10 Soft Skills for Project Managers

10 soft skills for project managers Soft skills are what we call “non-technical skills,” or skills that can help you improve your quality of work—without a specific tool or technical requirement. These are also called “people skills” or “interpersonal skills” because they often help you work with and relate to others in your workspace. These 10 skills are the most important soft skills for project management: 1. Collaboration Collaboration is the cornerstone of all project management skills. In project management, collaboration helps you get work done quickly and more efficiently. When you can coordinate across teams, you gain valuable insights into your project that you might not find within your team. If more minds are involved in the work, projects are inherently more creative and well developed. To improve your collaboration skills, practice having conversations. Use techniques like active listening, where you stay engaged and focused when others are speaking to you. It sounds simple, but learning how to have open communication, reduce boundaries, and cocreate are critical for a collaborative team. Read: 10 easy steps to boost team collaboration 2. Teamwork Everyone on your team has something to bring to the table, and your team is more effective working together than they would be alone. Teamwork ensures that everyone feels welcome, valued, and they are supported to contribute. If you’re working to boost your teamwork skills, dig deeper into team brainstorms, 1:1 conversations, and ask for feedback from your team—how can you be a better team member? Notice if there’s someone who hasn’t spoken up in a while, and be supportive when another team member has a new idea. 3. Communication Miscommunications are common when you’re working with a group of people. Learning how to communicate well and avoid these will make projects run more smoothly and be more enjoyable. To develop your communication skills, practice being open and honest with your coworkers. This requires a lot of trust between you and your team members. To build this trust, encourage your team members to bring any thoughts into a discussion—even if you disagree with them. 4. Time management Time management and organization skills go hand in hand. As you become better at organizing your tasks, you’ll also have a clearer sense of everything that’s on your plate and how long your upcoming tasks are going to take. Still, it can be hard to buckle down and prioritize your work. To improve your time management skills and reduce procrastination, try prioritizing tasks. When you’re clear on which tasks are higher priority, you can tackle them first, to make sure nothing gets left behind or falls through the cracks. 5. Leadership Even if you don’t think of yourself as a leader or have a role in team management, when you’re managing a project, your project team is looking to you for leadership, guidance, and support. To develop your leadership skills, practice approaching situations with empathy and understanding. Good leaders bring everyone together and make them feel supported to foster teamwork and collaboration. 6. Organization For a lot of project managers, organization is the most intimidating soft skill. You might think organization is either something you “have” or “don’t have.” But, like every other project management skill in this article, you can develop your organizational skills and become a Marie Kondo in your own right. The best way to become a better organizer is to create (and maintain) a central source of truth for your work and your team’s work. We’re often disorganized because work is disconnected—in fact, the average employee switches between 10 tools per day. Instead of splitting your time between 10 tools, try using a digital organization tool to act as that one central source of truth for your team. Read: How to get organized: 17 tips that actually work 7. Problem solving Problem solving skills are collaborative, iterative skills that help you approach a problem and, ultimately, solve it. Developing problem solving skills isn’t about always having the “right” answer to every problem—rather, people with great problem solving skills practice approaching problems from new perspectives and methodically working towards a solution. To become a better problem solver, use data-driven decision-making frameworks or routine analyses. For example, if you need to solve for how to boost sales by 10% over your competition, you can run a competitive analysis to determine where you currently stand in the market. Then, use that information to solve the problem of lower sales. In this case, you could develop a new marketing strategy coordinated with the sales team. Read: Turn your team into skilled problem solvers with these problem-solving strategies 8. Critical thinking Critical thinking, like problem solving, doesn’t have a “solution.” You can’t “win” at critical thinking, but you can practice approaching problems logically instead of making decisions based on your emotions. Good critical thinkers practice analyzing information in front of them and forming their own conclusions based on the facts—the way Sherlock Holmes solves a mystery. To practice critical thinking, always take a step back and ask yourself: how did I come to this conclusion? Could there be another answer? Am I being swayed by something other than factual information? Emotional decisions aren’t necessarily bad—in fact, some of the best decisions are those we’re passionate about. But critical thinking is a helpful way to make sure you’re approaching a situation from the right perspective. 