The personality and work ethic of various team members can produce a harmonious work environment, or cause tension.

In some groups everyone is extremely organized, send lots of e-mail, are always on time, like to write every little thing down, etc. ...

Other groups are more causal, they have faith that it will all get done, trust their classmates with general tasks and deadlines, and then everyone goes off and does their job.

When all the members of the team share a personality and work style, all goes well. When you have a group where there is a wide variety of work styles then stress and conflict can develop.

My advice to the group is to adjust to style of Project Manager. Since they run group, try and read their work ethic and conform to it.. The PM takes the most heat, and the most pressure, they have the right to set the standards regarding the level of organization, timeline for the project, and expectations regarding communication and deadlines.

Here are some conflicts I have seen regarding the PM and the team.

Some folks will get upset if PM doesn't send out e-mail quickly enough or act assertively enough with the client. Remember YOU adjust to your PM. If they do not provide you with the structure you crave, create your own more detailed schedule and then run it by them for approval. You may want to say something like

"I perform best with a detailed schedule so I made minor modifications to the timeline and work chart you created so I could more effectively meet the class deadlines. There is no need to change the documents you created, this will just be used by me."

Another option is to create this detailed schedule and not even mention to the PM.

If your team is relaxed and causal and this makes you nervous here is a little mantra you can chant.

"I will not worry about other folks job, I will just do my own."

If you are expecting an e-mail on Monday from a teammate and it does not arrive, ask yourself if you can continue to do your job without the information. If you can, just keep working.

If you can't send the teammate an e-mail asking for the info you need (without complaining that they did not send it to you). Wait 2 days, if no answer has arrived then send a note to the PM, if the PM has not done anything in 2 more days, then contact me. Document your communication with the teammate and the PM.

If your PM is more organized and detail oriented than you are, you need to remind yourself to send more notes than you usually would, be more sensitive to their need for punctuality at meetings, and be more organized than you would normally be. Consider this an opportunity to learn a new set of organizational skills.

If they start to drive you crazy a statement like the one below may help.

"I appreciate your hard work and commitment to the project. I believe we have different work styles and will try to respect your style as I am sure you will try and respect mine. What I need from you, is ....."

Content for these teaching materials were developed by Linda Hemenway. If you have questions or comments on the material I can be contacted through
lhemenway@santarosa.edu
(707) 527-4855

Web site design by Jessica Hirsch - jessicahirsch@email.msn.com

Funding for these notes provided by Project FIVE and Project PICTS supervised by Doug Garrison - Dean of the Petaluma Center.