How do I peer respond to Jonah and ask a question:

Good evening, classmates.

Virtual Communication Self-assessment

My future state of how I want other to see me as a high effective virtual communicator are as follows.

I want to ensure that my guidance and mission intent is clear and without confusion. I want my team to feel comfortable enough to notify me if they do not understand any step within a process. I want to establish timelines and steps for each stake holder to accomplish to meet these timelines. I want my team to feel virtually empowered to make decisions that meets my intent as well as mission success. I cannot micromanage my team nor do I want to, but we will establish weekly/ biweekly virtual TEAMS meetings to check in on the work week and what has been accomplished. This isn't only to check up on the progress of the programs, but it establishes more communication for myself to ask questions to my stakeholders and express to see what they need from their leadership if needed. I want my entire team to be unified and understand that I am the Program Manager, and it is my responsibility to ensure its success, not only for myself, but for the team. I want us all to win and not just myself.

Face to face communicator Self-assessment

I want to ensure that my team understand that this project is not only a "me" task but an "us" task, to establish program ownership. I want my body language to show to them that I am always eager to engage with my team to not only show that I care about the program success, but I care about the people who oversee that assigned task. Consistently being involved with my team helps me learn them as much as it does for them to learn myself. Learning my team and seeing how their body language reacts to specific situations helps me better utilize them where I think they are needed. Being a force of energy to your team is vital. If you're coming into meeting looking like a mess, vocally you are not being a commanding presence that your team needs from you, and your actions of the same effect will reflect poorly on your subordinates, and their effort will dimmish as well. The result of this will create an environment that your workers cannot prosper in. Doing your job and putting your effort into people will get you far in any leadership position you can find yourself in.

Strategic Perspectives as Program Manager

I think my strategy is going to be a mix of linear and non-linear approach. Trying to find a healthy balance between the two if necessary is vital to a program. Understanding and establishing clear lines of communication avoids any uncertainty within the prosses. Everyone who needs to know specific tasks and steps and avoiding including unnecessary stakeholders will save time and money. It the program managers job to ensure which communication style is best for the situation. Do not be a part of the distraction to your other stakeholders if it's not needed. In our weekly reading it states, "program managers are being pinched form all sides for results, and project managers gravitate towards using the same individuals and resources for similar tasks". It is important that this does not happen unless it's necessary. Expecting to over work a specific individual or resources, you cannot expect that be a single point of failure. Instead, you need to broaden your resources and ensure that you are developing your employees to ensure that, that single point of failure does not exist.

Curlee, Wanda, and Robert Lee Gordon.Successful Program Management : Complexity Theory, Communication, and Leadership, Auerbach Publishers, Incorporated, 2013.ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=1375217.

-Jonah