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The Reluctant Workers

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| Case Study: The Reluctant Workers |
Sharon Wellman | BUS 375 Project ManagementProfessor George Dollar | | 4/29/2013 |

Case Study: The Reluctant Workers
Three Core Skills: Identifying and Analyzing After reading the case study entitled, “The Reluctant Workers,” I have identified the following three core skills of the project manager that were not being fully utilized: Leadership, Team Building, and Management Support. The PM, Tim Aston, did not appear to be able to be able to motivate his team, and therefore had no ability to control their work ethics or habits. His Leadership skills were not fully realized or accepted by his team, possibly due to the age conflict and his “freshman” status, and he therefore lacked the capacity to even influence them to remain at work until afternoon meetings had concluded or ask him for help. He also seemed to lack confidence in his PM position, as evidenced by his failure to require his project staff to change their programmed vacation days when a test was scheduled and the customer’s management team was flying in. It appeared to me as if he presumed he could not order the project staff to make this change, and instead was relying on the staff to make the “right” decision and cancel their vacation days (Kerzner, 2009). Although it is hard to fully ascertain the type of team framework that exists from this short excerpt, I got the distinct impression that Tim is on one side of his team and the project staff are all on the other side, squaring off against each other. Tim’s Team Building skill is another factor that is affecting his ability to successfully motivate his staff. The staff are all at the top of their pay grade, they are both complacent and jaded, and the director of Project Management seems content to make excuses for their behavior. Building a team with these people will require Tim

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