The Psychology that can be beneficial for the Project Managers

 

Prologue

Those who are carried out with routine work in a traditional organization can only work more or less with the same colleagues starting from their training period to retirement. During this period, they know them well: the good sides, wrong sides, and their complete characteristics. With each passing year, this long-drawn relationship helps draw an order and team structure in the department and learn to deal with other colleagues individually.  This article will explain the psychology that can be beneficial for a project manager and how it has helped and will help in the future.

Challenge

New tasks are continually being mastered in the Project. Different tasks always required a different set of competencies, and the Project team is gathered to ensure they meet the upcoming challenges and the common goal. Working together as a team is becoming increasingly popular and sometimes seems to be challenging with remote working. If the project team is continuously being reorganized, there are many chances that team members will not get to know each other so well, whereas they may end up working together. The risk of misunderstandings and conflict will indeed increase considerably in such conditions.

Understandings

Dealing with such a superficial relationship within a project is an obvious task for a Project Manager. The PMs who can understand the psychology behind such a situation will always have the upper hand. Because they can better assess the behavior of their team members, and whenever required, they can route it in a positive direction. It is about how people react to a particular situation or certain conditions like the following.

• How people react when they see each other for the first time?
• How differently can people react to unfamiliar conditions?
• How do the project team's behavioral norms establish themselves very quickly?
• How does a Project team develops a group and able to deliver successfully?
• How does corporate culture influence project work?
• How can personal conflicts become a disruptive factor in a Project?

Ideally, a successful Project manager is expected to deal with all the mentioned aspects and sometimes more of them with respect to human behavior. If they deal with such human behavior and take them into account in their Project Management and route it accordingly, there is nothing called a failure for such PMs. So, Project Managers should be well-versed with the Project Management processes and methodologies and the psychological aspect of human cooperation. This is one of the critical factors that can seamlessly show success to the entire Project Team.

Learning Styles within the Project team

Usually, a Project Manager mastered the new and existing tasks in a Project. The new tasks come with their own set of set challenges, obviously the tasks performed for the first time, then one will not know how to achieve the same task effectively, and the risk associated with the task will also be unknown. So, one could always find many similarities between teaching a new skill and approaching a project task. It's vital for a Project Manager to know and understand how the learning processes work and the different working styles available in such conditions. The learning process and available working styles can provide hints and explanations for the project group's behavior. Because some people may approach new tasks by reflecting and observing, and some may prefer an active experimental approach.

Kolb's Learning Style

I have been reading a lot of artifacts, theories, and principles written by David Kolb. David Kolb published his learning styles in 1984, and many psychologists have used this to study their clients' behavioral and working patterns. To describe my learnings, I would follow a similar approach that Kolb follows. He uses two variables; the first deals with the Process, like how we approach a new task. This task has two endpoints. The first one is "Active experimentation," and the second one is "Reflective observation." The second variable deals with what we think of a new task and how we can carry it out. It also has two endpoints. The first one is "concrete experience," and the second one is "abstract concepts." According to David Kolb, the human mind can not simultaneously deal with the two opposing and contrasting terms. So, the reason we always decide on one endpoint for each of the variables. That is why he has come up with a matrix with four fields. Each of the boxes or areas represents a learning style created from the two of his variable.

Blending Kolb's Different Learning Style

The first learning style is called Discoverer and also be called Diverger. In this learning style, people can look at a particular task from different perspectives. Here the task bearer will prefer to watch rather than try something out in practice. The Second learning style is called Thinker and is also known as Assimilator. In this learning style, people prefer to have a logical approach. They prefer to learn with ideas and theoretical concepts and find it helpful while interacting with people and teams. The third learning style is called the Decision Maker and is also known as the Converger. In this learning style, people prefer to solve problems practically. They are more inclined towards the technical specifications and the functions of people and teams. The fourth learning style is called the Doer and is also known as the Accommodator. In this learning style, people prefer to learn by putting their different approaches directly into practice and trying them out. These people don't want to waste their time thinking or brainstorming various ideas and solutions in-depth.

