Project Managers: Your Behaviours Are The Key To Your Success

Project management is like baking a cake. You need the right ingredients, the right equipment, some knowledge (although a good book could be used to support this) and above all a competent person to bring it all together.

Regardless of how good the ingredients, equipment and knowledge are though, as soon as the person starts to lose interest, their way or their temper it's fairly certain that the cake won't come out as it should. Even if it does, the process of making it won't have been an enjoyable one.

The difference between behaviours and skills

Behaviours and skills are often used interchangeably which is confusing and wrong. A behaviour is something you 'are'. It's the way you respond to a situation or the way that you function under stress e.g. Colin was calm whilst dealing with that issue or Colin is supportive of our approach on this.

A skill is something that you 'have'. It's your ability to do something well e.g. Colin builds great teams or Colin is an excellent orator. The former affects the latter not the other way around. My skills will always be enhanced by my behaviours e.g. Colin is funny and this aids the process of planning rather than Colin is a great planner and that's what makes him funny.

Your behaviours are the things about you that make you memorable both positively and negatively. If you think about the best person that you've ever worked for it was likely that they were one or more of the following: caring, empathetic, supporting, considerate, decisive, confident, charismatic, thoughtful, kind, honourable, proactive, productive or courageous. They will have used these behaviours to enhance the skills that they had to create an environment or culture that you enjoyed working in.

Conversely, if you think about your least favourite person, it's likely they were one or more of the following: aggressive, bossy, selfish, controlling, deceitful, moody, rude, thoughtless, angry, anxious, erratic or inconsiderate. They may have had all the skills necessary to do the job, but their behaviours are how you will remember and describe them to others.

Leaders vs. Managers

This emphasis on behaviours versus skills is the key determinant between leadership and management. Leaders and managers generally have the same skill set, however it's how they behave that sets them apart. Leaders understand you. Managers understand the tasks you need to do. Leaders put you before the task. Managers put the task before you. Leaders want you to complete the task to the best of your ability. Managers want the task to be completed.

This is never more evident than in the world of project management. A profession that should change its name to change the focus of what it needs to be. A profession awash with training courses that develop and enhance skills. A profession that hires on skills and not behaviours (a PRINCE2 or PMP certificate is still the dominant recruitment criteria). A profession that continues to consistently fail to meet customer expectations despite the investment in these courses.

We've got it all wrong

No-one likes to be told that they're wrong, least of all an entire profession. However, enough projects fail every year for us to have lost confidence in the method and skill based approaches we've been using for the last two decades driven by large institutions who claim to have the longevity of the profession at heart. I recently asked a room full of senior managers to name 5 great project managers. The most anyone could name was 2. This saddens me because there are millions of project professionals out there trying to make the world a better place, which is exactly what our projects should do.

So it's time to reclaim project management from the theorists, methodologists and academics. It's time to focus our training courses on behaviours not skills. In short, it's time to put our projects back in the hands of people. People who recognise that in order to be great at what they do, they may have to change who they are alongside what they know. People who are role models. People who lead don't manage. People who become memorable for the way that they behave.

Get your behaviours right and success will follow.

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This post was originally published here.