil all the project goals and work effectively together. It is imperative to ensure that each team member is clear on their individual roles and responsibilities.

Define a clear project timeline

Learning how to develop a realistic time plan with key project milestones and clear phases is a crucial task for a project manager. If you’re unsure or want to improve your skills in project phasing, you can look into online courses or home learning options. Make sure that each phase of the project includes an evaluation point. This is key to measure how your project is developing and nip any problems in the bud as they arise.

Communicate regularly and efficiently with members of your team

As a project manager, it is your role to ensure that everyone involved in the project, as well as other key stakeholders, are completely up to date with its progress. The communication needs to be clear and consistent. You want to ensure that everyone is clear on the project deliverables. Send out regular and frequent updates on how the project is panning out. Weekly status reports are really helpful to make sure that everyone is completely aligned and on the same page with all relevant information. Poor communication is one of the key reasons behind the failure of a project.

Deal with any potential project risks

 As a project manager, it is your job to foresee imminent risks. You can spot these from your past experience working on similar projects, or through home learning and courses. Keep an eye out for any risks so you can learn to control them before they develop into a real problem. Clearly communicating with your team and asking them to honestly flag any potential risks will help avoid escalation.

Evaluate every project milestone

As you work through the phases of your project, make sure that you are continuously evaluating its progress. This will help to ensure that the final set of deliverables are aligned with your initial goals.  It will also help remind everyone of the goals, and allow for open and honest communication on any issues that may arise along the way.

Analyse and evaluate the project thoroughly upon completion

One of the most important tasks of a project manager is to ensure key learnings are collated from the project and disseminated to all team members. Each project offers the opportunity to gather crucial insight on what is working for your company. Document what worked well and what didn’t. These learnings can then be used to inform and improve your next project.

The likelihood is that you will have heard of Amnesty International. This is because it is possibly the most well-known human rights group in the world.

What is Amnesty International?

Founded in 1961 by a British lawyer, it has since worked on several human rights cases.  It campaigns for the end of the death penalty, works hard to ensure free and fair trials and for the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.

Some people have been and many are still in prison as a result of their religion or ethnicity. In recent times, the world has been alerted to the alleged use of concentration camps in Chechnya for gay men. These are all human rights abuses – many more happen every day in countries throughout the world, many of which we are unaware.

But Amnesty International works hard to ensure that everyone, no matter what their religion, faith, ethnicity, sexuality and so on are grounds for their imprisonment, torture or death.

Each Christmas, they arrange a Christmas card campaign. Members of the public support this by sending cards to political prisoners and prisoners of conscience to remind them that they are not forgotten.

Amnesty International Day is an annual event. Sunday 28^th May 2017 is your chance to add your voice in protest at the human rights abuses that happen throughout the world by attending a local meeting, making a donation, signing a petition or writing a letter of hope to a prisoner of conscience – or do them all!

Dealing with the emotional trauma

For people imprisoned or held against their will, they don’t just suffer physically – the mental and emotional abuse and torture scars them for the rest of their lives.

Post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, is known to affect soldiers. But it is not a condition that affects only military personnel. It can affect anyone who has suffered or been party to a trauma in their lives.

From a car accident to being caught in a horrific act such as that we witnessed in London on a March afternoon, post-traumatic stress is an emotional and mental illness that can be paralysing.

The field of mental health is not just about PTSD. There are numerous mental and emotional disorders, illnesses and conditions that can affect anyone at any time.

From eating disorders to an all-consuming grief, our attitudes to mental health illnesses and conditions have changed. In recent days, another great stride has been taken to understand how mental health issues manifest themselves, with Prince Harry admitting to ‘two years of chaos’ after the death of his mother.

The fact that he also sought help in the form of counselling, and making this public, is an extraordinarily brave step for someone in the public eye who has his life and mistakes scrutinised on a daily basis.

It gives hope to the millions of other people who suffer from mental health issues, and who are either seeking help or attempting to live their lives with the condition, hiding it in plain sight.

Opportunities to make a difference

This leads to one thing: opportunities.

It allows people to seek help when they need it but also places a growing emphasis on us, as a society, to upskill so that there are the various levels of help and treatment available.

This doesn’t just mean more psychologists or psychiatrists. It means counsellors, including those who specialise in key areas such as grief, loss, eating disorders etc. It also means people who listen, who are empathetic and have an understanding of mental health illnesses and how they can manifest themselves.

It means teachers and teaching assistants offering an empathetic ear to a child they suspect is struggling, but unable to verbalise their thoughts or feelings. It is understanding that asking ‘why?’ is sometimes a futile question.

Mental health courses will increase in prevalence for all professions. For some time now, many professions have recognised that there are impacts on the mental and emotional well-being of their staff and colleagues.

There are many professions yet to realise that they have a role to play.

Are mental health courses right for everyone?
We all need to nurture our emotional well-being. There are times when we need to talk, just as there are times we need to listen.

‘Getting it right’ is tough because mental health conditions are very different from one person to the next, from one day to the next. How we felt last week about the death of a loved one is different to how we feel about it today.

We all have a role to play – how much depends on you. There is an array of mental health courses on offer – why not take a look?

More Information
For an idea of how you can become involved in Amnesty International Day, take a look at their website. For example, you can sign the petition to stop concentration camps for gay men in Chechnya. It may only be a signature, but it sends a clear message.

Or take a look at the charity ‘Heads Together’ and become involved by raising money for the charity or using their resources to help young people, children or anyone you know struggling with depression, anxiety, grief, trauma and other mental health conditions.