Advantage of knowing the Team Member's Learning Style

If a Project Manager knows their project team member's learning style, it always gives them the advantage to classify their behavior while dealing with new or previously unknown tasks. In addition to this, if a Project Manager knows a team member's learning style, it can help the Project Manager provide better support and guidance in person. It can help the Project Manager, as they can pass on the new information to best suit the learning style of the particular individual. Knowing the team member's learning styles will always be advantageous because different learning styles work better in various project phases. Like Imagination works wonders when working on the Project scope, reflection works brilliantly during the planning, and hands-on mentality works excellently during project execution. It constantly emphasizes helpful behavior when a Project Manager is aware of such varieties of learning styles.

The best model for Team Development

When a team is formed, or a Project team is formed, it is apparent that it will have multiple arrays of personalities. To create a Project team, one has to move through several phases characterized by different behaviors. One of the best-known models to develop a Project is Dr. Bruce Tuckman's model. This model has described four phases that every team should follow and go through before a high-performance team is formed. Human behavior always has a strong influence over anything, so team development can't follow this more strictly. It is the main reason why a team jumps back and forth in the phases where they see the overlap and where some regression is expected. If a new team member is being added to the team or the team's changes happen, the team is always reset to the earlier phase.

Phases of building or Structuring a Team

As mentioned above, I have already discussed that every team must go through various phases when a team is newly formed. Now let's discuss those phases in detail, which a team should ideally go through before becoming a high-performance team.

• Forming: When a team is formed, usually all members feel energetic and excited. Most of the members will be happy to have been selected within the team, hoping to have a joyful and enjoyable team experience. On the other side, it is one side of a coin; on the other side, they would be thinking about how they will be taken in the team? How will they be accepted within the team? And if their performance will able to help the team in meeting the requirement and standards. Usually, many questions are expected from the team members because they will be uncertain about their roles and responsibilities. At the early stage of the team forming, all these questions will be redirected to the Project Manager because, naturally, they are the first point of contact for the entire team during this phase.

• Storming: During this phase, it's will be obvious that the initial uncertainty would have been shed. So, the team member's entire focus will shift from the actual activities and raise the question of belonging to the team members' behavior. In this phase, the other team member's expectations and performances will become the center of attention. Conflict is usual during this phase as each team member begins to express their opinions freely and openly. So, the risk of having the expectation clash is expected, and conflicts will also be approached openly during this phase.

• Norming: Once the team settled down with the conflicts and a common understanding has been established, an atmosphere of satisfaction and belonging will form. In this phase, all the Project team members will be able to leave their conflicts behind, and they will be started focusing on the common goal. Having common goals in the entire team's mind, they will not be focusing on their individual goals anymore. Especially in this phase, the Project team members will accept their team members' various weaknesses and strengths and have also developed an understanding of their roles and responsibilities.  

• Performing: There are many possibilities that all the teams will not be reaching the High-Performing phase. Because to reach this stage, they need to accept the group norms and also could be able to establish a balance distribution of roles. All the project team members must have accepted their co-worker's behavior and only focused on the common goal. Apart from all this, it is vital to have constructive feedback and communication culture. If all these conditions are met, then Project team members can attain the fourth phase, i.e., performing, and in this phase, all of them will be highly motivated and can work independently towards the common goal.

Integrating Dr. Bruce Tuckman's Model with Project Management

The team development model by Dr. Bruce Tuckman can provide additional information to the Project Managers, especially on the co-worker, cooperation, and interaction within the team. This model will help the Project Managers and the leaders adopt the appropriate leadership behavior and demonstrate them according to different phases. I will explain how a Project Manager or a Leader can demonstrate their leadership behavior in accordance with various phases.

• Forming: During this phase, Project Managers being the front Line leaders, can set up the team's direction. Activities and expectations of the results and standards should be communicated openly to everyone. In this phase, Project Managers are rarely shown open and direct resistance to the leadership style. Project Managers can be acting chairperson during this phase and show their support towards the team accordingly. Being an acting chairperson, they can structure and organize the meetings.

