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Being a successful Project Manager requires a wide range of skills, talents, and experience. Great writing skills, a deep knowledge of technology, and an aptitude to manage budgets are all key to Project Management. In addition to these skills, you must also have good customer relations, understand (and practice) prioritization as well as team leadership skills.
In order to help you out, we created a list of 6 must-have personal relationship skills every project manager needs.
Personal relationship skills are the most important for project managers as he/she is the one to control, navigate, and inspire the entire team.
Understand Your Project
Project Managers are not experts at everything and they often have to manage projects that are outside of their area of expertise. Start small so that you gain an understanding of the overall topic and project. You must have the ability to break things down into bite-sized bits. This will help you better understand the goals and allow you to start your project plan.
Being a successful Project Manager requires a wide range of skills, talents, and experience. Great writing skills, a deep knowledge of technology, and an aptitude to manage budgets are all key to Project Management. Click To TweetRemember, that you must have an understanding of the way things work, taking to the key participants, business analyst/designer and business owners will help you meet your goals.
Keep Calm
There is a fair amount of stress when you are responsible for a project’s success or failure (your reputation and maybe your job are on the line). When you feel things are starting to fall apart, it takes skills and talent to gain control of the situation and get it back on course. If you have to work after hours use corporate email and internal social media to get everyone’s attention. Using social media is quite acceptable these days, especially if it concerns start-ups or SMB (small to medium sizes companies like college-writers.com). Remember to use social media liberally as it is still informal and you can socialize while managing your project. Try to stay cool and informal, keep your project participants focused on meeting the goals.
Encourage Your Project Team
Some people require more encouragement than others. If you see that your team is falling behind or your business analyst/designer doesn’t have enough time to respond to emails and project deliverables, your role as the Project Manager and team leader requires having the talent to get your team back on track. Celebrate the milestones (big and small) and motivate your team to help them reach their goals.
Setting goals
As the project manager, you have to set the vision for project team members (but not necessarily the process). Not all project team members are able to see the “big picture” and understand the goals. Break projects into smaller deliverables and goals. Stress everything that has gone well, correct mistakes quickly, and focus on what’s working. Try to inspire instead of spending too much time on failures, motivate your staff so they have ownership in the big picture.
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Increase Retention
Even if you have a team of freelancers, retention should be still taken into account. It takes time and effort to find and build a project team with the right people and skills and losing team members during a project distracts from the overall goal and can cause a project to fail. The calmer you are as a team manager the better results you will achieve. A key part of a project’s success is finding the right team members and skills as well as the project manager’s ability to set give feedback and give clear and easy instructions.
Speaking the Same Language as Project Team Members
When meeting with team members, avoid getting straight to business. Think of your project meetings as an informal get-together. Chat for a while informally before officially starting your meeting. Then slowly start your project meeting. You have to remember that you are the glue that keeps everything together; you have to find the right approach for your project and team.
This online, self-paced course prepares new or aspiring project managers to pass the Project Management Institute’s Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® certification exam.