9. Adaptability At some point, whether it’s this project or the next one, aspects of your project plan will change. Maybe your deadline or priorities shifts, and you need to adapt your workflow accordingly. Great project managers are able to pivot and adapt to new situations to continue steering their project team in the right direction. Becoming more adaptable is all about understanding when and how to shift gears. To do this, you need to understand yourself. Developing other soft skills, such as self-awareness and mindfulness, can help you be more in touch with and manage your emotions, which are often in flux during times of change. Read: 6 Tips to Increase Your Adaptability In the Workplace 10. Conflict resolution Inevitably, conflict will arise during the projects you manage. It could be that a stakeholder wants to change the project scope. Or maybe you missed your budget or deadline. Conflict resolution is about addressing both sides of the conflict so everyone feels heard and supported. If there are harmed parties, take the time to listen to them and try to find a solution that works for everyone. Even when that can’t happen, approaching the conversation with patience and empathy can help defuse a potentially frustrating situation and lead to a better result. hard skills for project managers Unlike soft skills, hard skills are quantifiable abilities. While the soft skills mentioned above are applicable for many work skills, these seven hard skills are relevant specifically to project management. Developing these will help you become a more well rounded and efficient project manager. Manage projects with one tool 1. Project planning At its core, a project plan (sometimes called a project charter) is a blueprint of the key elements your project needs to succeed. Typically a project plan will include seven things: 1. Goals and project objectives A. Success metrics B. Stakeholders and roles C. Scope and budget D. Milestones, deliverables, and project dependencies E. Timeline and schedule F. Communication plan Some of these things, like your goals or your milestones, might already be defined in your project roadmap or brief. But your project plan is where all of these project elements come together to create a cohesive picture of your upcoming work. A lot of planning goes into the beginning of the year for what our vision is and where we will be by the end of that particular year. Once that is done, we summarize it in a project so it's visible to everyone... Having that visual representation in Asana makes it easier to move things around.” —SHERYL CHOPRA, PROJECT MANAGER, IPG MEDIABRANDS 2. Project scoping Project scope is the size, goals, and limitations (i.e., deadlines and resources) for your project. Your project scope will define what you can achieve within a certain timeframe and budget. Setting and defining your project scope is important in order to prevent scope creep, which is when your project deliverables outgrow your original project scope. In order to improve your project scoping skills, practice setting project scope early and often. Once you’ve set your project scope, share it with stakeholders and surface it frequently, so everyone is on the same page about the project’s aims and limitations. Use it as a point of reference, so you know when to say no to new asks. We have been able to reduce the number of products that we’ve oversold and the number of times we have to contact the customer to push a ship date out.” —ANDREA GEORGI, E-COMMERCE DIRECTOR, THE CITIZENRY 3. Writing a project brief Your project brief outlines your general project objectives and how you plan to get there. This can serve as a helpful North Star to guide planning sessions. The most important thing to remember about your project brief is that it’s a living document. As you develop your project plan and get input from stakeholders, you can adapt and update your project brief. In general, your project brief should contain a link to your project roadmap if you created one, a list of your project stakeholders and their responsibilities (sometimes called a RACI chart), other relevant documentation or files, and any other high-level information your team might need. Having executive oversight and insight into projects is key so we can quickly get up to speed on what is happening at any point.” —JEANA ABBOUD, COO, SOCIAL FACTOR 4. Hosting a project kickoff meeting A kickoff meeting is an opportunity to align with your project stakeholders. This is your chance to clarify your project goals and scope, and share any documents you’ve already put together like your project roadmap, project brief, or supplemental documentation like a bill of materials for a marketing campaign or a creative brief for a design team. To host a successful kickoff meeting, plan to share the documentation you have put together with project stakeholders. Then, host a brainstorming or Q&A session to align on any additional variables, like budget, resources, or final deliverables. 5. Project roadmapping A project roadmap is a high-level overview of your project’s key deliverables and timeline. Project roadmaps are helpful for complex initiatives with a lot of stakeholders because they help the entire project team get on the same page before the project even starts. Traditionally, project roadmaps are created in Gantt chart-like software, in order to display a general schedule of your project as a horizontal bar chart. To create a project roadmap, use a tool like Timeline in Asana to create a rough timeline of your project, adding key milestones or important dependencies. 6. Mapping your project timeline Your project timeline is the order and duration of events during your project lifecycle. Knowing your project timeline helps your team track project success and deliver the right assets on time. In order to build a great project timeline, make sure you clarify the start and end dates of your project, as well as any key milestones. As you continue building out individual tasks and deliverables, set dependencies between tasks, and clarify the start and end date of each piece of work. 7. Task management Once your project is officially underway, task management refers to how well you manage your and your team’s time. The best project managers have visibility into what their team is working on in real-time, so they can help their team effectively prioritize and execute work. But you don’t have to magically know everything that’s happening in your project— instead, use task management software. Task management software is more than a to-do list—it’s a way to get a holistic view of all of the work happening in your project. With effective task management, you can empower your team to work more productively, efficiently, and effectively.