• Storming: The Storming phase can be strenuous for the Project Managers because it is the phase where they will have to justify their decisions, organizations, and their leadership style to the entire project team. They should be in full control of this chaotic phase, and at the same time, they should be open to listening to the Project team members to intervene in conflicts. It's practically impossible for the Project Managers to incorporate all the ideas, suggestions, and recommendations of their team member into the planning. Still, Project Managers can gain confidence by showing their interest in listening to their team members. It gives a feel to the entire project team that they are being heard. It is not essential to explain the precise goals and activities in this phase, but it is important to describe the way there.

• Norming: Till this phase, the team would have gone through a transformation of two phases where they become part of the Process and structure, and the conflicts would have been resolved by now. In this phase, the team will agree to accept the common goals and work together to achieve them. During the phase, the Project Managers will start withdrawing themselves, and it's when they will be delegating certain responsibilities and activities to the Project team members. In this phase, the Project team members are no longer distracted by the conflicts and relationships, so they can focus more and start tackling more complex activities. During this phase, the Project Manager must begin working with the team to motivate them as a whole and as individuals. Project Managers can also continue to engage the project team members in the deep-dive analysis, decision-making, and long-term planning.

• Performing: This phase team has become independent to work efficiently in every aspect towards the common goal. This is the phase where the Project Manager can stop focusing only on the team. During this phase, the Project Manager can ideally shift their focus to the outside world because Project Managers should set goals for the team and share their vision with the leaders for what can be achieved in the future. These visions not only the Project results but also includes the performance of the Project team. Project Managers also work as a pathfinder for the Project team by tackling external obstacles and clarifying its organizational difficulties. This will help the project team to attain their activities and common goals by staying focused.

Conclusion

Human behavior or psychology is present in everyday life of a Project Manager. Unfortunately, this has not gained the attention that is required to have in Project Management education. David Kolb's learning style and DR. Bruce Tuckman's team development theory are the two best examples of a psychological model that can help the project manager understand their team, resolve conflicts, and have improved interactions with the project team. While writing this article and researching human psychology, I have realized that people won't behave the way a psychologist has predicted, So I have presented this article based on general ideas. It can also help the Project Managers and the aspiring Project Managers learn from these psychological models. As a Project Manager, I have adapted these models and ideas, and it lies with every other Project Manager as to how they adapt these models and ideas. To get the full and maximum results, one must adapt these ideas and models in every interaction and stage within the project team.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are based on my own research on various psychological aspects and my 15+ years of Project Management experience. 

The most hazardous word in Project Management?

All of you must be knowing the vital aspects of Project Management, the critical attributes of Project Management. But have you ever admired what the most hazardous word in Project Management is?

I sure most of you won't be aware of that word, and many of you would think there can't be any such words? But there is one word, and that is "UNIQUE." How? Let me explain it to you. "UNIQUE" is the word that, on a high level, stunts our growth as a profession and starves us of learning lessons & applying continuous improvement practices to project delivery.

All of you are a little confused; let me explain this in detail through this article.

If you are engaged in a Project or Project Management process, then you would have heard or come across the word "UNIQUE," and it's being used to describe the Projects and their deliverables. But do you all know the reality? In reality, PMI describes a project as "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, services, and results." Another renowned certification body, APM, describes a project as "a unique, transitory endeavor, commenced to accomplish planned goals, which could be defined in terms of outputs, outcomes, or benefits."

Unique is the Anti-Pattern

The anti-pattern is a typical response to a recurring problem that is ineffective and risks being counterproductive. In Project Management, the deep-settled preoccupation with the uniqueness of projects itself is an anti-pattern that slams Project to repeat the same mistakes as their predecessors. The overall pattern looks like this. Every organization believes that a solution to a problem or an opportunity cannot be achieved efficiently within its operational delivery structure. Therefore they board the project. In this stage, the solution is not the "UNIQUE" one; in fact, it's slightly out of alignment with the way business functions. It is like a round peg in a square hole. This is when Project managers take over and begin to apply strategies designed for handling genuinely unique challenges. Uniqueness is assumed from the beginning of the project, and unlike other assumptions, it has never been validated adequately. In such cases, lessons learned from the past are overlooked because no one believes that these lessons would be beneficial or relevant for this project. As a result, the project will start making the same mistakes as other projects that were already delivered by the same Project Manager, same organization, same business units, or using the same technology. To become successful, we need to spend less time thinking about what makes our projects unique, and we should spend more time understanding what makes our Project Ordinary.

