To succeed as a project manager and advance your career, you must have a good grasp of three main areas: project management education and training, industry experience, and interpersonal skills.
As a project manager, your interpersonal skills are crucial for establishing and maintaining relationships with team members, stakeholders, and clients.
In this article, we’ll discuss seven essential interpersonal skills for project managers and ways to develop and apply them.
1. Communication
It’s clear that we spend most of our workday communicating with others through phone calls, emails, and meetings. Both verbal and written communication require different skills, but no matter if you’re writing an email or leading a meeting, strive to be concise, direct, and unambiguous.
Instead of focusing on the circumstances surrounding the communication, it is better to concentrate on the subject and the goal you wish to achieve. To ensure proper sentence structure and grammar when writing, you can use a tool like Grammarly.
Another essential part of communication is active listening. By giving your team members an opportunity to express their views and ask questions and by listening to feedback from stakeholders, you will become a better communicator.
2. Leadership
Good project leadership starts with having strong project ownership and a clear vision of how it is planned and executed. Possessing these traits will encourage your team to follow your leadership.
In addition to ownership and vision, good leadership requires supporting and encouraging your team, understanding each member’s unique strengths and weaknesses, placing them in the right position, and working with them to achieve their goals.
The best way to influence your team is to lead by example and demonstrate the values and behaviors you expect from your team members. Finally, recognize and reward your team for even small accomplishments.
3. Problem-Solving
As a project manager, you must be adept at solving problems that could arise daily. This requires analyzing the situation and developing a solution that effectively balances the project’s requirements in terms of time, cost, and risk.
However, it is equally important to identify the root cause of the issue and eliminate it so you are not constantly consumed by problem-solving.
Sometimes, it is better to take a step back and not rush into a solution. Seeking advice from peers or managers can also be helpful.
4. Negotiation
Negotiation is a skill that can be very useful in many situations, such as negotiating for project resources with your manager, commercial negotiation with suppliers, or negotiation with the client on variations orders, claims, and completion dates.
To have a successful negotiation, it is essential to build relationships and find common ground. Honesty, integrity, and persistence are critical in gaining the other party’s trust and making them willing to negotiate openly with you.
It is also essential to be flexible and willing to compromise when necessary, acknowledging that it may not always be possible to obtain everything you want.
5. Conflict Management
Managing conflicts is an essential part of project delivery. As a project manager, it’s important to handle conflicts that arise among the various project stakeholders effectively.
Stakeholders in any project may have different interests and requirements, which can sometimes be conflicting.
For example, the project sponsor may want to speed up the work, while another stakeholder may prefer to take more time to explore alternative ideas and options.
When managing conflicts, make the project’s interests the primary focus, considering not only stakeholders’ requirements but also balancing other project constraints, including schedule, budget, quality, and risk.
6. Teamwork
As a project manager, you will likely work in an organization with various functional departments, each with its own teams and other project managers handling different projects.
While focusing on your project’s work, it is also important to collaborate with the broader team.
You want to create a positive and productive work environment by cooperating, helping, mentoring, and sharing knowledge and expertise with other team members.
Your helpful, cheerful, and enthusiastic attitude will pay off in the long run.
7. Emotional Intelligence
Possessing emotional intelligence is a crucial interpersonal skill that often goes unnoticed.
It involves managing one’s own emotions and stresses, as well as understanding, empathizing with, and appreciating the emotions of other team members.
In times of increased pressure, a project manager with a strong grasp of emotional intelligence is invaluable.
Conclusion
Project managers should continuously develop their interpersonal skills, as it is a career-long process rather than a one-time accomplishment.
This can be achieved by reading books, taking courses, observing and learning from other project managers, and being self-aware with a willingness to improve.
By investing time and effort to improve your interpersonal skills, you will become a more effective project manager and a better leader.
