Treat your team members like humans

When you have a team and you have a lot of deadlines, you know that you have to make sure that they are working optimally.  Do they have the information that they need in order to get things done?  What resources are they lacking?  Are they still alert?  Are they still able to deliver?

Sometimes people get sick and it could be something due to stress at work.  If you are a project manager and you know that your team members have been falling ill rather often, you have to assess the situation very well.  And if your team's composition will change, the adjustments will impact team velocity and productivity.  There would have to be adjustments to be done and sometimes it doesn't happen quickly.

Your team members know what they need and how they could do things better.  And you, as project manager, could figure out whether they're just trying to slack off or have an easier time but not doing things right.  You could talk and see where you could compromise.  That's why it's important that from the very start of the project, you are able to hear out each member's ideas, spoken or not.  Sometimes you have to read between the lines.  It could be tricky sometimes, but you have to do it.

A project manager must respect each team member.  And a project manager must treat everyone like humans, not just workers to do the dirty job. Sometimes project managers seem to forget that because of the pressure from the client and from management.  There has to be balance somewhere or else, things could fall apart in the middle of the project because the team suffers from too much work.

Relating with other people sure is tough.  One has to build up some confidence in approaching others.  Flexibility too -- so that one could accept ideas from these people.