Approach to categorize Projects in a Portfolio

There is a most common approach which is usually used in Lean Manufacturing. The approach is called Runners, Repeaters, and Strangers; this approach can categorize the projects in a portfolio. As the name goes, this approach will sort and categorize the projects into three sections, i.e., Runners, Repeaters, and Strangers.

Runners

The runners are the most frequent types of Projects. In large organizations, it can be included in intradepartmental projects or technology upgrade related projects. In an event management company, the regular meetups or breakfast seminars are considered as runners. Similarly, all the internal projects coming through business units can be considered or categorized as runners.

Repeaters

Repeaters are the regular projects, but not all the typical projects need to be treated as repeaters. Usually, projects like significant CRM upgrades and introducing new product lines would fall in this category.

Strangers

All the infrequent types of projects will fall under this category. The projects that are not common in nature and rare types of nature like mergers, acquisitions, or something unusual product line with no frame of reference will fit the strangers' category.

In most organizations, the number of Runners projects would be very high, and on the other hand, there will be fewer projects that can be categorized as Strangers. The effort should be made to arrange the projects which belong to Runners and Repeaters category and build the competencies in delivering these projects, rather than treating them as unique. We should study and analyze that the Projects are categorized as strangers; are they strangers everywhere or just in our organization. If they are strangers only in our organization, our effort should focus and learn about them from the market or from the other organizations.

The detailed analysis of all three categories of projects will help the organizations develop a process-oriented methodology to deliver effectively. It can also help to get constant feedback loops to ensure a sustainable process, and we are refining them as we keep learning from past lessons.

Lessons Learned: The most underrated aspect of Project Management

If the Projects are unique, then it deems the chances of learning from them. So, if we set aside the anti-pattern of "UNIQUENESS," then we see rich seams of data and insights will open up from all the corners. I discussed this with one of my school friends, who is currently working in Chennai in the Toyota Manufacturing plant. He was explaining to me that the plant has something called "The Andon Cord." So, The Andon Cord's benefits are when someone pulls up the cord; then it means a critical issue has occurred and required immediate attention and response. The best part is pulling up the cord is restricted to managers; everyone has the authority and leverage to pull up the cord as in when required. Once the cord has been pulled, the entire team has to resolve the issue and ensure that it won't happen again. This approach won't be required or required significantly less for a "UNIQUE" Project, but with Runners and Repeaters, this approach makes absolute sense. Usually, a slight delay on one project to resolve an issue and prevent it from happening in the future would help the organization save money and time in the long run. Based on my discussion with my friend, I realized that stopping the manufacturing line would feel too extreme, so lessons learned can be powerful and can help them save a huge amount of waste. Effective techniques like "CALL3" should be introduced within the organization to bring up the lesson learned to life rather than simply filling up the lessons after the end of the project to gather the dust and be forgotten.

Continuous Delivery: The most tweaked aspect of Project Management

Many organizations are adopting Agile approaches; I can also see that organization adopting the continuous delivery approaches. Usually, in this kind of environment, forming a team to deliver the project is completely different. Project work is actually drip-fed into highly flexible and permanent teams that can deliver the business priority. These approaches are common in software development environments, but now it's actually gaining some traction in other industries like marketing and others. Go Aboard on a continuous delivery journey can even allow more opportunities like to improve and optimize. It challenges the anti-pattern "UNIQUENESS" and eradicates the concept of the project is a temporary arrangement. We all know that pulling up together a Project team is a highly inefficient method. As I have mentioned in my previous article in the "psychology that can be beneficial to Project Managers," each team will go through the phases like forming and storming to attain the condition where they are performing at a level that is considered normal. Seldom project teams stay long enough to reach the performing stage, but continuous improvement can help teams stay together and bring the work in them to attain the performing stage. The approach of continuous delivery can open up more possibilities for standardizing the lessons learned and applying them more prominently than ever before. It is always worth considering this approach if you have a higher number of projects which require common skills and capabilities.

