The role of a project manager is simple: successfully initiate, plan, execute, monitor, control, and close projects. Becoming a successful project manager, however, is not as simple. Many scholarly articles have been written on the skills required to be a successful project manager, the PMI teaches the ideal skill set, the PMI Talent Triangle, is a combination of technical, leadership, and strategic and business management expertise:
- Technical: Knowledge, skills and behaviours related to specific domains of project, program and portfolio management. The technical aspects of performing your job/role. Technical Skills include; requirements management and traceability, planning, scheduling, budgeting, meeting facilitation, performance tracking and forecasting.
- Leadership: Knowledge, skills and behaviours involved in the ability to guide, motivate and/or direct others to achieve a goal. Leadership Skills include; coaching and mentoring, influencing, team building, negotiating, and problem solving.
- Strategic & Business Management: Knowledge of and expertise in the industry/organization, helping you align your team in a way that enhances performance and better delivers business outcomes. Strategic and Business Management Skills include; big picture thinking, commercial acumen, critical thinking, listening skills, planning and organising.
While technical skills are core to project management, in today’s ever increasingly competitive marketplace, companies demand more, and now more than ever skills in leadership and business intelligence are essential. Whilst most people accept technical skills can be learnt, can leadership and business intelligence be learnt?
There is an age old question on whether leaders are made or born, and whilst many leaders are fortunate to be born with these skills, many successful leaders will admit they have acquired their skills in part through training, coaching and mentoring. Also required is the desire to be a great leader, a willingness to learn through experience, and to learn from watching others.
Learning Strategic & Business Management skills is a little trickier and can be very specific to the industry you are working in, but there are generic skills that can also be learned through training; creative problem solving, the ability to harvest analytics and data from past experiences, effective planning and organisational skills.
Aspira offer a range of online instructor led industry certified training courses which include all of the basics to acquire the necessary skills to be a successful project manager. If you would like to find out more, click here.
