successful project management - Commonwealth of Learning

• What are the signs of thought and meaning in this situation? Pay attention to
the words used and the accompanying non-verbal actions to help you
determine the mood of the meeting and act accordingly.
This is probably not easy to do, but has nevertheless to be done for the sake of a
successful project in distance education. It will be concluded that when properly
equipped with the language related interactive skills, the project manager is better
positioned to go through meetings with success. Such meetings will include planning
meetings, scheduling meetings, meetings in which teams are structured, meetings to
do with project evaluation, and meetings aimed at reviewing progress.
Key Points to Remember
Systematic interaction is a precondition for successful management of distance
education projects, mainly because participants have to work as a team. Interaction
directly implies a conscious control and exploitation of the most effective potential of
expressive language in both its verbal and non-verbal manifestations. As an
example, project managers who communicate and interact well usually listen hard for
silences of the team members. They detect enthusiastic agreement, bitter resistance
or unspoken misgivings. This comes from focusing, really listening and staying
present. Towards that end, in this chapter we covered a range of key ideas on the
subject of interactivity, and these included:
• Terms of reference for the project team. These form the basis for both initial
and subsequent interaction.
• There are certain ways with words that are facilitative of more effective
communication and purposefulness. These were discussed as advice to the
project manager e.g. how to speak with ease, the need to explain
complicated ideas lucidly; and the essence of speaking clearly and audibly.
• We also dwelt on the importance of message content, that is, the need to
ensure that the content is logically sequenced and put across in a manner
that brings the message to life.
• The issues of diction, voice pitch, tone, volume, and use of pauses were
explored as a way of illustrating the fact that successful interaction is
dependent on exploitation of these elements of communication.
• We concluded the chapter with an examination of the need for the manager
to actively develop emotional intelligence for successful planning and
scheduling of distance education projects.
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