Part 1 - Assess personal management style

Select two peers or people in your current or former organization with whom you have recently worked closely, on a project or a team. Arrange a meeting with each person to discuss your own communication style and ideas for improvements. If you are unable to meet in person, you may conduct the meeting virtually by phone or through a Skype call.

Develop a set of questions designed to collect feedback on your personal communication style, the communications tools and methods you used, and the other persons' ideas for improvements. During or immediately after your meetings, make notes of the conversations.

After both meetings are complete, consider the following:

1. What did you learn about your communication style?

2. Were the two individuals in agreement?

3. Was there any feedback you disagreed with?

4. Did you at any point feel uncomfortable or defensive? Why/why not?

5. Which communication tools work well for you and which do not?

6. How will you communicate differently in the future with your peers?

Prepare a report in which you reflect on your experiences from this exercise. In addition, submit a copy of the notes/transcript you developed during your meeting.

Length: 3-4 pages, not including notes/transcript, title, and reference pages

Part 2- Tailor and Justify Communication Stakeholders

Read articles on project communication, read the blog entry by Barlow (2015), and watch the video "What to do during a project management crisis".

http://www.theshelbygroup.com/blog/post/four-steps-for-ensuring-effective-stakeholder-communications/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLVYKrmWe-g

Imagine you are project manager for a large product development team, tasked with creating a new design for an airplane wing that uses non-traditional materials. You company is bidding on a potentially very large, 20 year contract with the Boeing Company and stakes are high. You are on a very tight schedule and your executive team has let you know that your career options hinge on winning this contract. You are 10 days from the deadline when one of your lead engineers informs you that regrettably, the current wing design was based on a previously unknown calculation error, which invalidates the very foundation of your proposal.

With only a few days left before you have to produce a winning proposal, you have to act quickly and decide immediately to 1) redo the design and 2) order a mandatory 100% overtime for the next 10 days for everyone on your team. You know you must communicate the problem and your decision to the executive team, as well as informing your engineers and other project members. You decide to communicate via emails.

Write two separate emails, one to your team and one to the executive committee, in which you:

1. Explain the problem

2. Explain and justify your action plan

3. Discuss your confidence level in finishing the proposal to Boeing on time

Answer the recipients' respective, anticipated questions about the situation

Include anything else you deem important for the intended audience.

Once you have finished writing your emails, explain your communication strategy. Include a discussion of the differences in content and tone between the two emails you write. Relate this discussion to the larger goal of tailoring your project manager communication style to the audience and stakeholder profiles. Combine all three parts into one paper.

Support your paper with a minimum of three (3) external resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including older articles, may be included.

Length: 2-3 pages not including title and reference pages.