Interpersonal Skills in Project Management

Effective project managers acquire a balance of technical, interpersonal, and conceptual skills that help them analyze situations and interact appropriately. The following are some important interpersonal skills required for project management based on the project management of body knowledge (PMBOK® Guide):

• Leadership
• Team building
• Motivation
• Communication
• Influencing
• Decision Making
• Political and cultural awareness
• Negotiation

The appropriate use of these skills assists the project manager in effectively managing the project.

Decision Making Skills in Project Management

There are four basic decision styles normally used by project managers: command, consultation, consensus, and coin flip (random).

There are four major factors that affect the decision style: time constraint, trust, quality, and acceptance. Project managers may make decisions individually, or they may involve the project team in the decision-making process.

Project managers and project teams sometimes use a decision-making model or process such as the six-phase model shown below.

1. Problem Definition - Fully explore, clarify, and define the problem.
2. Problem Solution Generation - Prolong the new idea generating process by brainstorming multiple solutions and discouraging premature decisions.
3. Ideas to Action - Define evaluation criteria, rate pros and cons of alternatives, select best solution.
4. Solution Action Planning - Involve key participants to gain acceptance and commitment to making the solution work.
5. Solution Evaluation Planning - Post implementation analysis, evaluation, and lesson learned.
6. Evaluation of the Outcome and Process - Evaluate how well the problem was solved or project goals were achieved (extension of previous phase).

Influencing Skills in Project Management

Influencing is a strategy of sharing power and relying on interpersonal skills to get others to cooperate towards common goals.

Using the following guidelines can influence team members:

• Lead by example, and follow through with commitments.
• Clarify how a decision will be made.
• Use a flexible interpersonal style, adjust the style to the audience.
• Apply your power skillfully and cautiously. Think of long-term collaboration.

Source: Project Management of Body Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)

Communication Skills in Project Management

Communication has been identified as one of the single biggest reasons for project success or failure. Effective communication within the project team and between the project manager, team members, and all external stakeholder is essential. Openness in communication is a gateway to teamwork and high performance. It improves relationship among project team members and creates mutual trust.

To communicate effectively, the project manager should be aware of the communication styles of other parties, cultural issues, relationships, personalities, and overall context of the situation. Awareness of these factors leads to mutual understanding and thus to effective communication. Project managers should identify various communication channels, understand what important they need to provide, what information they need to receive, and which interpersonal skills will help them communicate effectively with various project stakeholders. Carrying out team-building activities to determine team member communications styles (e.g. directive, collaborative, logical, explorer, etc), allows managers to plan their communications with appropriate sensitivity to relationship and cultural differences.

Listening is an important part of communication. Listening techniques, both active and effective give the user insight to problem areas, negotiation and conflict management strategies, decision making, and problem resolution.

The communication skills are common in the project management, such as:

• Listening actively and effectively,
• Questioning, probing ideas and situations to ensure better understanding,
• Educating to increase team's knowledge so that they can be more effective,
• Fact-finding to identify or confirm information,
• Setting and managing expectations,
• Persuading a person or organization to perform an action,
• Negotiating to achieve mutually acceptable agreements between parties,
• Resolving conflict to prevent disruptive impacts, and
• Summarizing, recapping, and identifying next steps.

Source: Project Management of Body Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)

Negotiation Skills in Project Management

Negotiation is a strategy of conferring with parties of shared or opposed interests with a view to compromise or reach an agreement. Negotiation is an integral part of project management and done well, increases the probability of project success.

The following skills and behaviors are useful in negotiating successfully:

• Analyze the situation.
• Differentiate between wants and needs - both theirs and yours.
• Focus on interests and issues rather than on positions.
• Ask high and offer low, but be realistic.
• When you make a concession, act as if your are yielding something of value, don't just give in.
• Always make sure both parties feel as if they have won. This is win-win negotiating. Never let the other party leave feeling as if he or she has had advantage taken of them.
• Do a good job in listening and articulating.

Source: Project Management of Body Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) 

Political and Cultural Awareness Skills in Project Management

Organizational politics are inevitable in project environments due to the diversity in norms, backgrounds and expectations of the people involved with a project. The skillful use of politics power helps the project manager to be successful. Conversely, ignoring or avoiding project politics and inappropriate use of power can lead to difficulty in managing projects.

