I have had the opportunity to start moving our company office. When I started, I could choose the team to help me. While my current employer has a compact team, I didn’t have many options. Knowing most of the people, I quickly chose the first three members of the core team. But the fourth one was proposed by our CEO. With the intent to help, he gave me a person who worked with him to move the office to a different company. And here is where the pain started. No commitment, no deadlines met, no helpful information. At the same time, while feeling close to the CEO, this person used that connection to present other project team members’ wins as theirs. Then, at the final phase of the project, when we had to physically move the equipment and the stuff of our employees to the new office, this same person “organized” it in such a way that caused more trouble than results and, at the same time during the days of physical movement the person didn’t show up.
Being nervous and not having enough information, other project team members started searching for solutions within their knowledge and contacts. In the end, we finished the project successfully, and everyone moving to the new office was happy, until the troublemaker didn’t come and said that the praise for the project’s success was to her, while she used to be there every time we needed her. That caused a wave of negative emotions that I had to calm with much effort and flexibility.
Then came a conversation with our CEO, who asked if I was happy with the movement and what I would do differently next time. My answer was direct and unexpected – “Not letting low-value contributors on the team and defending my decision with all possible tools I have in my hands.” While going through the project lifecycle and all the steps, tasks, responsibilities, and challenges, the CEO understood how misled he was from the old experience with the person and agreed not to interfere in future projects.
Although the above text looks more like a TV soap series, it significantly impacted relationships in the team and even changed behaviors and attitudes, creating discrepancy not only between team members in the projects but also between departments of different projects team members were part of. As a result, I learned another valuable lesson in my life on how to better deal with project team members, And now I feel more confident when the next project arises on the horizon. I hope what I can learn through the project lifecycle can help others complete a project with less effort and stress.
Here is part of my learnings:
Chose your team alone
The project manager’s role is vital when executing a project schedule. No matter how the world around you is situated, the project manager must ensure balance in the team to deliver the best results with less effort. To do that, you must carefully choose capable people, but at the same time, you can work together as a team. The project sponsor’s role is to validate the project team rather than interfere with decisions and pushy proposals. If that happens, the project manager should carefully evaluate the sponsor’s proposal and return to them with a clear explanation of how the expectations and deliverables can change if executing the sponsor scenario with the sponsor-chosen team members. The role of the sponsor is not to decide but to validate the choice of the project manager. After all, if the project manager fails, it has to be their responsibility and not someone else’s decision.
Sell the project idea only to people you think are worth participating in.
This may sound harsh, but you need people to help you finish the project. No matter what most people say, they think of projects like trampolines to help them boost their careers, and at the same time, most people cannot foresee the effort and challenges a project can bring to their everyday lives. Without this good judgment, many people start with enthusiasm for a project, realize that it is not as sweet as they thought before, and abandon it silently or loudly during the most challenging parts. Here is where the role of the excellent project manager is by using judgmental thinking and analyzing behavior and attitudes to decide who to add to the team and who will not bring value so that the project runs smoothly. After doing that analysis and deciding on the possible team members comes the hard part – selling the idea for the wins of the project to the right people and attracting them to the project.
Organize projects with flexibility in the schedule.
It has become modern for everything flexible to be also called agile. No matter what you call the project schedule, as a project manager, you need to add enough buffers to the project to allow space for achieving project goals. With that simple action, the project may become easier to finish and not create much stress for the people involved. Building the buffers also allows team members to plan better and develop their own safe space for achievement. Team members who see flexibility and freedom to build their part of the project agenda the way they see it to happen are more productive and result-oriented than those who only have to follow someone else schedule.
Re-evaluate the team several times through the project cycle.
Someone excited initially may not be the same in the middle of the project. Maybe this person is just showing off for some attention, or they decided that the project is not interesting for them, or even the most unpleasant one – they are lazy and have covered that successfully until this project. Lazy people are easy to spot – they always have excuses, often forget things that are their responsibility and services that they did not do anything on their part of the project as late as they can. If you find those signs, you must act directly with the person. No matter if this person is added to the project by you or someone else, as a project manager, you need to collect enough evidence on how their behavior affects project results and build possible scenarios based on the level of their laziness. Then, with that list of designs, you, as the project manager, must step up in front of the project sponsor and explain how the lazy person affects the project and what needs to be done. Often, this means replacing the person, but if you got that person through a sponsor request or demand, it might be a little bit harder.
