20 Sep 10 Essential Skills For An Effective Project Manager
What do you do as a project manager?
A project manager plays an important role in any type of project. On most projects, a project manager is involved in planning and understanding the deliverables a little before the project actually begins. The project manager and the team function like orchestra where the project manager is the conductor
A project manager has to coordinate, collaborate, help the team when the team members are stuck, manage conflicts and so many other things.
Keeping focus across the project work and balancing the conflicting constraints skillfully is a project manager’s role. The 8 skills mentioned below help a project manager do it
Stakeholder Engagement
The project is carried on to meet Stakeholder needs. So, primarily, the project manager must be able to satisfy the stakeholders whose needs the project is supposed to meet. Skill to network and influence the stakeholders without being aggressive will help a project manager close the gaps in his projects.
When does stakeholder engagement begin? It is one of the first things to begin! In fact, when you first learn that you are going to manage a project, do you not thank the sponsor and the key stakeholders the first thing? What are you doing? You are managing the expectations of your important stakeholders. More often than not, you will first find out if you should be meeting them formally to thank them. This is part of your stakeholder engagement strategy.
Stakeholder engagement is always work in progress. The project manager who learns the art of stakeholder engagement will never be unsuccessful in his projects
Prioritization
If I remember my early project management days, I always used to say to myself “Oh this week is busy! From next week, everything will fall in its place.” That next week never showed up. Every upcoming week was busier than the previous one. Only thing is, later I learnt that I need to focus on what is more important and take it up on priority. This helped me reduce my tensions and hassles. Rather than attacking and completing the things one after the other as they surfaced, I learnt to prioritize them and focus only on top priority work. Delegating most of the work balance. That helped my team learn responsibility and freed me from hassles and work pressure. Of Course, I did not forget to teach them importance of prioritizing
Interpersonal Skills
The stakeholder engagement on your project is tightly integrated with your interpersonal skills. You need to communicate project progress, when things are not going great. You need to convince a stakeholder why his requirements do not align with your project. You need to close the issues while they are concerns and not wait till they are full blown issues!!
You need to understand what type of communication ticks with which stakeholder. A project manager, who knows how to lend an ear is more likely to be successful than the one who brushes the concerns away or is aggressive or does not spend enough time with a stakeholder who needs patient understanding
Be Organized
I always feel that a project manager’s work is similar to a monkey walking tightrope while balancing a stick in his hand. He has to focus on his balance, the stick (work) and walk the entire length of the tightrope to close the project.
To be a successful project manager (should I say tightrope walking monkey??), the project manager needs to be really well organized so that nothing slips. Being organized in the workplace is something that has helped me keep my focus on the priorities.
One more thing I always monitored well is my own time management. Rather than postponing the work as the delivery day is far, I would focus on closing it if I had good clarity about it. On the other hand, I would not start working on something about which I did not have clarity or I knew that the things would be clear in some time. This is one almost sure way of avoiding re-work. Teamwork
Your project work is as good as your team! As a project manager, you never get a perfect team. You have to make do with whatever team you get. Every team member will be good at something. Develop a good rapport with your team. Understand their concerns and problems. Help them out. Motivate them to do better. Rather than a ringmaster, don the clothes of a coach and you will have a strong, motivated team that delivers.
Take Integrative Approach
After stakeholder engagement, the most important skill for a project manager is understanding integration of the work. Knowing how all the work completed by the team needs to be integrated. This will help a project manager focus on what is really important rather than focusing on a small part of the work which some stakeholders may perceive as more important.
Critical Thinking
When a project begins, a project manager is overwhelmed with expectations. There is not much information available. The stakeholders are enthusiastic and the project team gets many requirements, sometimes contradictory! It is very difficult to decide the way forward in such situations where no real data is available. What should a project manager do in such a case?
The answer is simple (not easy!). Based on his experience, his judgment and analysis of stakeholders and the situation, he has to go ahead and decide the way forward. At the same time, he also needs to be flexible enough to change the decision if the data suggests so!
Out of Box Thinking
Something which sounds cliche and yet, is indispensable for a project manager. Every time you walk the treaded path, you miss an opportunity to work better on your project. Many times, we are blinded by our routine experience. We refuse to believe that some other solution could be there.
Encourage your team not to close the options with standard solutions. Let them think fresh. Motivate them to be creative. They may find out time and money saving solutions.
Leadership
In modern days, a project manager is not only a manager. He needs to be a leader too to understand the strengths of his team and encourage them. Understand the interests of the stakeholders and help them decide what is in the interest of the project
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