Mentoring Teams and Stakeholders

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Projects are unique and project team members are frequently changing. Project mentoring - which focuses on coaching and aligning project team members and stakeholders - is frequently required. In this case, it is less about long-term career mentoring and more about effective engagement with other project team members to ensure project objectives are met.

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Quick reference

Mentoring Teams and Stakeholders

Mentoring within projects occurs frequently.  Team members are coached on the project management process and the requirements of assigned tasks. Stakeholders are coached on project management processes and tracking systems, which are frequently changing.

When to use

Since projects are unique, almost all projects have team members who are inexperienced in some aspect of project management or execution.  Therefore, mentoring occurs frequently.  In addition, new project team members typically require mentoring to help them integrate with the other project team members.

Instructions

Project teams are often formed from among who is available.  Which means there may not be a perfect fit of skills and experience.  In addition, today’s business environment is characterized by “gig workers” who frequently change jobs.  So, many projects are staffed in part by new people to the organization and most projects undergo changes to the team members during the life of the project.  All of these conditions combine to create a project environment where there are many team members with gaps in either skill capabilities to do the work or in process knowledge of local practices. 

If there was adequate time, the new team members could go through training and certification to become fully prepared to participate in the project.  However, the urgency of the project prevents this, so team members rely on coaching and mentoring to enable them to learn and do at the same time.  To be very clear, the mentoring required for project teams is not the classic long-term career mentoring that is often discussed in business literature.  The project mentoring is focused on immediate application and current job performance. 

Mentoring Levels

There are three levels of mentoring that are appropriate for project mentors. Each level directly relates to the performance of the individual within the project team.

  • Task level mentoring focuses on the specific actions needed to complete task work and the understanding of acceptable standards for that work.  It is essentially addressing whether the mentee is doing the right thing in the right manner.
  • Process level mentoring focused on the organizational policies, procedures, and systems that are used with the project.  Each organization is unique and new individuals need to learn to work within the organization’s systems and culture to be efficient and effective.
  • Relationship level mentoring focuses on the individual’s interpersonal skills.  Project team members must work together.  This type of mentoring is primarily based in emotional intelligence and communication skills.  The goal is to improve team performance by improving the interaction skills of the team members. 

Mentoring Stakeholders

A common type of mentoring done by the project leader, core team members, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners is the mentoring of senior management stakeholders in the project management process.  With the advent of new business tools, new working approaches, and interactive teams, the role of senior leadership in the area of project oversight has changed over the past few years. Many times the project leaders and core team members find themselves coaching and mentoring the senior executives in how they can best provide leadership and support for projects.  In particular, with the new technologies and analytics, which are constantly improving, senior stakeholders often need a junior person in the organization who is a “digital native” to mentor them on how best to use the new technologies and tools.

