Course Outline

Relationship Assessment

Stakeholder relationships are a major challenge for the project leader, especially in a virtual environment. Understanding your leadership style and the leadership styles of others using the Strength Deployment Inventory will help you interact more effectively with project stakeholders.

• Gain a working knowledge of Relationship Awareness® Theory and Strength Deployment Inventory®  
• Assess your leadership style  
• Identify the characteristics of each leadership style  
• Facilitated discussions/exercises
  • What is important to my leadership style  
  • How to identify and interact with other leadership styles  

Conflict Management

In today’s business world, project leaders are often challenged with identifying stakeholders’ potentially problematic behaviors in a virtual project environment. This module presents tools and discussions for recognizing situations and managing conflict.

• Determine the difference between motivation, intention, and behavior
• Identify when personal strengths become weaknesses
• Identify behaviors under conditions of conflict  
• Discuss the changing focus during conflict  
• Identify difficult stakeholders
• Discuss a plan for coping with difficult stakeholders
• Facilitated discussions/exercises
  • Create a strategy for dealing with difficult stakeholders  

Communication within the Team Environment

Communication is always a major challenge for the project leader, and this is magnified in a virtual environment. Through discussions and lectures, participants gain a better understanding of how to recognize and manage communication issues.

• Understand communication principles  
• Manage dysfunctional meeting behaviors
• Determine when to hold a difficult conversation
• Respond effectively if a difficult conversation goes badly
• Interpret and use body language
• Use voice for impact
• Facilitated discussions/exercises
  • Develop a plan for a difficult conversation
  • Practice/role play/coaching for difficult conversations  

Effective Stakeholder Engagement

Inadequate stakeholder engagement is a major cause of troubled projects. This module explores causes and solutions for effectively identifying and managing stakeholders.

• Identify project stakeholders
• Identify items to consider when analyzing stakeholders
• Perform a stakeholder analysis
• Determine key stakeholders and analyze their impact on the project
• Contrast the roles of the project manager and the project sponsor
• Develop a Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix
• Identify questions to ask stakeholders  
• Facilitated discussions/exercises
  • Identify organizational stakeholders
  • Determine questions to ask key stakeholders