FIVE (5) Key Project Management Skills

I know I may be nuts, but… I have shortlisted, from literally hundreds of skills, a few CRUCIAL skills a Project Manager should possess to successfully run their projects. I received many inquiries, from graduates to even professionals – who are disillusioned on the type of skills one should possess “in becoming” an effective Project Manager.

The topic of management skills is broad – attempting to search for “key management skills” reveals differing views and responses from various sources. A skill is, by definition, an attribute or qualities a person possess to carry out their duties effectively. When a job necessitated certain skill, the employee would be able to carry out their duty with confidence and yield greater positive outcome and results.

Project Management Institute (PMI) suggests that a Project Manager emphasizes on the Talent Triangle which focusses on the following THREE (3) key skills:

1. Technical Project Management – the knowledge, skills, and behaviors related to specific domains of the project.
2. Leadership – Guiding, motivating, inspiring and directing the project team to achieve the project and business goals.
3. Strategic and Business Management – the knowledge and expertise in the industry that enhanced performance and better delivers business outcomes. (PMBOK 6.0, pg 56)

From the above broad perspective, shown below are the TOP FIVE (5) skills that I believe a Project Manager MUST have and harness in achieve greater results in their projects.

Skill #1: Leadership Skills

The phrase “leadership” is often described without knowing its context. You could find these in the job advertisements where it emphasizes a person must demonstrate “good” leadership – without explaining their definition of good leadership.

Leadership involves THREE (3) major characteristics:

• Establishing direction. This is where the leader defines the vision, mission, goals, objectives, and targets. The goal/direction must be clear and emotionally bound that could excite and bring out the energy within a person to do what it takes to achieve them.
• Aligning people. This shall be the art of influencing, coercing and involving people towards the set direction and goals.
• Motivating and inspiring. This involves keeping the energy and high momentum of the project team throughout. This is akin to the drums during the war to spur the team’s performance and to create fear in the hearts of the enemy.

Skill #2: Communication Skills

Communication skill is the ART of conveying information and messages effectively and efficiently to another party. Almost NINETY (90) percent of the time you will be involved in communication. Communication consists of THREE (3) channels:

• Sender. You are responsible to ensure your message gets delivered to the receiver successfully. To do this, various factors must be considered. These includes:

1. Avoiding jargons and phrases, as it will be filtered out by the recipient’s mind upon receiving the message.
2. Understanding the recipient’s knowledge on the subject
3. Understanding the cultural and racial influences of the phrases used.
4. Understanding the recipient’s language limitations (such as weak grasps of English)
5. Emotions displayed while conveying the message. 
6. The attitude expressed while conveying the message.
7. Geographical locations and dialects used. Your intended message may have a different meaning in another dialect, for example.
8. Gender. Male and Female communicate at a different level of complexity
9. Age factor. Gen-X speaks differently than Millenials. Likewise, the baby-boomers and the Gen-Y.

• Receiver. It is the duty and responsibility of the receiver to ensure that they understand the message correctly. This can be through clarification statement, such as “If I hear you correctly”, “allow me to repeat what you have said”, among other similar statements.
• The message. This is the “noise” transmitted between the sender and the receiver above.  

There are THREE (3) methods of communication between a sender and receiver:

1. Verbal. Most commonly used, which involves spoken words, either face to face, or remotely.
2. Visual. This methods of communication involve preparation of status reports, progress reports and forecast reports, amongst others. The art of visual communication involves more than expressing through words. Ideally, management prefers simplified and factual points (rather than long sentences), graphics, tables, use of effective colors, and use of appropriate fonts (i.e. Serif and San-serif fonts).
3. Non-verbal. A crucial element often ignored in communication. Mastering body language enhances your communication skills further, such as getting a cue of excitement, boredom, lies, truth, and among others through eye movements. The techniques of handshakes which reveal one’s confidence, fear, distrust, commanding, and among others.

One can see your SOUL through your eyes!

Skill #3: Negotiation Skills

Negotiating skills include methods of communicating, persuading and influencing, planning, strategizing, employing tactics to obtain an amicable result.

Invest in learning the ART of negotiation. As a Project Manager, you will be involved in numerous negotiations:

• Vertical. With your peers in negotiating resources from their department into your project. Or agreeing on a solution with your fellow peers.
• Upwards. Negotiating with your bosses on team grievances, bonuses, deadlines, cost allocations, risks and issues, among others. 
• Downwards. Negotiating with your resources on their performance, conflicts with their peers and delivery timelines, among others.
• Vendors / Suppliers. Negotiating contracts, conflicts, price and delivery demands, among others. 
• And in many other situations.

Skill #4: Problem Solving Skills

Problem-solving skills helps you to resolve obstacles in project situations. Every project involves issues on a daily basis. Every problem requires deliberation and decision making skills from the Project Manager. Hence, the Project Manager would need to sharpen and strengthen their mind in resolving complex issues.

Some of the ways that you could be effective in problem-solving include:

• Creativity. This could be either a thorough understanding of the process or through intuition. 
• Research. Search engines provide vast research options. In addition to more rigorous investigations and research projects.
• Team Work. When two or more minds meet and brainstorm an idea, a vast mastermind is formed that could lead to an immense number of ideas to resolve a problem.
• Risk Assessment. Systematic identification of potential problems and risk responses could mitigate many project challenges ahead of time.
• Risk Assessment. Systematic identification of potential problems and risk responses could mitigate many project challenges ahead of time.
• Among many other methods of resolving problems.

“Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles.”

I usually advice Project Managers to have some challenging activities to sharpen their mind on a daily basis. Solving word puzzles, Rubik Cubes, solving Sudoku, challenging your project team for quick responses on problems via tools such as Kahoot and Knolskape simulations, are among the many mind-related activities that you could encourage your team to perform.

In addition, I always emphasize for project teams to be involved in problem-solving related team building activities. There are thousands available by searching for team building activities. These types of team building games not only creates bonding and fun within the team but also sharpens the mind to seek for solutions within a given deadline. I do emphasize the importance of the problem-solving skills to my training participants through various games and activities that challenge them mentally.

Skill #5: Influencing Skills

Influencing is your ability to convince, getting buy-in, change others opinion and beliefs – in this case, your project team, senior management, vendors/suppliers, and various other stakeholders – without using force or coercion, and motivating them to work together towards the results you desire.

As the project progresses, you may be called up for Management or Board meetings to influence them on your project progress, ideas and strategies. In addition to convincing the senior management with your solutions, you may also have to deal with and convince the negative stakeholders and those who inhibit your progress and success.

There are a number of ways that you could apply your influencing skills, that includes creating rapport with your stakeholders, the art of emphatic listening, using questioning techniques that leads people towards the answer that you desire, being a master of body languages (including mirroring techniques), being calm, relaxed and having good sense of humor.  

Conclusion

While I consider the above FIVE (5) skills as priority and key for a Project Manager, some may argue that there are other skills which may be more crucial than the one highlighted above. These are general comments from subject matter experts who believe certain skills take more priorities than the above.  For example, some may suggest that technical skills may be of more importance. Some may suggest team building skills or organizational skills.  None of them are wrong. What I have presented is a generic model that could be applied for all industries and across the board.

There are many Project Managers who give the excuse that they have no time to learn or attend training to upgrade their skills, due to their deadline pressures, project priorities among others. Ultimately, remember that obtaining skills is a life long journey. Never stop growing mentally. Upgrading your skills is an INVESTMENT!