Internship- week 10

I learned four levels of subordinate maturity, matched with their most appropriate leadership style. very immature subordinates, low to moderate maturity subordinates, moderate to high maturity subordinats and high maturity subordinates. The last one are independent, motivated, and highly skilled. They are best handled with a delegating style and need neither task direction nor the emotional apron strings that relationship oriented behaviors provide. In the very beginning, I had trouble acting managerial in my role as this small insurance agency-despite having only one employee. By learning slowly shifting the balance between task and relationship oriented behaviors, I am able to nudge subordinates toward higher maturity levels. I also negotiate a behavioral shift with subordiantes, finanally immature subordinats can be found at every level. Anyone can slip up when moving into unfamiliar jobs, even in senior levels of management.

Internship-Week 9

I learned from MBA about leadership. THere is four basic combinations or leadership styles exist. The situational leadership model takes a "how to" approach in arguing that effective leadership requires the right combination of task-oriented behavior and relationship-oriented behavior with subordinates. Four basic combinations are telling, selling participating and delegating. The leadership between Sammy and I are more like participating style, it is a more collaborative and emotional leadership style focusing on consultation, coaching and supportivenness. Little or no task direction is provided. Sammy does everything she needs to do, and after having trained a month, she knew what her job is.
The real trick is to match the appropriate behavioral style to the maturity level of the subordinate. Maturity consists of both 1. job readiness (level of skills and experience) and 2. pyschological willingness (level of self respect, confidence and motivation). As the subordinate's maturity level incerases, leader should become less task-oriented. Conversely, relationship oriented behaviors should increase up to moderate levels of subordinate maturity and then slowly decline.

Project Management- Chapter 11 Ideas

Project team members have four major communication needs: responsibility, coordination, status and authorization.
Whether you are assigning work to an individual performer or to a vendor, these following basic rules should be observed:
1. Explain the deliverables.
2. Be clear about the level of effort expected and the due dates.
3. If you know of any obstacles they can expect or special information they'll need, make sure they know it too.
4. Hand out work assignments personally, allowing plenty of time for questions and discussions.
Then kickoff meeting really kicks me off. I like this subject too. A kickoff meeting usually marks the beginning of the execution phase of a project. By this time, the staement of work and project plan have been approved and the team is assembled. It is an opportunity to celebrate initiation of the project.
Project status meeting. A good project status meeting meets a lot of communication needs within the project team. status meetings give the project manager an opportunity to
1. increase team cohesion
2. keep the team informed about project developments from sources external to the team
3. identify potential problems or share solutions to common problems
4. ensure the team understands the progress of the project and works together to determine any neccesary changes to the project plan.
5. make sure that the entire team shares the responsibility of meeting all the project objectives.
In additon to the basic rules for running an effective meeting, the following guidelines are useful for running a project status meeting:
1. be prepared
2. including all the related members
3. use the meeting to disseminate decisions made by management or customers.
4. using the open task report, get the status of every task that should have been started or completed since the last status meetings
5. take advantage of the fact that the entire team is availabale to consider ehat action needs to be taken on any problems
6. don't try to solve problesm that are too big for the meeting or that don't include everyone present.
7. review the readiness for future takes on the OTR.
8. review project logs.

Project Management- Chapter 10 Ideas

After having read Chapter 10, I like the framework for building high-performance team. They break the components of a strong project team into trhee areas that work together in the same way that an arch works to support a bridge. Teamwork arch shares the same properties as a structual arch:
1. A strong team requires each of the individual components.
2. The strength of the arch lies in the way the pieces work together.
3. Weakness in one component cannot be compensated for by strength in another component.
Point A Point B
Positive Team Environment Collaborative Problem Solving
Ground rules Continuous learning
Team Identity Conflict Management
Listening skills Decision Modes
Meeting Management Problem analysis
A positive team enviroment, collaborative problem solving capability and leadership, these are the three primary components of a high performance team.