Question

Why are good people and project management skills essential for team leaders?

Why do team leaders need to encourage diversity, inclusion and collaboration within their teams?

What is the difference between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ conflict within teams and why is ‘healthy’ conflict so beneficial?

Answer 1

1A.Developing leadership skills is important for project management because the overall success of any project is determined by its leaders. Leaders, or project managers, oversee projects and make critical decisions that can lead to their success or failure. Communication, management, sharing a vision, honesty, planning, flexibility, and decision making are all leadership skills that a good project manager needs to develop

2A. Its proven that more diverse companies are often more innovative and creative because, Duke Energy Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Joni Davis. The main reasons you'll gain productivity and a boost in creativity is that you’re bringing together individuals from different walks of life. These people come from varied backgrounds and experiences and will each have uniques ways to improve your products and services you’re offering.

Diverse teams will bring broader ideas and new perspectives to the table. Your new diverse employee groups will also be more productive and much more desirable to work for. Still not convinced? Having various teams helps you retain top talent, strengthens your brand's image and boosts profits.

In short, diversity is just a solid business concept all around, for everyone in any business. A great way to achieve your new team is by successfully navigating your thoughts and actions into the awareness of being more inclusive.

3.A Unhealthy conflict can create an obstacle that prevents teams from talking about disagreements that matter. In other words, one person’s personal or stylistic issues can prevent the team from successfully engaging in meaningful discourse. Therefore, designers must recognize the differences between these things and do what they can to avoid being the source of unhealthy conflict.

Perhaps this is the designer’s greatest challenge: conflict is good for design, but pointless arguing is counterproductive. Arguing wherever and whenever possible, therefore, is not a safe gamble. The occasional productive conversation isn’t worth it if no one wants to work with you.

Unhealthy conflict is easy to recognize because it’s personal. I had a client say to me, “This is all wrong. You got this all wrong.” Throwing failure in someone’s face, deserved or not, is the fastest way to divert a conversation. My immediate reaction was to get defensive. In this case, the defense mechanism manifested itself as redirecting blame: I insisted that she was constantly changing the project objectives. Her only response was to deny that. We got, no surprise, nowhere.

You can recognize unhealthy conflict when people

· Lash out at designs without a rationale for their critique: “This sucks.”

· Attempt to undermine a team member’s creative skills without constructive criticism: “This is clearly above you.”

· Attack other aspects of the designer’s style or approach: “You’re so disorganized.”

· Defend their own actions: “I told you how to prioritize the requirements.”

These phrases represent real situations, and their messages are important, but the phrasing is purposefully antagonistic. People who have the good of the project in mind (not their own self-interest) will position these messages differently.