One Mistake Good Project Managers Don’t Make

One thing that I’ve always prided myself in running a great project is that I don’t make one critical mistake

I don’t ask my teams to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself

There is no better way to reduce the productivity of your team than if you dictate to them tasks that you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. It’s a good check as you are delegating tasks. Now that doesn’t mean that you should be doing tasks that you shouldn’t. What it means is that you are willing to put in the work to complete any task that is required to deliver on the objectives of the project.

When project managers make this mistake, these are the three activities that they don’t seem to want to do.

Participate in unnecessary meetings

Everyone hates unnecessary meetings, but they can’t seem to help themselves from conducting them.

The biggest culprit to why unnecessary meetings exist is because the person running the meeting hasn’t done the work to prepare. And if you aren’t willing to do the work to prepare for a meeting, then you probably shouldn’t have the meeting. Too often I see leaders that get upset when their teams aren’t prepared for meetings that they are conducting, but the leader comes to their own meetings unprepared due to an excuse of being in back-to-back meetings prior.

Don’t make the mistake of running unnecessary meetings.

Do administrative work

Another thing that people hate is doing administrative work.

But that’s often a symptom of not knowing why they are doing administrative work. I see this often in sales. Where leaders will insist that their employees spend the time to make certain that their CRM is up-to-date. Looking at those leaders data in the CRM however shows that they haven’t kept it up themselves. Leaders either need to fit in the time to do the administrative work or delegate it to someone as their responsibility.

Do as I say, not as I do is a bad leadership habit.

Wake up early, stay late, and work weekends/ holidays

I strongly believe that working beyond 9-5 is a sign of poor management and organization.

There are times when it’s necessary and any time that it is, leaders need to work those timetables alongside their staff. Even if they have nothing in particular to do. Because of the differential in power, staff often aren’t able to push back (and may not even consider pushing back) on a leader that asks for more of their time in a given week. If working after hours is a result of poor management, why should the leader not be subject to rolling up their sleeves and resolving the issue. If it’s due to something unforeseen, then it’s all the more important that that leader is involved.

Don’t be the leader that is out on the golf course while your team is toiling away.