8 Project Manager Skills That Will Make You The Best

Project management is a difficult task that requires certain skills and traits to be good at it.

Having a big experience in project management, I have analyzed years of my work and found 8 most important skills that will make you the best project manager.

If you have a high level of those competences, you can become a very demanded specialist that the biggest companies will be willing to pay anything for to solve their problems or manage their projects.

Read further to find out, what these abilities and qualities are.

Leadership Skill

Of course, one of the main skills of the best project managers is leadership. To be a good manager, you need to be a good leader. A leader that can truly control the workflow of different parts of the project they are implementing. He can take strategic decisions without any help and do not allow anyone to doubt his decisions.

A good leader can successfully manage a project of any level of complexity (of course, having a list of other important project manager traits). A good leader is a great team player and team manager, which is connected to the next very important skill.

Team Management

Any project consists of a big team of people fulfilling absolutely different, but connected roles. The task of a project manager is exactly this connection. He needs to ensure the right flow of information between the team members.

For a successful planning (another pm skill I will discuss further), the best project manager needs to understand the work and tasks of his subordinates. Project managers that just finished their MBA often put unrealistic terms and deadlines, because they don’t understand the complexity of a particular task and how it is done.

The best project managers know exactly, what each of the team members is doing. I have a diverse background (used to work as a Senior Developer, CRM Solutions Manager, Internet Consultant, Head of IT, and had many other tasks). It allows me to understand and precisely estimate the time for various tasks.

Hire me to manage your project successfully.

Many companies spend a lot of money on specialists, whose job they don’t understand very well. A Java programmer might finish his task in a few hours and keep telling the boss that he is working hard on it for a week.

This gradually moves us to the nest very important skill of a successful project manager, planning.

Planning

This point can be separated into several parts, where three major ones are: resource planning, human resource planning and project planning. Knowing the length of each task of his subordinates, a successful project manager can efficiently plan the length of the project and its separate tasks. He can further allocate people to each of the tasks and estimate the needed resources to complete the project.

With all that, the best project manager can estimate the total budget and deadlines of the project. To visualize and easier track the results, such a specialist needs some special tools like Network Diagrams and Gantt’s Charts. To use these tools efficiently, a successful project manager needs technical skills (my next point).

Technical Skills

Technical skills are essential in such a precise and analytical task as project management. The project is not always implemented as previously planned, so the project manager needs to solve some technical issues, which is impossible without technical abilities.

Such expertise is even more important in case of management of IT projects. In order to understand the problems and tasks of subordinates, having strong technical skills is necessary for a successful project manager.

The risk of project mishaps and problems always exists, but it can be predicted, and losses minimized. It is another very important skill of a project manager.

Risk Management

Nobody likes project failures, but they not always depend on the project manager. Problems can arise due to suppliers, new requirements of clients, work of some employees, technical failures and many factors of the macro environment. Task of a project manager is to prevent (or decrease the possibility for) them to happen or get prepared for them to minimize the possible damage.

The best project manager foresees all possible risks and, in case of the largest risks, does everything possible to prevent any future problems.  One of the ways to do that is by means of communication skills.

Communication Skills

Often managing a big team, the project manager needs to communicate with them a lot. In order to communicate most efficiently, he needs communication skills. Being an introvert is definitely not an option if you want to become the best project manager in your sphere or location.

Money is not always the best means to make the subordinates motivated in achieving the common goal. Finding the right words when ordering them what to do, appreciation of their work and some other communication factors may play a very important role in project management.

But, not only employees influence the effectiveness of the project management process. There are also outside factors like clients, suppliers and competitors. The most important skill when dealing with them may be not communication, but negotiation skill.

Negotiation Skills

The main constraints in project management are time, money and resources (human, product…). Those, who can significantly influence on these factors are competitors, suppliers and clients.

To get the best terms from buyers (time and money), avoid competitors from implementing a similar project (money, resources), and not to let clients to change their requirements in the middle of the project implementation (time, money, resources), a successful project manager needs a combination of communication and negotiation skills.

Now, we move to the last, and perhaps, the most important skill of a project manager, personal organization.

Personal Organization

How can you organize a big team and manage a massive multimillion project if you cannot organize yourself? Personal organization is a basic skill mastering which will allow you to reach heights in your career or business, whether connected with project management or not. It is something every successful person has, and you should have too to become the best project manager!

It was a list of 8 most important skills and traits a person should have to become a great project manager. There are more necessary abilities, but these 8 will let you compete with the best project management specialists. Wish you success with your career!

If you have a project to manage, hire me!