Perhaps you believe you already have good communication skills with little room for improvement, but are you really a good listener? Because being a good listener is fundamental to being a good communicator, yet we have probably all been guilty at times of not paying attention to what another person is saying to us.
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With organizations increasingly adopting distributed team approaches for their workforce, new and frequently unanticipated communication challenges are surfacing requiring novel or at least highly considered approaches to solve. Project teams particularly are susceptible to many of these issues as, by their very nature project teams are formed for a specific task and then dissolve either back into the host organization or, into the more general workforce. Many insights gained in one project can easily be lost to future projects.

Among the many novel challenges which are typically encountered by these distributed teams is the question of how to best manage communications between office locations, when the offices may be separated not just by distance but also by time zones.
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One of the most important skills a project manager has is being able to communicate effectively with the team. Project managers need to know when to communicate, when not to communicate, and how to do it effectively. Having good communication skills means knowing the the right format – should I email this person, call her, or schedule a meeting in person?
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Back in the age when the Romans ruled much of the world, there was a special place, located in what we now collectively call the Middle East, where three major roads met: the road leading northwest to Europe, the road leading south to Africa, and the road leading east to Asia. At the meeting place of these three roads was, so the story goes, a giant pole, upon which passers-by would post messages to other passers-by, in the hope and expectation that the private messages would be delivered to their destinations...
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Everyone is talking about the enormous benefits to be had through collaborative working and better employee engagement. Industry analysts (McKinsey) report a 25% improvement in organizational efficiency when companies successfully deploy a collaboration platform. Whether it’s social media or social collaboration, organizations are striving to deliver better value through a more connected workforce and closer engagement with customers and stakeholders.
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Are you collaborating with a virtual team? When you’ve got several parties involved and they are all based in different locations, it can be hard to keep everyone on the same page. The trick is to work effectively by using good collaboration skills. That sounds simple, but in large project teams it can be difficult to do in practice. Here are five collaboration tips that you can use today so that your team can work more effectively.
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Some of us spend most of our lives waiting for an awesome idea that will never come, others have lots of ideas and projects but don´t execute them. Every successful entrepreneur is an executor, people who do whatever it takes to bring their ideas to life.

Being an entrepreneur is not easy. Many people dream about being the next Facebook or Apple, but few are willing to do what it takes to get there. Discipline is what it takes. Of course there are exceptions and accidental entrepreneurs who can be successful.
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I have the great opportunity to speak with project managers and entrepreneurs from around the world via #PMChat, a weeklyTweetup I co-founded. Over the past two years, we have had some amazing experts from leadership, project management, and other business disciplines lead community discussions on strategy, negotiations, virtual teams, and more. Regardless of topic and domain expertise of our weekly guest expert, the community often references the common characteristics that comprise a strong PM. The list is extensive, but it often boils down to leadership, communication, and the ability to manage expectations...
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