Team structures, even in well-ordered, functionally-structured organizations, are inherently complex. Today's matrixed organizations make that complexity even greater, resulting in multiple loyalties among matrix project team members, and if the team is not cohesive, these divided loyalties can be harmful to the success of the project. 

Mark your calendars, and plan to join us for our September 8, 2010 monthly PMISSC meeting, featuring Karen Davey-Winter of Work Life Coaching, who will be speaking about Team Building in a Matrix Environment. 

Location: Blair Mansion Inn, 7711 Eastern Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20912.

Cost will be $35 for payment in advance, $40 at the door, and the event will be worth 1.5 PDUs. Punch the date into your Blackberries and your Outlook Calendars, and plan to join us for a great evening as we sort out the tangled web of building teams in a matrixed project management environment.

Team-Building in a Matrixed Environment

Are you trying to successfully deliver a project without direct control of your resources? Is it hard to build allegiance in your project team when their first loyalty is to their functional team? Are you having trouble understanding what phase of development your team is in so that you can figure out how to get the best out of them? Would helping your matrix team members understand each other better be likely to result in a more productive team and a more successful project? Are you managing virtual project teams and struggling with how to build a team spirit?

This program will help you identify the following:

• The different teams that, as Project Managers, we have to navigate on a daily basis
• Why a matrix environment is especially complex
• Bruce Tuckman's Phases of Group Development - forming, norming, storming, performing
• A series of different team building techniques
• Which phase of Tuckerman's Group Development each technique is best suited to
• A model for virtual team development, based on J McGrath's approach to optimizing virtual team performance
• Some techniques for building virtual teams

At the end of the session you will have practical tips on how to improve the performance of your team, resulting in improved project delivery. This is a participative session!

Karen Davey-Winter

Karen is an Executive and Life Coach who has trained with the College of Executive Coaching and Coach U and who is MBTI and PMP certified. She is also a Program Manager and has over 20 years experience in IT Leadership roles in a variety of organizations. She is an enthusiastic leader of teams of up to 150 people, and has gained considerable experience coaching in these roles. She is particularly skilled in helping individuals and teams identify their communication, decision-making and planning styles to enable them to be more efficient and effective in the workplace.