Four Core Skill Sets That Are Essential To Successful Project Management

Project managers work in many industries. They tackle a variety of projects from start to finish and the skills project managers learn in one industry can be applied in others.

Technical (hard) skills: These are skills relating to a specific task or situation such as programming, technical writing, project management, and more.

Non-technical (interpersonal) skills: These are the skills that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals. They include skills like communication, leadership, team management, and more.

1. Enabling decision-making

• The ability to enable decision-making on the team, or gathering decisions from the appropriate leader, is crucial to keep projects on task and achieve their goals.
• Lots of the day-to-day decisions within a project will likely fall to you and your teammates to discuss and agree on. You’ll ensure that projects stay on schedule by gathering information from teammates and using those insights to help the team make informed decisions.
• You can help team members feel empowered from the start of your project by making the decision-making process collaborative. For example, state the goals of specific deliverables and elicit input from your team on how to achieve those goals. You may have an idea of how you would like certain tasks to be accomplished, but your team members may have more creative or efficient approaches. Empowering your team to express their opinions and make their own decisions allows you to focus on the overarching management tasks and prioritize them in order of importance. Additionally, when you allow team members to have a voice in decisions, it helps foster an environment of responsibility, accountability, and team closeness.

2. Communicating and escalating

• Make sure that those decisions are communicated to the necessary coworkers, whether that’s the immediate team or company leaders.
• As a project manager, you’ll use your communication skills in just about everything you do. This might look like documenting plans, sending emails about the status of the project, or holding a meeting to escalate risks or issues to stakeholders.
• Project management requires clearly communicating project goals and expectations, team member roles and responsibilities, and constructive feedback. Knowing how to effectively communicate and when to escalate issues to management is key to keeping you, your team, and your organization on the path to success. When escalation is required, try to approach management with both the problem and the potential solution or suggestions. This will show that you’re taking initiative as a project manager.

3. Flexibility

• As a project manager, knowing how to be flexible when changes are needed is key. Plans definitively will change, even with careful upfront planning.
• For example, maybe the goals of your company change, or maybe a member of your team unexpectedly takes a new position at another company. A good project manager knows that unpredictable moments like these are almost always guaranteed.
• All project managers need the ability to adapt and overcome changes and challenges.
• Flexible planning: Change is inevitable, and the more flexible you are as a project manager, the more successful you will be throughout your career. These flexible planning strategies can help you manage your project during times of unpredictability:
• Assess external constraints. When planning your project, take external events into account, such as national holidays and team member vacations and sick leave. Leaving extra time in the schedule for these inevitable events up front can help minimize the impact to your project.
• Plan for risks and challenges. If you consider the risks that may occur, you may be able to find solutions for them in advance. For example, what if someone on your team gets sick or decides to quit? Are you able to replace them within the company? If not, can you hire an independent contractor? Come up with a list of people who may be able to join your team if one of your team members becomes unavailable. You can also assess risks by looking at historical data. Review your past projects and examine the challenges you faced. Then evaluate if similar challenges could occur in this project and prepare accordingly.
• Calculate “float” in your schedule. Float refers to the amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting subsequent tasks or impacting the project’s timeline. For example, imagine you are managing a construction project to renovate an office space. In order to complete the renovation, the following tasks must be completed in order: drywall installation, cabinet installation, plumbing and electric installation, and floor installation. However, since tasks such as painting and decorating can be completed at any time after the drywall is installed and the subsequent tasks do not rely on their completion, these tasks could be delayed. Identifying tasks such as these and calculating the float they provide can help you determine where you can change the order of tasks or juggle resources if needed.
• Handling ambiguity: Project managers often face ambiguity in goals, requirements, schedules, vision, or other areas related to the project. Your team will look to you to lead during times of ambiguity and change, and flexibility is especially important during these instances. Here are some different ways to help your team deal with ambiguity:
• Keep calm. In uncertain times, handling ambiguity with grace and poise will help inspire the members of your team to do the same.
• Express empathy. As a project manager, it is important to try to understand what your team is thinking and feeling, especially during times of ambiguity. Let your team members know that you care about the challenges they are facing and are there to support them.
• Communicate what you know clearly. Define the aspects of the project that are confirmed and will not change. This helps your team get a better sense of what to expect, regardless of any aspects of the project that are still unknown or changing.
• Make decisions and stick to them. Try not to second-guess your decisions in front of your team since this can lead to greater uncertainty. If you need to change course, clearly explain why you have chosen to do so to your team.
• Trust the expertise of your team. Increase clarity by having everyone on your team discuss what they already know or believe to be true about components of your project, such as what is involved in specific tasks or resources needed, based on their areas of expertise. Then, discuss what you still don’t know and brainstorm ways to gather more information.