PMO Plays the Vital Role

PMO plays a critical role in breaking the anti-pattern, which continues to hold the delivery back. Based on my experience, here is a checklist that I prepared. The checklist can be beneficial for the PMO to break the strings of "UNIQUENESS" and can help them to improve project delivery in organizations:

• Categorize the Projects as Runners, Repeaters, and Strangers.
• Work closely with the Project Managers to classify the Runners and then the Repeaters so that they can have a standardized Project plan, checklists, pre-populated stakeholder maps, and pre-populated risk log.
• Prepare a training plan and provide training in delivering the Runner Projects. Build your capabilities and Skillsets to deliver the changes rapidly and consistently.
• Create and Act as a hub for lessons learned.
• Deploy the Call3 to ensure the project starts without the lessons learned from a similarly delivered past project.
• Check if the continuous delivery will work for your organization or not, and if it works, then what steps or measures can be taken to turn it into a reality.
• Create a framework where success can be measured easily and seamlessly.
• Ensure you have the best metrics to track the delivery improvements for all the projects across the organization. It will help you see how the changes implemented by the PMO impact the delivery.
• If your organization is already working on a continuous delivery environment then start tracking cycle time and determine process improvements.
• For projects that are categorized as Strangers, check with your peers and supplier network to leverage them and get the benefits from the lessons they learned for those stranger Projects.
• Spread the word if the project delivery is going to improve, we need to stop thinking that our Projects are "UNIQUE." So, dropping this anti-pattern could pave the way for more project delivery improvements than one could have imagined. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are my own. I have articulated this article based on my 15+ years of experience in Project Management. I have been delivered 39+ projects. Based on my Project delivery observation and experience, I have realized that "UNIQUENESS" is the word that can destroy the entire project team's creativity and stunts their growth. For the Project team to grow, they need to drop the word "UNIQUENESS." This article is purely based on my viewpoints based on my experience; if anyone wishes to share their thoughts, please share your comment in this article.

Shifting PMOs to PMOBots

 

One morning my phone screeched. I got a message that three of my Project coordinators will be on holiday, one was visiting a different office in another city, and the other team member is already sick. This kind of information helps PMOs prepare the team's mental notes to ensure proper support networks are in place even when the PMs and PCs are on leave. Through one of our company's popular messaging systems, the message was delivered to me, "SLACK," and the message came from the Bot user available in Slack called "Holly." Holly was actually integrated with querying our HR systems, finding out if anyone from the team is on leave or not, and if Holly found anyone, it will send a consolidated update back to the team every morning.

The Bots

It was initially started with Holly (holiday-bot), but now if you guys search for it, you may not find it. It has been upgraded to Attendance Bot, and there are plenty of other bots available in Slack like time bot, Vacation Tracker, Reminder Bot, Calamari, and Leave Board. There could be actually more bots available than I just mentioned. I used these bots, so I have mentioned these. So now, coming back to our topic and coming back to "Holly." In Slack, all these bots have a name, profile, and picture just like all of us. We can interact with them through commands, to which they will respond promptly, and they can understand our basic requests. I have been using Holly as a valuable member of the team till I discovered all these bots, which I mentioned above. When I was aware of the only bot, "Holly," I always get to know what the resource strength looks like each day with its help. It actually works through a short piece of the code, which resides in one of our servers and connects our internal HR system and Slack. Our holiday bot "Holly" (which is now replaced with multiple other productive bots, but I still miss Holly) takes the repeatable mundane task and runs with it, which frees up valuable time for the other team members. It was not only Holly that I was using. I also remember one more bot called "GlossBot" because it maintains the glossary of standard terms in our organization and responds to our requests with definitions. E.g., if someone doesn't know what BOSCARD stands for, then a question is raised to GlossBot, and it immediately responds, telling that BOSCARD is an acronym for creating terms of reference – Background; Objective; Scope; Constraints; Assumptions; Risks; Dependencies.

The Change

A big thanks to the growing number of CRM systems with API interfaces and messaging systems like Slack, which positively embrace bots' use and automate more simple tasks. It can even further use to do the daily follow-up and tracking like letting us know if the team is in office or not; it can quickly inform the PMO manager about the milestone due and if the Project Managers have updated the risks log not. It can help the Project Managers or the coordinators in following up the assigned tasks are completed or not? Like bots can check with the task owners if the assigned tasks are completed or not, and it can even update the project plan accordingly.

