PM Personality

What characteristics do good project managers share? As you would expect project managers are a pretty diverse bunch, but certain personal traits may help.

First and foremost they like managing projects. Managing projects is not something people are neutral about. They either like it or they don't. Why would anyone want to do a job in which you can all too obviously fail spectacularly and if you succeed people will shrug their shoulders and say you just did your job? Others relish the challenge and like the feeling of accomplishment, of getting something done that may not have happened without them.

Good Project Managers

• manage rather than co-ordinate, preside or spectate
• are natural planners
• don't like surprises, so they plan thoroughly to try to prevent them
• are effective fire-fighters - when the inevitable surprises do occur they sort them out quickly and decisively
• reward and punish - not dealing with someone who isn't pulling their weight can destroy team morale
• are good motivators, good team builders
• address conflict rather than leaving things to fester
• do not hide in an office, they walk around and ideally sit physically in the middle of the team so they are approachable
• get consensus whenever possible but dictate when necessary
• use tactics to manage projects

Effective Project Managers are

Lifelong Learners

If you’re new to project management, you’re probably on a steep learning curve at the moment.

Maybe you tell yourself that things will get better when you’ve been doing it longer. There won’t be so much to learn. You’ll have systems in place soon and everything will run smoothly.

Sadly, I think this is a myth. I’ve been managing projects for many years now, and I can always get better. Just when I’ve got one element sorted out, nagging thoughts come out of the woodwork beckoning me towards working more effectively with my teams.

If you want to be the best project manager you can be, you have to keep learning.  Whether it’s training courses, blogs, books, or podcasts, you have to keep on your toes.

Fortunately, being curious and wanting to learn keeps you young and your brain active. A love of learning doesn’t just set you up for a successful career, but for a successful and happy life.

Clear Communicators

This one can’t be stressed enough. Project management is 90% communication, right?  I don’t know about trying to specify a percentage, but it’s a whole lot of what makes you successful or not as a project manager.

Without clear communication, your teams will be stressed, you will be stressed, and your customers and stakeholders will be stressed.  Not good. Not good at all.

Analytical

Successful project managers look at their projects as systems. Systems Thinking is one of the best ways to approach a way of doing project work and find the places where it can be improved.

To be a successful project manager, you need to be able to identify the areas for improvement through objective analysis of how you and your teams are working.  How does the work flow?  What is the value stream?  Where are the bottlenecks?

Focused & Organized

Successful project managers keep themselves and their teams focused on the Goal. When ad-hoc requests flood in, a successful project manager is able to protect his team from multitasking by using priority mechanisms.

Value Planning

Successful project managers understand the value that comes from planning with their teams. They also realize that plans change, and the process of planning is often much more important than the plan itself.

To get good at this, they practice, try new things, practice some more, attend training on planning to get new perspectives, practice some more…

Empathetic

I don’t mean getting all emotional, or even sympathetic.  Empathy is just about the ability to get out of your own head for perspective.

Successful project managers are able to simulate the viewpoint of someone else, and thus understand them better.

Managing your team and stakeholders empathetically is critical if you want to really understand what is going on with your project, and how to facilitate all of the various pieces and parts towards a common goal.

Self-Starters

Absolutely critical. No one is going to spoon feed you what you need.  You have to get out there and get it. When a successful project manager senses a miscommunication, he attacks it with a vengeance.  It’s HIS job to do so. Throwing your hands up in the air and saying “OK, but I’m going to set the building on fire” is not acceptable.

Passive-aggressive behavior doesn’t work if you want to be an effective project manager.

Good Listeners

An effective project manager is a facilitator. They listen more than they talk, and guide their teams towards sharing their insights and leveraging their talents.  If you want to know what’s REALLY going on with your project, you have to listen to your team, customers, stakeholders.  Listen.

Successful project managers listen.

Conclusion

Project managers need all the personal skills that any manager needs so project managers should not only attend courses that teach them how to manage projects (may we plug this excellent project management course) they should also attend people management training: leadership skills, influencing skills, appraisal skills and so on.

Most of all, good project managers MANAGE. They do not just get swept along by the current (see The Tale of Three Project Managers). They grab the project by the scruff of the neck and manage it.

However, it is sometimes the case that project managers do not feel sufficiently empowered to manage and control the things/people they need to manage and control in order to be successful. This problem has a solution.

The sponsor should make it clear to everyone that the project manager is operating with the sponsor's full authority: "take issue with the project manager and you are taking issue with me; disagree with him and you are disagreeing with me; I don't care how senior you are, what the project manager says is what I say. Now if he's obviously got it completely wrong come and have a word with me, but other than that what he says is what I say."

Will the sponsor think of making some public pronouncement like that at the beginning of a project? Probably not. Whose job is to write the script for the sponsor? Yes, the project manager's.

How many project managers should a project have? One. That is, one reporting to the sponsor. The project manager may need others below him managing parts of the project or specialist teams, but there is only one project manager accountable directly to the project sponsor.

“Project Management is beyond a profession… Project Management is a lifestyle.”