What are the most important skills a project manager should have? What skill sets should a PM have? What PM skills are important for a project manager’s job? Watch this list of top skills for every project manager.
have you ever wondered why some of your projects succeed and others don’t have you ever looked at other PM’s and wondered what it is that they do different to make their project succeed I have been in the world of project management for over 20 years and I’ve trained and I’ve consulted many professionals in the field at all different levels and over these years I have seen that there is a consistent set of skills that if you have you tend to be a lot more predictable in your success yes you could have random patches of success here and there but that’s not really what you want what you want is consistent success you don’t want to watch this video to the very end so that you can assess along the way which of these skills you have mastered which of these you need to work on so listen carefully to what they are some of them are going to be baskets of skills some of them are going to be individual skills and you need to determine where you rate on these skills and what action plan you’ll need to develop so that you can become a better p.m. so why don’t we just go ahead and discuss the ten key skill sets that you need to master to become a consistently good effective project manager and I’ll start with the first one which you probably have already heard about which is communication and by communication I mean all forms of communication this would mean the spoken the written the body language the documenting the emailing the reporting the uploading downloading all the things that need to be shared for information on the project you need to be good at it but more so the way you talk the way you extract information the way you were things the way you document things the way you send the emails that’s going to help you in many of the other steps that I’ll talk about in becoming a good project manager the second skill set that you need to have is effective scope and requirements management now mind you if you’re a good communicator you should be able to get good information out of people you should be able to sit with them and extract requirements very specific ones very clear objectives and goals you know the smart model specific measurable agreed-upon realistic and time and cost bound objectives so when we collect scope we need to make sure these are very specific and can be measured we need to get good at preparing deliverables list so we can follow up on those we need to be able to have very clear specifications we need to know how to develop and document good quality requirements and we also need to have the ability to go about verifying that the scope or the requirements have been met when someone says I have completed my task the third skill set that you need to develop is planning now there’s a lot of stuff that goes on the planning but some of the key ones that you really need to be good at when it comes to project management is schedules you will need to plan activities out milestones mind you you don’t have to always do it yourself you could always have somebody do it but it needs to be done you can’t just work by memory you need to have things documented you need timelines of when things should be happening so that you can follow up on these things later on you need some key milestones so that you can report to management on them you also need to work with planning resources you need to know when these resources will be available and how many and for what purpose if you can plan your schedules and resources these are some of the key planning skills that you need to have there’ll be other planning skills that you would require but these are core when it comes to project management the fourth skill set that you need to have is the ability to do monitoring and follow-ups that is effective monitoring and follow-ups that doesn’t mean go in and know everybody stand over their heads and do micromanagement but you need to develop you know you need to educate yourself there’s a lot of YouTube videos there’s a lot of documentation and articles and yet–and you need to read up on how you can monitor timely deliverables monitor the schedule monitor the budget monitor deliverables monitor performance and be able to react to that and resolve issues and problems and agree on how to make decisions with the team and management so decision-making abilities problem solving issue resolution are going to be required when you’re doing the monitoring that’s a skill set that you really need to have so planning is how you set it up monitoring is how you check it the fifth skill set you need to have is team management capabilities now that’s a huge basket of capabilities that will need to be developed but I bundle them into one because it is one category to be able to manage a team you need to know how to develop and motivate this team you can look at something called the Tuchman ladder right that one talks about the different steps that people go through in order to become more capable and perform better for the organization you need to understand team dynamics how to how people work together together separate and so on you need to know their preferences and strengths and weaknesses you also need to know how to delegate responsibilities to the team members you also need to be able to supervise the team performance and deal with conflicts if it ever arises you may want to tap into something called emotional intelligence which you’ve probably heard of this is where you tap into the mood and the mindset and the feelings and the emotions of the other person and be able to take advantage of you knowing that in reacting to the situation so these are your these are part of your team management capabilities that you need to develop yes I agree this is a big basket but you know if you develop them over time then over time you become more successful in managing your projects scale number six is that believe it or not you have to be likable and what that means is that you need to have a positive attitude you need to exhibit positive energy positive vibe people like managers who exhibit