Project Leadership:
Building High-Performance Teams

What is this course about?

Through an immersive case study, you transition into a leader capable of inspiring a diverse team to work together and deliver customer success. You learn how to develop effective team performance through the Leadership Services Model and build a strong team identity through vision, purpose and commitment. At the end of your classroom experience, you take away a project leadership best practices handbook and a personal development plan for use back at the office.

How is this course structured?

This course is structured around a dynamic style of learning created by Learning Tree called RealityPlus^TM - an immersive experience that engages you in authentic tasks within a simulated real-world context. Through media-rich case studies, role playing, and video/computer-based activities, you are immersed throughout the course in an evolving scenario where the decisions you make affect the outcome of the simulation. The RealityPlus learning method is presented in a safe environment where you gain new skills and practice the most effective techniques to bring back to your job. At the end of your course, you are prepared to immediately and successfully apply these new skills within your organization!

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 commercial and organizational boundaries, using dispersed teams, contractors, and managing cultural differences.

High-performance leadership recognizes 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. Practical techniques 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 technique is reinforced with workshops and opportunities to practice the related skills.The core of the course is a real project that demands high levels of coordination and creativity from team members. The techniques learned in short, intensive lecture and activity sessions are immediately applied in the project. Realistic incidents and changes force the teams to adapt their plan and project work in real time. The skills learned in class are directly and immediately applicable back at work.

What background do I need?

There are no formal prerequisite requirements for this course. It's helpful to have some knowledge of basic project planning techniques such as timeline and milestones, but this is not essential.

Who will benefit from this course?

This course benefits anyone involved in building and managing a team in a project environment. Those who already manage a team and want to advance their team to a level of high performance will 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 organizations, handle conflict productively, build productive team environments, and manage virtual project teams. During the class real-time project, your experience will be called on as your team works to deal with deadlines, quality standards and project risks. This course is the ideal next step for project managers who want to progress in their careers.

How much time is spent on each topic?

What kinds of activities are covered in the workshops?

Approximately 50 percent of this course is spent in workshops. Throughout the course, you practice the roles of project leader and team member during an immersive case study. You develop a leadership style that builds successful high-performance project teams. Experiential activities include:

• Applying the LSM model and best leadership practices
• Distinguishing the stages of team development
• Developing team ground rules
• Maximizing team participation in delivering project process outcomes
• Creating team direction and purpose
• Applying conflict style analysis to minimize project disruption through role play
• Identifying what your project teams need to transition to high performance
• Building a personal project leadership action plan

Why is leadership training important?

Leadership is a key component of management and the source of high performance. Leadership is increasingly recognized, both in research and in practice, as what makes the difference between average and outstanding teams and organizations. Leadership skills have been shown to be learnable, not innate, characteristics. This course presents techniques to help participants build their skills as a leader.

What model of leadership does the course use?

The course uses a service-driven approach, illustrating how project managers can build their team's capabilities and performance through the application of techniques based on a six element model.

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 recognize 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 toward a Project Management Institute (PMI) certification?

Yes. Though this course is not designed as preparation for an exam, it is beneficial to anyone working toward, or maintaining, a PMI certification. Most PMI certifications require a specific number of PDUs in order to obtain and maintain the credential. Completion of this course provides 23 professional development units (PDUs).

Learning Tree offers several courses that help you prepare for PMI certifications, including Course 276, Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP)^® Exam, which prepares you for PMI's most popular certification. For more details on these courses and PMI certifications, 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 
• 296, Project Management: Skills for Success 
• 3610, Building a Successful Project Management Office 
• 287, Complex Project Management 
• 292, Communication Skills: Results through Collaboration 
• 294, Influence Skills: Getting Results without Direct Authority 
• 3702, Microsoft® Project 2010: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction