Do YOU want to be a Manager or a Leader?

Engineers & Project Managers:

If YOU are an Engineer or a Project Manager; did you ever think that whether you want to be more of a manager or a leader? Are you aware of the difference between the two? Do you know that Leadership is one of the three legs of PMI Talent Triangle? Do you really know what the leadership skills are? If yes, are you focusing on acquiring these skills?

Let us dive deeper and understand better?

Project management is true test of your professional and leadership abilities. PMI talent triangle mentions clearly what are the major skills required for a successful project manager.

As you can see the PMI Talent Triangle diagram, it tests your domain experience, the niche or the industry that you have been working for. It could be IT industry or construction etc. You can learn about the industry by working enough and acquiring the right experience. As you acquire more experience, your grip on this arm becomes deeper and your ability to contribute in the project also enhances.

The second arm in the triangle is your ability to manage projects, which includes handling stakeholders, handling project teams, managing the project performance, and handling the project communications across cross-section of people. This comes with right qualification and also with experience. PMI certification, along with project experience is very useful in helping you learn and fine-tune your PM skills.

Third arm in the Talent Triangle speaks about leadership skills, which is your ability to inspire people, become completely accountable for the project outcome and lead the project team and other stakeholders to meet project objectives, as expected in the Project Management Plan documents.

The issue comes here because most people are not born leaders and these skills are not covered in our education curriculum. Most project managers come from engineering or management streams which do not really teach you leadership skills for sure. So you are left to learn these skills on your own as a part of your experience, or you learn some aspects of these skills in bits in pieces, e.g. learning communication skills or delegation skills.

You might have questions, what are these Leadership Skills? In my view, being a leader requires you to have the following:

1. Certain level of self-awareness knowing our likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and consistently working on them for being better. Learning this generally needs help of a coach or an accountability partner.

2. Have a clear vision of what you want to achieve in your career or life, and creating annual, monthly and weekly goals flowing from that vision

3. Knowing our interests and strengths, and aligning the same with your vision and goals

4. A strong sense of taking complete accountability for the results, in spite of any circumstances. This is very profound and having a deeper understanding and internalization is the key to leadership.

5. Ability to handle our emotions, including setbacks and failures. This can take ages to learn unless you put real efforts; it is simple to learn but needs real guidance of an able coach.

Another important thing to note is that, once you learn these skills, you need someone to guide you and help imbibe these skills to be able to really benefit you. Merely knowing or learning is not enough, absorbing or internalizing them is must.

Let me know your observations? Try apply this to any of your current issues / concerns that you are facing in your work, and let me know if you have any queries?

So, do you agree to these suggestions? Try applying this to your current concerns that you are facing in your work, and let me know if you have any queries?

If you are a corporate professional and want to find out how to grow fast, You can join our Linkedin Group for Project Managers - Move Up The Ladder - https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/9018500/

?

?????????? ??????????, Project Management and Leadership Coach

Trainer for Leadership, PMP, ITIL, CISA & S/w Engg.

https://lnkd.in/dpQnz3A

#leadershipdevelopment ,?#leadership ,?#successcoach ,?#ashokgoyal ,?#pmptraining