Inadequate to automate & delegate to bots can waste time and reduce the quality.

Many PMO roles are taken up with a severe manual gathering and communicating information between various roles and stakeholders. These efforts are usually driven by the need to fill the information gap within a project and the organization. The entire process of gathering and disseminating information is always labor-intensive. As a result, a PMO analyst always ended up and stuck up in a furrow of working on low-level and repetitive tasks. Moreover, the gathered information relies heavily on human intervention, which can lead to error or bias. The entire process, which I just mentioned, is relatively slow and inaccurate, and it can leave Project teams and stakeholders feeling frustrated. It is the only reason why PMO has been viewed as a blocker, not an enabler. Ideally, the PMO should be an Enabler, and effective use of bots can help them become enablers by reducing the administrative overhead and delegating repetitive and mundane tasks to bots.

Use of bots and automation scripts to reduce the mundane or repetitive tasks

PMOs have almost all the processes, which clearly screams out for automation. Normally automating such tasks can be cost-prohibitive because of the temporary nature of the Project. The question here is Project may be temporary, but the project portfolio is not.  Usually, PMOs will have a ton of small and routine tasks easily delegated to bots, like checking the missing documents, ensuring metadata is up to date, and following up on the overdue reports. Many such tasks can be handed over to bots or can be delegated to an automated script.

Furthermore, there are plenty of common tasks and processes used by a wide range of projects in the Portfolio PMO, like booking meetings, tracking actions, creating a tracklist, and the list goes on. Every software project will have routine processes like creating GIT repos, running test scripts, and building test environments can also be handed over to bots or use workflow automation software to automate these mundane tasks. There are plenty of bots available in Slack that can take care of such mundane tasks, but that is just one option; we have multiple other options available. One can always create and customize the automation script and run them based on their requirement and feasibility.

RPA bots

Several RPA (Robotics Process Automation) solutions are available, like UiPath, Blue Prism, Epiplex, Laserfiche, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ElectroNeek Pega, which can create bots which can work either alongside human or independently. Bots that can be worked alongside humans are called attended bots, and the ones who can work independently are called unattended bots. Attended bots are helpful for repetitive tasks that require a high level of accuracy. Unattended bots can run 24x7 and can handle a large backlog of work from the queue of CRM, PPM, or any other subsequent tools. Unattended bots can help set up access for people working on projects, any reconciliation especially helpful for the finance team and PMO work like following up and checking the quality of the timesheet. Attended bots can able to save 30% of the time, and more saving can be achieved for more complicated processes, and unattended bots can be able to save almost all the time. In fact, it can remove the redundancy of all such mundane tasks.  

PMO should track automation as a KPI

Now is the time when PMO should start considering automation as a KPI, and having this in mind, PMO should start with new metrics and name them as "% automated processes." I believe that a PMO's role is to be the catalyst for the business, and if all of you have a similar thought process, then I recommend all of you should start targeting to grow these metrics month-on-month. Trust me, freeing up the valuable human hours to focus on making the business runs faster is the catalyst's primary responsibility. Being a PMO, it's always with us. It is either I grow, or we grow.

Learning continues

It is only the tip of the Iceberg. Learning about bots and RPA is like diving into the deepest ocean, and I can only go deeper until I hold my breath. So, I will try to cover the automation tools in the PMO in my next article. Till then, I would be happy to hear about this topic from all of you. So, please comment and help me to learn more 😊. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are my own. I have articulated this article based on my experience of using apps like Slack, teams, workstream.ai; out of all, I find Slack very useful as it has plenty of bots starting from geekbot, which can be used for Scrum stand up. Other developer bots are available within slack like Jenkins CI, Hubot, Bitbucket Cloud, Gitlab, and many more such bots, which can ease up human hours by taking up the mundane tasks, which I mentioned in my article.

Trending In LinkedIn

We all have been wondering how someone's post is trending and what does it mean. So I will explain LinkedIn trending, its meaning, and how does a post qualify for trending in this article.