Make the right decision for the team and the project and defend it until the end.
It may sound scary to stand up in front of the project sponsor and announce that you want to remove someone from the project they favor, but that is what a good project manager must do to finish the project with minimal damage. Suppose it is not possible to remove the person from the project. In that case, you may need to renegotiate the project schedule or even introduce new members to the project team to ensure that results will happen within the agreed deadline. In my case with the office, if I did not do that, then on one exact date, we may have to sit on the street with no office and no comfortable place for half of the team members to work from. So here it is, where the project manager has to be ready for a fight with the project sponsor and explain the consequences of the decision to keep the lazy person in the loop of the project.
Shrink lazy person’s responsibilities.
You need to keep the person on the team. There is no agreement between you and the project sponsor. Do not feel defeated. Just think of a different strategy. Indirectly, you can pull off the work from the lazy person and give it to someone else. You only need to be prepared with someone else in advance not to lose precious time. Moving the responsibilities from the lazy person to the member who will and can do them is a strategy to use while searching for a peaceful solution to the situation with the lazy person. Don’t worry about this step from yours. The lazy person will not complain because they, in reality, don’t want to involve themselves with the project, and the project sponsor will not do much if they see the favorite person still in the project team and the results achieved. This may look like cheating, but in some situations, an approach like that helps the project and lowers pressure and stress without causing too many discrepancies.
Give regular feedback on the lazy employee.
An essential part of every project is reporting. With information during reporting sessions, the project sponsor can decide how the project will continue. According to the predefined schedule, the project’s progress is the first part. Still, a wise project manager always shares brief information about every team member’s contribution to the different stages and tasks. Doing this regularly builds understanding and acceptance from the project sponsor who drives the project and where the weak spots are. While delivering that feedback, the project manager must share a small amount of information, just highlighting what happened, without blaming anyone on the team. Repeating that part in every session slowly but sustainably builds every project member’s image. It allows the sponsor to create” buckets” of information to stay consistent with the project and, at the same time, equitable to the contribution of every team member.
Prepare for pushback from the lazy employee at the end.
While doing all the project tasks with a slight delay, it may look like the project goes smoothly, and the lazy person may think that no one sees how they affect the project schedule with no or less contribution. Showing that you see through your behavior, praising other members, and putting the lazy employee on a second plan may provoke unhealthy behavior like rumoring, talking behind your and other team members, and sabotaging things and actions in the project agenda. While it takes negative forms, this pushback may create a stress load and provoke harmful interactions, able to slow or even stop some of the project tasks. Being prepared with an adequate list of reactions and sharing that list several times during the project execution can signal that tolerance to interference will be low and that there is an action item that can cover different discrepancies during the project cycle. With that communicated, the impact of the lazy person’s actions or actions can be limited to limited cases with less or no significant effect on project execution.
Be honest with the lazy person every moment the project happens.
What many people use as an excuse when pointed out not to be helpful in a particular situation or a project is they have never understood the meaning of the project manager’s actions. And these people are partially correct. Many project managers (fifty-four percent according to the HBR survey form 2019) give feedback and then step back, thinking the input is understood and accepted. The project manager must realize that understanding and accepting feedback are different. The lazy person is good at finding excuses for how nothing was said to them in a clear text so they can take corrective actions on time. Building a cohesive, regular plan on how project members can be informed on the progress of the project and their contribution is a critical skill that the project manager has to build on. This skill is valuable when dealing with a lazy person and, even more importantly, if that person thinks they are protected from the project sponsor or someone else with more power than the project manager.
Build or kill expectations based on the feedback you give
One of the most potent tools during feedback bucket building is that the project manager can build their final decisions on how future projects will be executed and how they can be a possible team member for these projects. Of course, sharing that information at the end of the project with every team member personally may create dissatisfaction in the beginning. Still, it will work positively in the future for every team member – even the lazy person, who will understand that future possibilities to show up won’t be easy to win with that behavior.
IN CONCLUSION:
There is no easy way to deal with a lazy person in a project team. Removing the person from the team is not always the best decision. Learning to deal with laziness consistently and showing no or little tolerance toward it is a winning approach that drives projects forward and helps team members see their real value for the project and the organization. This creates more engaged and internally motivated core project teams, not allowing laziness to get them to fail.
The Human place 