Isabelle Jensen

Arizona State University

Scenario B

After completing this week’s simulation, I decided to focus on the issues that went wrong

while reading through Project Management Best Practices and choosing my two blog posts.

There are several different lessons to be learned, but the main ones I focused on in these readings

were situation leadership and proactive management. When something goes wrong on your

project and throws you off course, both of these lessons are there to teach you how to get back up

and keeping moving on. By learning these early on in my project management development, I

am sure to have a better idea of what to do when I face a real problem on the job. I will also be

able to use this new knowledge in my future simulation scenarios.

One of the best ways to lead as a project manager, in my opinion, is situational

leadership. During scenario B of our simulation, an unexpected hiring freeze occurred and we

were left with one or two employees to take on the entire workload. When problems of this size

occur, it is important that the leader has the situational leadership skill to adapt to the situation.

In these situations, when you are able to use situational leadership to give your team the

leadership they want, need and value, then they will also give you the results you want, need and

value (Clayton, 2018). I often noticed that when I was listening to the needs of my team, in the

simulation, during the hiring freeze, they were able to get more tasks done because I was giving

them the leadership they needed. Situational leadership is all about choosing the right way to

lead your team when different issues arise. If a project manager doesn’t have this skill, they will

most likely have more projects fail or unhappy team members when problems arise (Kerzner,

2018).

I found a great blog post about situational leadership and how useful it can be in project

management called “How to Get the Best from Your Project Team with Situational Leadership”.
 Isabelle Jensen
Arizona State University
The best part about situational leadership is that you are able to change your leadership style not

only with different situations but also with different team members. This style takes into account

the different experience, personality, and ability of each employee (Clayton, 2018). The blog

also gives many different ways you can support different team members as their leader

pertaining to their different abilities and motivations. I think this skill is something I am going to

focus on developing over the course of this semester. Situational leadership has been one of the

most valuable lessons I have come across so far pertaining to project management and managing

many different people because it can often times be a messy job.

For my second blog post, I decided to dive into the “Be Proactive, Not Reactive” lesson.

This is a great lesson to keep in mind when problems or setbacks occur on the job. One lesson

that I learned, after taking this week’s simulation scenario B many times, was being ahead of

schedule is the best way to stay ahead of any setbacks. For so many of my rounds I couldn’t

understand why I would fall so far behind when the hiring freeze hit. Then it hit me, if I were to

be ahead of schedule and plan for my setback to occur, I won’t be so far behind afterwards. A

good example of this is driving defensively behind the wheel of a car, preparing for conditions

such as weather, traffic, and other drivers keeps us safe from problems or accidents (Egeland,

2017).

The book Project Management Best Practices also has a great chapter on proactive

versus reactive management. In this section, they talk about how often times it is easy for project

managers to get so caught up in the many tasks they are handling on the project that they forget

to plan ahead (Kerzner, 2018). Without planning ahead, they are stuck with reacting in the

moment to problems instead of being proactive and planning for these problems beforehand. As I

explained before, I was getting some of my lowest scores, and even having to end my projects
 Isabelle Jensen
Arizona State University
early when I was reacting to the hiring freeze instead of being proactive at the start. To ensure

that I am prepared for future problems in the simulation, I am planning to stay ahead of schedule

at the beginning to practice my proactive management skills.

Although I don’t have much experience personally yet with project management, I plan

to use each lesson I learn in this course throughout blog posts, books, and the simulation when I

get my first project management job in May after graduation. However, I hope that I can also

find smaller ways to implement these skills into my daily life, school work, and part-time

accounting job right now. No matter what you do, situational leadership and learning to be

proactive are skills that will set you up for success. As I have found lately, being proactive and

getting my school work done a week ahead of time has allowed me to fix issues that may occur

with any assignments before they are due.

Overall, I completely agreed with what the book and what the blog posts had to say about

situational leadership and proactive management. These lessons that I have learned are direct

correlations to the issues with scenario B I endured. After taking the simulation almost 20 times

this week, I realized just how much the knowledge I gain from reading these blog posts and

chapters come in handy. Now that I know staying ahead of schedule from the beginning and

being proactive to whatever problems may arise, I believe I will be able to achieve even better

scores in the next scenario. Having the situational leadership skills will also help me to learn how

I can rise to the occasion as a leader during tough situations and be able to still motivate my team

to get the best results.

 Isabelle Jensen
Arizona State University
References

Clayton, M. (2018). How to Get the Best from Your Project Team with Situational Leadership
[Web log post]. Retrieved 2021, from https://onlinepmcourses.com/best-project-team-
situational-leadership/

Egeland, B. (2011, March 27). Be Proactive, Not Reactive [Web log post]. Retrieved 2021, from
https://pmtips.net/article/proactive-reactive

Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices achieving global excellence. Hoboken,
NJ: John Wiley & Sons.