4. Strong organizational skills.

• Finally, a successful project manager needs strong organizational skills. As you learned earlier, the role of a project manager requires using a lot of different processes to keep the project on track. Having strong organizational skills means having the ability to organize these processes and the core elements of a project to ensure nothing gets lost or overlooked, which trust me, can and does happen. To prevent this, you might decide to track daily tasks in a spreadsheet or send frequent status updates or reminders.
• If you demonstrate that it is important for you, as a leader, to stay organized through efficient tracking and communications, your team will follow suit. One way to do this is by utilizing the abundance of organizational tools available, such as:

1. Planning and scheduling software (templates, workflows, calendars)

2. Collaboration tools (email, collaboration software, dashboards)

3. Documentation (files, plans, spreadsheets)

4. Quality assurance tools (evaluations, productivity trackers, reports)

Industry knowledge that applies to most project management roles.

Knowledge of helpful tools and templates and familiarity with popular project management styles like Waterfall and Agile, can help you organize and document the project throughout its lifecycle.

As a project manager, having the flexibility and ability to handle ambiguity in a rapidly-changing business setting gives you an advantage. Mastering these competencies, along with enabling decision-making, effective communication skills, and strong organizational skills, will allow you to innovate and grow as a project manager and leader.

Common myths about project managers

Myth: You have to be an expert in the field and have a lot of technical knowledge about the project.

• Reality: There are benefits to the project manager not having a lot of technical knowledge about a project. Rather than getting caught up in the technical details when communicating with management and stakeholders, the project manager can look at all of the different pieces that the cross-functional team is working on and assess how they each contribute to the success of the project. As a project manager, you bring on the right team members — with their differing areas of expertise — and trust them to be able to focus on the technical aspects of the project. Your job is to handle the communication, documentation, and organization necessary to get the project successfully to the finish line.
• The bottom line: Project managers hire the experts and help put all the pieces of the project together. Project managers don’t need to be experts in every field.

Myth: Only people with a lot of experience within an organization can manage projects successfully.

• Reality: It is a common misconception that anyone who has significant experience and success in an organization can manage projects there. In order to successfully manage projects in any organization, you must acquire the necessary skills, knowledge, tools, and techniques and be able to apply them. You don’t necessarily need to have worked in previous roles at that organization.
• The bottom line: To be a successful project manager at any organization — regardless of whether you have worked there previously — it is essential to master the skills, tools, and techniques of project management.

Myth: You have to know every single detail about the project at all times.

• Reality: Details matter in project execution, but as a project manager, you must also focus on the big picture and strategy for the project. What is the end goal? Do you and your team have a clear direction? If the whole team understands their objectives and has what they need to be successful in their tasks, they can work on the individual details and provide you space to supervise the overall project goals. Open lines of communication will help ensure that your team members share any possible risks to the budget or schedule with you.
• The bottom line: Your role as a project manager is to communicate with your stakeholders, clarify objectives, and set expectations. Trust your team to handle the details of each project task and communicate with you when there’s an issue. Through your direct communication and strategic approach to problem-solving, you can provide solutions and help remove barriers for your team. This is where you add value!

Using your interpersonal skills is key to building relationships with the people involved in your project. By developing these relationships, you’ll learn about the needs and concerns of the team. This will help you determine the priorities of the project and motivate your team throughout the process.

Influencing without authority, which refers to a project manager’s ability to guide teammates to complete their assigned work without acting as their direct managers.

Key interpersonal skills

Communication:

• In the context of leading a team, communication can include checking in with teammates to understand how they’re progressing on a task and providing clear feedback on the quality of a teammate’s work.

Negotiation:

• Negotiation might include working with a teammate to compromise on a new deadline when they tell you that they won’t be able to complete their work on time.
• You’ll need to use your negotiation skills often with your teammates and stakeholders to balance their needs and what is best for the project.

Conflict mediation:

• Project plans can change and issues will arise. This can sometimes lead to tension and conflict within the team. Conflict mediation is a great skill to practice and develop to ensure the project does not suffer as a result.
• This might involve setting up a meeting with two teammates who are struggling to agree upon the best way to handle a shared task.

Understanding motivations:

• This means getting to know your teammates and figuring out what pushes them to do their best work. Understanding motivations might also include learning how your teammates prefer to receive feedback, and how they like to receive recognition for doing a great job.