positive energy people who have a positive outlook people who look at solutions rather than complain about problems you also need to be assertive you need to know how to ask for what you want you need to be able to tap into emotional intelligence so that you can understand this situation and how somebody feels and be able to tap into that in order for you to come up with a possible response to a situation it also means that you need to be objective that means you can’t focus on the people whenever there’s a problem don’t address the person address the problem itself be objective you know fixate yourself on the issue what is causing the problem not who is causing the problem right try to speak in terms of the issue itself so don’t ask someone how come it’s taking you so long instead you could ask them you know is there a way that we can speed up the delivery of this one item so remain focused on the object not the person you also need to make sure your body language exhibits positivity right so things like you know keeping your arms open you know that’s the sign of openness doing this you know looks like you don’t want to listen right so you need to learn the body languages that people appreciate that people respond good to you need to learn how to mirror people you know their movements their body language míriam go look it up if you can mirror someone you can get their attention and finally when it comes to likability you got to consider the looks right now yeah you know some are not born with you know great looks but still the way you handle your hygiene your overall cleanliness the way you dress people look at that and they judge your character so if somebody’s been neglecting themselves then their team are going to ask why should we trust this one person if they can’t even take care of themselves so you got to keep yourself nice and clean with a pleasant as best as possible plus appearance and be dressed for the occasion so that was skill number six that you need to have skill number seven is influencing you gotta get good at influencing and what influencing means is that you want to be able to not control but you want to be able to drive somebody else to do what you want them to do because they think that’s what they want so that’s what influencing is you should read up on influencing and learn how that works if you can influence others then you can get them to do the work for you not that you don’t want to work but you know the work that you’re going to delegate if you’re going to motivate if you’re going to have anybody do anything then they get a feel that they want to do it and so that requires influencing obviously the opposite of influencing would be manipulation which we don’t want to do this is where you get somebody to do something and act on something in a bad way because you played with their mind so what you want to do is you want to play with their mind but for positive things that are beneficial to the project so you got to develop those skills skill number eight will be negotiation you have to know how to negotiate why you will need to negotiate for resources for more time for budget for space software for positions right on a project is always give and take there’s always contractors there’s sponsor there’s many people involved and you need to know how to negotiate you need to know how to strike a win-win deal which means that we both win as an outcome of this you know there’s also the win lose which means that only one side is winning and it’s either you have to enforce it on somebody else or they are enforcing this on you but that doesn’t leave a good feeling so learn how to develop when win agreement skill number nine that you need to develop is the skill to develop good reports do excellent or powerful presentations and have very successful meetings as a project manager you’re going to have to present information to your sponsors to your seniors you need to explain the status the progress and so those those are going to be in a meeting set up where you need to make sure that the meeting and the people don’t run away from you so you stick to the agenda so that’s meeting management you need to know how to stand there and present the information to them in a nice orderly fashion and that requires that you prepare reports or powerpoints that are suitable for the occasion when you’re sending emails with reports you need to make sure that the report is structured in a way and contains the information that the other person who is receiving that report wants to see you always want to make sure that your communications whether written or spoken are going to be in the style of the person who’s receiving this information not in your style because they’re the one who need to understand this information and the final skill that you need to have which you would have thought would have been my first recommendation is best practices in project management right this is skill number 10 you need to know the best practices in project management and on top of that so that means the PIM book for example if you’re on the PMI path you need to understand the PIM book project management body of knowledge but you also need to understand a little bit more about what programs are portfolios business analysis the different roles and responsibilities organizational structures strategy mission vision you know the business model that your organization has you need to know these things so that when you make decisions along the way for changes or for add-ons to the project or to the scope you need to make sure that these do not defeat the purpose of either the project or the organization all right so that’s it for the 10 skills I hope you enjoyed this video if you have any comments please put them down in the comment section I’d like to hear what you think and if you know if you think some other skills should have been discussed I’d love to hear your feedback if you like this video please give me a thumbs up let me know that you liked it and if you’re not a subscriber yet please hit the subscribe button and also hit the notification bell so I’ll let you know when I release additional videos like this thank you very much for watching and hope to see you on the next video bye bye