• History of LinkedIn Hashtag & Trend: Linkedin introduced hashtags(#) in 2018. Though we were familiar with Instagram and Twitter hashtags, LinkedIn Hashtags are different from other social media hashtags. using LinkedIn hashtags will help you to make your content more discoverable and also help you to connect with people, who are more interested in your work and what you do over LinkedIn. In short, using the LinkedIn hashtags will get you and your content in front of a wider audience and to expand your readership by attracting the required amount of attention from the right people. As hashtags joined the game in 2018, So LinkedIn Trend comes into the picture to rebalance the post and increase the visibility of your post and content within LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn Trend and its Meaning: As part of the strategy to rebalance your post and content and to increase its visibility. LinkedIn exposes your post to a larger audience following the same hashtags which is been used in your post. LinkedIn trend meaning your content is shown to LinkedIn members outside your network whom you may not have any degree of connections with.
• How to Post On LinkedIn to Achieve Trending Status: You need to understand the LinkedIn best practices in order to achieve trending status for your post. To understand the LinkedIn best practices we need to understand LinkedIn Algorithm. LinkedIn uses a combination of human editors and computer algorithms to find storylines that are resonating with LinkedIn Members.

The LinkedIn Algorithm looks like below:

The algorithm behind the setup uses "Profile Quality Classifiers," which means the strength & quality of your individual profile matters a lot rather than the number of users in your network. Below 3 things that matter a lot:

• Profile Strength: You may follow any influencers, but chances of knowing them personally are significantly less. LinkedIn gives more weightage to the connections whom you know personally. To determine which posts are most related to members, LinkedIn takes implicit and explicit signals into consideration. It considers whom you have interacted with directly through comments, shares, and reactions. It also considers information listed within profiles, such as interests, skills, and which members work together, etc. For actionable results, consider posting more content in the form of posts related to your relevant topic or maybe topics in which you have an interest.
• Interest relevance: You may be personally connected to someone, but that doesn't mean you will like their content. LinkedIn, through their algorithm, measures a post's affinity to someone's interest based on the groups, hashtags, pages, and people they follow.
• Engagement probability: The LinkedIn algorithm rank this component in two stages; first, the algorithm evaluates the likelihood that others will share, comment, and react to a post, and secondly, how quickly a post starts raking in interactions after it's been published.

"The above-mentioned things will help you understand the LinkedIn algorithm better. As you understand the best practice and algorithm better it will help you make your post trending on LinkedIn."

Anatomy of a Trending Post/ How to Achieve Trending status: We will cover a step-by-step approach to achieving a trending status.

• Formulate a useful post: This is very important to write a post related to your topic, related to a group you follow, related to a role you play, or related to a job.
• Catchy but Informative content: Create a post to attract members of LinkedIn, but at the same time, you need to have informative content. This will allow the members of LinkedIn to read your post or article. You may also share the experience you had in a recent event, meetings, or gatherings.
• Selecting Suitable Image: If you have any image to share, please make sure you have a suitable image relating to your post or Article.
• Tag the attendees who are in the Picture.
• Tag/ mention any organizations involved.
• If possible, tag the business, sponsors, etc.
• Always end the post with a call to action.
• Use proper & relevant hashtags: Research the relevant hashtags and use them in your post or Article. As the number of followers, a hashtag will increase, your chance to get your post trending.
• Research about relevant hashtags
• Include 3 popular and 3 that are entirely relevant to your topic.
• Pick up a convenient time for all the users you have tagged: This is very important. If all your users are online, then it will gain you maximum visibility within no time.
• Let everyone know about your post: You can share the link of your post on other social media platforms.
• Make sure you respond to each and every comment: This is the most critical part as the LinkedIn algorithm considers the engagement of the post/ article author. So it's essential to respond to every comment, and also it's a gesture to thank all of them who appreciate your post/ article.

If you follow the formula mentioned above, then you will see the changes within a week. Your post will gain views compared to your earlier posts.

Benefits of LinkedIn Post Trending:

• Trending can produce a significant spike in the number of views of your post and LinkedIn Profile outside your connections.
• Increases the visibility of your profile to more prominent members outside of your connections.