Good PM 9 – How do deal with people on your project
Posted: September 14th, 2009 | Tags: people skills, Project Management, Project Management Institute, Project manager, Project Manager skills | No Comments »
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The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun. - John D. Rockefeller
Here we get to the point that really seperate “any old” project manager from the “Good PM”. How well can you deal with people. People is the most dynamic part of any project. PMI defines a project as an “unique endevear”. Every project that has people involved will by definition be unique if we do not have exactly the same team as on the previous project.
A lot of the previous “good pm” attributes, like conflict management, have people at the core. In order for your project to be successful in any way, you will need to be able to make the best of the people you have on-board. Being able to relate to people, being able to identify different personality types and how to deal with each of these is crucial if you want to succeed in project management. Like the previous post, this skill is also something that can be taught in training classes but only be perfected by real life experience.
Recently I have witnessed another case of a brilliant mind that did not have the ability to build rapport with key stakeholders. Although all the decisions made on the project were technically correct, the inability of the project manager to appropriately deal with the conflict between stakeholders turned the project into a “burning” project where the fire fighters had to come and help. The key cause in this case was the project managers inability to “read” the stakeholders, understand their emotions and deal with it in an unbiased way.
I have also seen the opposite case, where the project manager is such a people person that now work gets done. Keeping everybody happy was so important that no tough decisions where ever made and all difficult decision got put on hold.
It is normally fairly easy to spot the project managers with bad people skills. Not to say that bad people skills always equal bad project manager. There are roles for these people as well. Sometimes the lack of “soft” skills is what is needed from a escalation manager, where being able to take charge, evaluate a situation and make decisions are the critical skills.
Horses for courses! Just be sure you know the limitations of the project managers that you work with.
