Essential Business Skills for Project Managers

A project manager, in order to successfully complete a project, must be able to plan, organize, and manage resources. The project manager’s job may be long or short term, and range from one project to several. Each project has a start and end date, and may involve from one to several members. A good project manager will need to have a wide array of skills to effectively utilize the allocation of assets and achieve the projected goals.

Project Management is about balance
The key to effective project management is balance. Learning about customer expectations, understanding the internal culture of your own company, and how to manage people, and then balancing all those into a working plan will mean that you can successfully complete a project on time. This is a life skill. You do it every day with the many facets of your own personal life. Being able to translate this skill from your personal to your professional life will prove to be an invaluable trait.

Project Management is about problem solving
Problem solving is another key element, not only in working with a particular project, but with handling the members of your team. Invariably, conflicts will arise between team members. Every member of the team should be in place because they bring their own unique skill sets to the group, and your job as manager is to prevent any one member from dominating the project, and allow each of the members to contribute. Being able to facilitate and not dominate meetings is a major dimension of project management. Nothing stifles productivity and ingenuity like a manager who refuses to deal with problems, or, one who micromanages his team members. Learn how to balance control versus facilitation.

Project Management is about life skills that cannot be taught
The one common factor in all these skills is people, and much of it cannot be taught. The best manager is not necessarily the one with the best education. A good manager can surround himself with the technical expertise he needs, but he cannot delegate the ability to make things work together. He must have the foresight to deal with issues quickly, and be able to keep the scope of the project(s) in mind, in order to attain real goals.
Effectiveness rests with a manager, who is astute enough to surround himself with champions. He must realize that he can only do so much, but if he can reproduce himself in twenty people, he can do twenty times as much. He must be able to delegate and turn loose, to allow his champions to do their work, hold them accountable, but allow them the freedom to perform, without micromanaging them.
Understand the stages of team development
Realize that in any new team various stages of development will exhibit themselves, and will need to be worked through. With each new project, new team members will come on board, and others will leave, so the team forming process will be present at some level with each new project. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing).
The early stage of team development requires clear communication of what the project entails and how each team member will fit into the overall scope of the work. Team members will start out working independently, with each not yet feeling they are an integral part of the whole. The project manager needs to constantly communicate the need to share information, learn about fellow team members, and de-emphasize the individual over the group.
During the next stage, team members confront each other and learn to work through personal differences to arrive at workable solutions to problems. The project manager will continue to be more involved in direction and communication, emphasizing the need for tolerance of each others’ ideas. This stage is usually a make-or-break stage, with many teams never learning the importance of listening to others, and evaluating their ideas, and working in a non-judgmental atmosphere. Consequently, many teams never progress beyond this stage.
The third stage may involve an acceptance of the ideas of others, and an adjustment of attitudes and behaviors, to work together towards the same goals. At this stage, the team may agree on rules of behavior, conduct, etc. The motivation of the group increases, but careful attention should be given to the development of groupthink, in which team members simply go along with someone’s ideal just to maintain unity. The project manager becomes more of a participant in this stage, and less of a director of action.
In the final stage, the team will perform with an inter-dependence, not present in earlier stages, and can work to reach goals with little or no supervision. While the danger of reverting back to other stages exist, and in some cases is quite normal, only a few teams will ever reach this stage of development. The manager, at this level, works as a team participant and facilitator.
Conclusion
The project manager, in order to be effective, must bring to the table certain interpersonal skills which allow him to work well with people. All of the goals in management have one characteristic in common, working with people, to manage their expectations, abilities, and direction. These much sought after abilities are indispensible to achieving goals, and if done well, will ensure a manager has a long and valuable career.

By Dr M Smith