What are the True Qualities and Skills of a Successful Project Manager?

The true qualities of a project manager often lie beyond hard skills. In this blog, I will highlight the personality and skill-based attributes that successful project managers should possess. Let me begin by defining a project manager.

A project manager is responsible for steering an entire project toward its completion. Right from the ideation of a project to deciding its scope to managing the team and resources and then finally winding up the project: everything lies on the shoulder of a project manager.

Project managers also manage the stakeholders; they coordinate with internal and external stakeholders to ensure the smooth running of the project.

That is why it is essential to have some specific qualities if you are aiming for a career in project management.

Successful project management: what true qualities does it take?

Every project manager has a unique way of handling and responding to any situation, which is perfectly natural as we all have different personalities. But the following are some of the traits that often become critical to a successful career in project management:

1. Organization skills

A successful project manager has to be very organized in every aspect to complete the project on time and within the budget. Every successful project manager needs to be a multi-tasker, and they need excellent organization skills.

A good project manager must break down the project into smaller elements and create deadlines for each. They need to communicate clearly the responsibility of each team and regularly monitor whether the intermediate deadlines are met. Thus, organization skill at every step is crucial for completing a project on time and within budget.

2. Risk management

One of the essential skills you may need as a project manager is risk management. Risks can occur at any project stage; therefore, a successful PM professional must be able to identify the potential risks, evaluate their severity, and construct a plan to diminish the hazards.

Let us discuss a situation where a project manager’s skills helped divert risk. A construction work was delayed due to a dispute between the supplier and the company. The project manager had anticipated trouble based on the supplier’s behavior.

The PM put their risk management quality to work and developed good relations with other suppliers beforehand, who agreed to supply materials during the crisis. The construction work resumed in no time.

3. Leadership

A good leader who can inspire his teams and motivate each member to bring out their best can undoubtedly become a successful project manager. Leadership skills include self-awareness, listening, decisiveness, empathy, and vision.

A good leader does not impose themselves on their teammates. They should be approachable, supportive, and empathetic. A great leader always leads by example. If you set high-performance standards for your teammates, then you, as a project manager, should be able to perform at higher standards to set an example.

4. Communication skills

Good communication is the key to successful work. Anything, from the vision to strategies, to delegation of work, explaining responsibilities, and finally, collecting feedback, requires good communication from the project manager to ensure excellent deliverables.

If a project manager can communicate well, there are fewer confusions and errors. The teams get a clear idea of what is expected from them, which also helps build trust between teammates.

5. Problem-solving attitude

If you are a problem solver, then there is no stopping you from becoming a successful project manager. Keeping a positive attitude and having patience can help you handle problems better. A great project manager should be able to identify the problem, analyze it, evaluate the options, choose the best solution, and take action to solve it proactively.

6. Detail-oriented

Successful project managers possess a sharp eye for details to spot errors at an early stage and prevent those from becoming more outstanding issues later. Also, when a project manager is detail-oriented, the project’s quality is supreme.

7. Flexibility

Any project, large and small, can run into roadblocks, encounter changes in plans or face sudden emergencies. That’s why, as a project manager, you will need to be flexible.

The pandemic has seen a rise in remote workers. If you manage a team of such remote workers stationed in different time zones, you may need to modify the team’s work timings to ensure the entire team is available together for a few hours each day. It will improve communication and result in better conclusions. Thus, the project manager’s flexibility is vital to success.

8. Creativity

A creative project manager can bring innovation in all aspects, like thinking, implementing new ideas, solving problems, and creatively managing all team members. A project manager can become successful by keeping in touch with their creative side.

9. Accountability

With any leadership position comes accountability. A good project manager takes responsibility for any consequence of the project.

Here is an example. Let’s say a team is working on a tight deadline, and suddenly one of the workers falls sick. It is evident that meeting the deadline would become difficult. In such a situation, a truly successful project manager will take accountability for the crisis.

They will re-delegate the responsibilities and modify the timeline so that the quality of the project is not hampered. They will also communicate the situation and the change in deadline to the stakeholders.

A successful project manager does not blame others for shortcomings but derives ways of overcoming the issues together and achieving the desired outcomes.

10. Task delegation

A project manager’s role oversees the project’s entire lifecycle, but they cannot do everything independently. Task delegation is an important quality required to become a successful project manager.

They should be able to identify the qualities of their teammates and motivate them to bring out their best. A project manager should delegate tasks smartly to people exploiting their best abilities to achieve desired outcomes.

A project manager must balance the above qualities to succeed in this competitive field. These are general qualities. However, there are different types of project managers, such as:

• IT project manager

• Construction project manager

• Event project manager

• Marketing project manager

• Product project manager

Each project management role may demand specific competencies and expertise, varying slightly depending on the industry.

Let’s explore a few of these specific attributes in detail.

IT project manager

As the name suggests, PM professionals in this field are expected to have a technical background. They should be familiar with the agile methodology, a project management method extensively used in software development projects.

The agile process involves breaking up a project into several iterations, including frequent releases and customer feedback at every stage.

Construction project manager

Construction projects particularly have very tight deadlines and higher risk potentials. Often, there are many stakeholders like suppliers, engineers, government bodies, and the general public.

Therefore, construction project managers must have expertise in stakeholder management and be able to thrive under pressure. They need to have a strong personality and should be able to resist the unwanted.

Unlike the IT PMs, the construction project manager should be skilled in the waterfall methodology. This approach needs you to move from one stage to another only after the successful completion of the previous stage.

Safety management is another area that construction project managers need to focus on and ensure that all workers on the project site are following safety protocols and procedures.

Event project manager

All the exciting corporate events, seminars, webinars, conferences, and trade shows are managed by event project managers. Effective communication skill and organization is the key to their success. They need to be bubbling with confidence and energy always. Also, a great event project manager is a people person.

Marketing project manager

A marketing project manager obviously needs to have a strong marketing background. They must have good presentation skills to deliver the right messages to the target customers effectively. They should also possess analytical skills; familiarity with analytical tools can be a plus.

Marketing project managers need to employ creative thinking to be able to think creatively and develop innovative solutions to marketing challenges.

Product project manager

As the name indicates, a product manager looks over a product from its ideation to its launch. Therefore, a successful product project manager must have cross-functional qualities and a comprehensive understanding of all the different aspects like design, development, sales & marketing.

Parting Words

Thus, all these different types of project managers play crucial roles in an organization’s growth and are an asset for the company. So, which of the true qualities do you already have in you to become a successful project manager?

No matter which industry you choose, the Edbrick project management training courses will leave you with invaluable lessons both within and outside the certification curricula. Advance your career with our flexible courses.