5 most important competences of project manager
Kamil Kruk
Project manager is a position which, for everyday performance of obligations requires a wide range of abilities, competences and features of character. Except for necessary, specialized skills and experience, an effective PM should also possess a set of soft competences. I will present the most of them in this post.
- Communication – although is seems like something obvious – “because everyone can communicate between each other”,people, despite many thousands of years of practice still cannot communicate effectively. In practice this is the most important feature of effective project manager, which is difficult to command for many. I understand communication as: clarity of conveying information, easiness to establish contacts, proper body language and ability to listen with understanding. This set allows to understand the needs of the clients better and transfer one’s thoughts to the team in a more clear way.
- Negotiating – the competence resulting somehow from an ability of proper communication. This is the attitude of project manager in crisis situations, on which the fate of the project ran depends. PM should maintain good relations with all parties and in case of a confrontation – find a consensus beneficial for both parties.
- Chairing – PM holds the position of a leader in projects, reacts to the occurring obstacles, is not afraid of introducing changes in the project and make important decisions. His is resolute and demanding. At the same same, he helps to achieve the goal and motivates the team for further work.
- Work organization – a feature on which the work of the project manager is based. PM is responsible not only for delegating tasks in accordance with skills of co-employees, but also for establishing and realizing the schedule of the whole project. Effective planning is familiarization of tasks of each team member, where in order to start work over one modification, one first complete the work over two others.
- Predicting difficulties -An ability of PM to predict obstacles which may happen/occur in the project, sometimes it may decide about the success. Being familiarized with any problems and proper preparation to neutralize them, allows to save plenty of time and avoid potential conflicts in a team or with the client.The competences presented here by me are key ones in everyday life of the project manager, however this is only a part of „power” by which an effective PM should be characterized. I speak here about the whole range of different skills and competences (both soft and hard ones) which are used in running projects. In next entries I will deal with describing other components of effective work of the project manager.