Question

When should relationship building between the project manager/other core team members and important stakeholders occur? What are some ways to build relationships within the core team? What are some ways to build relationships with key stakeholders?

Answer 1

Solution:

The relationships form a very important aspect of any teamwork or project work. In order to work together on a project, it is necessary that the people working on the project have strong relationships among them in order to make the most out of their efforts to develop a project. Building relationships helps in smoothly operating the project workflow and handling various tasks within a project. Hence, the importance of better relationships among team members, stakeholders of the project cannot be ignored.

The relationship building with the key stakeholders or core team members of the project should happen as early as possible in a project. The earlier the relationships are built between various stakeholders of the project better will be the flow of information among these stakeholders. This will help in communicating the required objectives and goals from the project by the stakeholders. This will further help the core team members to strategies the flow of the project. Hence, the relationship building is generally done at the start of the project by the project manager and is carried out periodically to ensure sustainable relationships among project members.

In order to build relationships with team members or core team frequent discussions, meetings, contact among these core team members helps in building a comforting relationship among the core team members who actually work in close proximity with one another. The crux here is that core team members need to spend as much time as possible with one another to help them get comfortable working with each other. This is not true for relationship building with stakeholders who are not always required to stay constantly in touch with the project teams. The relationship with the project stakeholders can be developed at the start of the project with either casual meetings, conferences, informal meetings. These meetings can be organized throughout the project organized strategically in order to keep the project stakeholders in the loop with project progress.

Hence, this is how important the relationship building is in project management.