Today project managers operate in a global environment, and many projects exist in an environment of cultural diversity. By understanding and capitalizing on cultural differences, the project management team is more likely to create an environment of mutual trust and a win/win atmosphere. Cultural differences can be both individual and corporate in nature and may both internal and external stakeholders. An effective way to manage this cultural diversity is through getting to know the various team members and the use of good communication planning as part of the overall project plan.

Culture at a behavioral level includes those behaviors and expectations that occur independently of geography, ethnic heritage, or common and disparate languages. Culture can impact the speed of working, the decision-making process, and the impulse to act without appropriate planning. This may lead to conflict and stress in some organizations, thereby affecting the performance of project managers and project teams.

Source: Project Management of Body Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)

Motivation Skills in Project Management

Project teams are comprised of team members with diverse backgrounds, expectations, and individual objectives. The overall success of project depends upon the project team's commitment, which is directly related to their level of motivation.

Motivating in a project environment involves creating an environment to meet project objectives while offering maximum self-satisfaction related to what people value most. These values may include job satisfaction, challenging work, a sense of accomplishment, achievement and growth, sufficient financial compensation, and other rewards and recognition the individual considers necessary and important.

Good project managers should understand the expectation of each team member. The different value of each people will determine how to motivate the team members to meet the project objective.

Source: Project Management of Body Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)

Team Building Skills in Project Management

Team building is the process of helping a group of individuals, bound by a common sense of purpose, to work interdependently with each other, the leader, external stakeholders, and the organization. The result of good leadership and good team building is teamwork.

Team building activities consist of tasks (establish goals, define, and negotiate roles and procedures) and processes (interpersonal behavior with emphasis on communication, conflict management, motivation, and leadership). Developing a team environment involves handling project team problems and discussing these as team issues without placing blame on individuals. Team building can be further enhanced by obtaining top management support, encouraging team member commitment, introducing appropriate rewards, recognition and ethics, creating a team identity, managing conflicts effectively, promoting trust and open communication among team members, and providing leadership.

While team building is essential during the front end of a project, it is an ongoing process. Changes in a project environment are inevitable. To manage these changes effectively, a continued or renewed team building effort is required. Outcomes of team building include mutual trust, high quality of information exchange, better decision making, and effective project control.

Source: Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)

Leadership Skills of Project Managers

Leadership is one of the important interpersonal skills for project managers. Leadership involves focusing the efforts of a group of people toward a common goal and enabling them to work as a team.
In general terms, leadership is the ability to get things done through others. Respect and trust, rather than fear and submission, are the key elements of effective leadership.

Although important throughout all project phases, effective leadership is critical during the beginning phases of a project when the emphasis is on communication the vision and motivating and inspiring project participants to achieve high performance.

Project managers with a strong leadership skill have the ability to force a clear project objective, to create and manage a comprehensive statement of scope, to differentiate between requirements and expectations and manage both, to analyze and manage risks, to define and enforce a clear review and approval process for deliverables, and to build cohesive team out of a temporary group of employees.

Throughout the project, the project team leaders are responsible for establishing and maintaining the vision, strategy, and communications; fostering trust and team building; influencing, mentoring, and monitoring; and evaluating the performance of the team and the project.

Three Types of Project Manager Skills

A successful project manager needs three types of skill: technical project management skills, project leadership skills, and general management skills.

Technical Project Management Skills
Project managers need to have mastered the technical requirements of the job. These include planning skills such as the ability to develop work breakdown structure, identify dependencies, gather and assess estimates, analyze risks, assign and level resources, and build a project plan. They also include project execution skills such as the ability to gather and evaluate status data, develop estimates at completion, prepare meaningful status reports, and track progress.

Project Leadership Skills
These skills are typically called "soft" skills because they involve managing relationship and the expectations of project participants. However, there is difference between general soft skills, discussed in the next section, and the specific skills needed by a project manager. The later include such skills as the ability to force a clear project objective, to create and manage a comprehensive statement of scope, to differentiate between requirements and expectations and manage both, to analyze and manage risks, to define and enforce a clear review and approval process for deliverables, and to build cohesive team out of a temporary group of employees.

General Management Skills
Project managers also need the general skills used by all effective managers. These include such abilities as listening, goal-setting, delegation, communications, time management, meeting management, and negotiation.