Hints & tips

  • Project leaders should expect that mentoring is needed in some areas by most team members (including themselves).  Help each person to get the coaching assistance they need.
  • The mentoring should be done by a subject matter expert, but that person does not need to be a team member.  Find the best person to coach your team members on the areas in which they need help.
  • When mentoring senior stakeholders, do not call it mentoring.  For most of them, mentoring is long-term career coaching and they do not need it, rather they are often providing it to junior members of the organization.  Refer to it as coaching or orientation to the new methodologies, technologies, and management tools.
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  • 00:04 Hello I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 Change is everywhere including within our project teams and among our stakeholders.
  • 00:11 For that reason,
  • 00:12 mentoring has become a regular part of many project leaders activities.
  • 00:17 >> Why has mentoring become so important in the project management arena?
  • 00:21 Well, let's consider some of the characteristics of projects.
  • 00:24 First, they are unique, so there will be aspects that the stakeholders and
  • 00:27 project team members do not have experience with.
  • 00:30 That means that in many cases,
  • 00:32 the skills needed will be different from project to project.
  • 00:35 A person who is a subject matter expert for one project may be a novice on
  • 00:39 the next one and need mentoring and coaching to come up to speed.
  • 00:43 Second, project teams are often created based upon who is available most
  • 00:47 organizations do not have pools of workers waiting for something to do.
  • 00:51 The project team gets who they get, and
  • 00:53 it's most likely that some of the team members will have gaps in their skill set,
  • 00:57 at least gaps in the skills required for the unique nature of the project.
  • 01:02 This could be gaps in technical skills or gaps in leadership skills and experience.
  • 01:07 Now, keep in mind, we're not saying these are bad people,
  • 01:09 they just haven't had the opportunity to develop these skills.
  • 01:12 So mentoring is needed to help them develop.
  • 01:16 Now, you may be thinking,
  • 01:17 why don't you just send them off to get formal training or certification?
  • 01:20 So that they can acquire those skills.
  • 01:23 Well the problem with that is that the project milestones still must be met.
  • 01:27 And project teams need to be executing now, not months or potentially even years
  • 01:32 from now, by the time an individual completes training and certification.
  • 01:37 So given these constraints, the project team must work with who they have.
  • 01:41 But as a way to help those who are inexperienced or unskilled for
  • 01:45 what they need to do, coaching and mentoring is provided.
  • 01:49 Remember I said that the individual may not have the technical or
  • 01:52 leadership skills.
  • 01:54 When we think of mentoring, we can provide the mentoring in three different domains.
  • 01:58 An individual may need mentoring and only one of those or potentially all three.
  • 02:03 Most organizations that have a mentoring program are approaching it from a career
  • 02:07 perspective.
  • 02:09 The program is run by HR, and it's to guide individuals early in their career.
  • 02:14 That is not the type of mentoring that we are discussing.
  • 02:17 Our focus is on mentoring for a particular job or role within our project activities.
  • 02:22 The goal is to help those individuals perform an assigned set of tasks well,
  • 02:26 through this they gain experience and the project makes progress.
  • 02:30 So what are those three levels?
  • 02:33 They are task level mentoring, process level mentoring and
  • 02:35 relationship level mentoring.
  • 02:37 All three of these apply directly to the work the individual is doing
  • 02:41 on the project.
  • 02:42 The task level mentoring is helping to make sure that they are doing the right
  • 02:46 work and they're doing it the right way.
  • 02:48 The best person to provide this mentoring will probably be a subject matter expert.
  • 02:53 The process level mentoring is focused on helping them to understand how to work
  • 02:57 within established procedures and practices of the organization.
  • 03:02 An interesting thing at this point is that the role of the mentor and
  • 03:05 mentee may be reversed from what you would normally assume.
  • 03:09 Thanks to digital transformation many business processes have been automated,
  • 03:14 connected to the cloud, and are now managed with an app on your phone.
  • 03:18 For workers who are not tech savvy, the mentor they
  • 03:21 need may be a much younger team member who grew up as a digital native and
  • 03:25 can guide them through the use of the app.
  • 03:27 The third area for mentoring is the relationship level.
  • 03:30 In this case, the concern is whether their interpersonal skills and
  • 03:35 communication skills are an asset or a detriment.
  • 03:38 The mentoring may be done by someone on the project team or
  • 03:42 may be done by someone who is outside observer such as HR.
  • 03:47 Notice that I did not say that the project manager must do the mentoring.
  • 03:51 In fact the project manager may not be doing any mentoring, but
  • 03:54 their role is to ensure that those people who need mentoring are identified and
  • 03:59 mentors are provided.
  • 04:01 Another very challenging element of mentoring for the project team is
  • 04:04 the frequent need to mentor stakeholders who are not members of the project team.
  • 04:09 These are individuals who, because of their managerial and
  • 04:12 oversight role will periodically interact with the project team.
  • 04:15 But they're not up to date on the latest project
  • 04:18 management methodologies such as agile scrum.
  • 04:20 Or possibly they haven't adjusted to the fast pace of change
  • 04:24 in the organization and are confused and uncertain about the project objectives.
  • 04:29 In my experience, most of these individuals would be offended if you told
  • 04:33 them that they were unskilled for their current role, and need to be mentored.
  • 04:38 So instead, you just do this with informal interactions, and
  • 04:42 let them discover and overcome the gaps on their own.
  • 04:46 In some cases, you're mentoring them to transform their thinking process and
  • 04:50 they're operating assumptions and perspectives.
  • 04:53 They can't understand what this project is supposed to do for the business.
  • 04:56 So you need to paint them a picture and provide metaphors for
  • 04:59 them of what the project impact would be.
  • 05:02 In some cases they don't understand the culture,
  • 05:04 people change jobs frequently in today's business environments.
  • 05:08 A new stakeholder will look at things through the lens of their last job.
  • 05:12 Again, some mentoring to help them understand this organizational
  • 05:15 culture may be needed.
  • 05:17 I've already mentioned several times how the senior management role on an Agile
  • 05:21 project is different from a traditional project.
  • 05:24 Again, coaching and mentoring can help them understand this.
  • 05:27 A final element of change in perspective is that many organizations are flattening.
  • 05:32 By that, I mean,
  • 05:33 layers of middle management in the organization are being eliminated.
  • 05:37 Instead, new technologies are being incorporated to accelerate and
  • 05:40 improve the work.
  • 05:42 For stakeholders, that means that their role changes from controlling to coaching,
  • 05:46 and they may need help to know how to do that well.
  • 05:49 Of course, besides the stakeholders perspective and
  • 05:52 attitudes that need mentoring, there're often specific skills that
  • 05:56 could benefit from a mentor to accelerate the time needed to gain proficiency.
  • 06:00 This could be a new tool or the use of a new business system.
  • 06:04 These mentor mentee interactions, may be formal presentations or
  • 06:07 just informal discussions.
  • 06:09 Either way, the stakeholder needs coaching.
  • 06:12 >> Fortunately, there are many project management tools available
  • 06:15 today that simplify and automate the technical aspect of project management.
  • 06:20 This opens up more time for project managers to mentor their team members and
  • 06:25 stakeholders when it's required.

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