21 Key Skills For Your Project Management Resume In 2022
If you’ve started the year and committed to upping your project management skills to be a better project manager, what project management skills are the ticket for success? We’ve written before about ‘What makes a great digital project manager?‘ where we talked about the need for ‘competence’ — a blend of experience and skills, but in this article we explore more specifically, examples of project management skills you can develop to successfully lead teams and projects effectively and be an even more awesome project manager.
We project managers often have a bad rep. Mention you’re a project manager and all too often, people share their unenlightened thoughts on what we do; “Oh, you’re one of those ones who boss everyone else around on a project.” While that’s true, anyone who’s ever managed projects knows there is far more to project management than being a tin pot dictator who barks out orders to the team and then returns to their desk for a cup of tea and a slice of cake.
In fact, being good at telling others what to do, or managing is not even in our list of skills for a project manager. Leading others however, now that’s a different story, one which is core to the success of any project manager, and we’ll will get to that shortly.
As project managers, we’re responsible for managing work through the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. This PMI definition of project management succinctly communicates the idea that our jobs as project managers demand that we possess varied competencies, one of which is skills. Yes, we must be knowledgeable; yes, we must have the right tools; but critically, we must know how to apply the right techniques to our projects.
Knowing project management theory — but without the skills to apply what we know is useless. Similarly, having the right tools and techniques — but without the skill to put them to good use is meaningless. So in order to become really great project managers, we need to hone our project management skills where theory, experience and knowledge of proper application come together in one happy family!
7 Project Management Skills To Master
We’ve trimmed our project management skills list to just seven areas that we think it’s important to master to be an effective project manager — leadership, communication, time management, risk management, planning, negotiation, and subject matter expertise. Let’s explore each of these project management skill areas:
Leadership
If we’ve learned anything from years of leading projects, it’s that great leadership is an essential skill to being a good project manager. Our leadership role means we lead and manage teams; setting the vision, motivating the team, serving them, coaching them and inspiring others.
As project managers, we lead from both a strategic and operational perspective — we communicate the vision and get team (and organizational) buy-in, we resolve conflict, set goals, and evaluate performance and make sure team members have the tools, money, space etc. that they need to get things done.
But being a leader isn’t just about creating a feel-good vibe for our teams — we have to enforce process and keep everyone on the team in line too. And while it’s important to get everyone’s buy-in, we know that we have the final call about what our team works on next, as well as the final responsibility for whether the project fails or succeeds. As Jane Callahan admonishes, “Even if the entire team is up-to-speed, remember that you, the project manager, are still in the lead. That means doing whatever it takes to get the project done, even if it’s outside of your assigned duties.” Ouch.
Every project needs a leader who supports the process, the team and client. They are the team’s №1 cheerleader and chief encourager, but at the same time, not afraid to call out the team when they drop the ball; they bring balance to the project and team. Leading them well means to serve them by taking responsibility for how you as a project manager are going to make your team’s life better today. Be the person that moves mountains for them. Be the one that greases the wheels. Be the one to move all the barriers that could get in their way.
The key project management leadership skill to master in leadership is making sure you’re leading, rather than just managing. That means providing a vision and a roadmap for success and serving and empowering your team to get there.
Communication
One of the essential skills for project management is the ability to communicate well — understanding and being understood. Great communication is the crux of any relationship and so the effectiveness of a project manager’s communication has an impact not only on the project team but the client and stakeholders too.
‘I wish my project manager would stop giving me so many project updates.’ — said no client, ever. The more touchpoints you have with your client, the more solid the relationship will be, and the more likely the project will be a success. Good communication gets you continually realigned, and if you’re doing it frequently enough you’ll ensure you are successful as you’ll never deviate far from where the project needs to be to be a success.
We’ve discussed previously the importance of ‘keep communicating’; communication isn’t effective unless the person you’re communicating to understands what you’re trying to tell them. Frequent and effective communication will ensure that everyone is on the same page and help to avoid uncomfortable conversations and in future.
For our clients, communication and interpersonal skills are important for successful project stakeholder management so that people know what’s going on, that they’re not surprised. That means we need to take very seriously, our responsibility to convey vision, ideas, goals, and issues, as well as produce clear status reports and project presentations.
From the client’s perspective, communication of project details in writing and a periodic status report is absolutely essential as it will help to reinforce the message and build rapport. We have also found status meetings and reports with our teams to be invaluable, as it helps us keep track of next steps, action items, project risks, budgets and process.
And for our teams, communication is critical. We’ve written before about ‘Why our teams suck at doing what they’re told (and what to do about it)‘ — in that article we propose that people don’t do what we want them to do because we haven’t been clear on what they need to do, why they need to do it, how they need to do it, and when they need to do it by. Clear communication and proper briefing is fundamentally about being understood. It’s a dialogue, not a one-way, garbled message.
Effective communication is just as important in relation to project team dynamics. Human Resource adviser, Fred Holloway’s observation that “You can tie back almost every employee issue –attendance, morale, performance, and productivity — to communication,” applies just as much to project management as it does to HR, since a core part of the project manager’s role is communicating with the project team.
However, effective communication doesn’t just happen. It starts by putting in the time and effort required to get to know your team well, and devising an appropriate communication plan that connects with the different personality types. For us, this has meant having to adapt our communications strategy from project to project, for the simple reason that we may have different team members for each project and a particular communication system or structure may not always work for every everyone.
The key project management communication skill to master is the ability to listen, to be clear and ensure you’re understood. When information flows with the right messaging, at the right time, to the right person, through the right channel, almost any hurdle can be overcome.
Planning Skills
Project scheduling is a core project management skill, but one that surprisingly, many managers do not pay much attention to, says Elizabeth Harrin of Project Management Perspectives. But really, what is a project manager without a plan? Our ability to organize tasks in the right order, to hit the right outcome at the right time is a major part of our jobs as project manager, isn’t it? It is absolutely critical that as project managers, we give scheduling the serious attention it deserves, and along with it, monitoring progress as the project moves forward and making tweaks to ensure that everything stays on track.
Proper planning means everything from meta to micro. There’s the large scale obvious planning we need to get right to create great meeting plans, statements of work, estimates, timelines, resource plans and briefs, to the more mundane — planning out your day, who you’re going to talk to first, and how you are going to make time to keep your status documents up to date. Planning is all about finding ways to do all that you need to do as efficiently as possible.
The extent to which you’re able to effectively plan will directly impact the project’s ability to be successful. No matter how good you are at executing, without being able to properly plan a project, the project won’t succeed.
The project management planning skill to master is planning to the extent that you’re always ten steps ahead and always know ‘what’s next’. That means not only for success but for the disasters too. As a skilled project manager, you’ve always got a plan up your sleeve.
Read the full article to learn more:
- Time management
- Risk management
- Negotiation skills
- Subject matter expertise
Originally published at www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com on January 8, 2018.
