What Makes a Good Project Manager?
Something interesting you will notice about project managers is they all seem to have different backgrounds. Some started out in technical roles, like developers and testers. Others came up from the functional side. You will also see a lot of project managers who came from various roles within a core business function.
The reason there is opportunity for people of all kinds of backgrounds to become a project manager is because a project manager is a generalist role, requiring mostly soft skills to be successful. The hard skills required for a project manager are skills that can be sharpened serving many different kinds of roles. Further, every professional is a project manager in their own way. When you are given tasks by your manager, you need to manage yourself (and possibly others) to make sure you take the steps needed to produce a quality deliverable within the directed time. So, being an actual project manager is just scaling out to manage higher impacts.
If a person does an exceptional job managing their work areas, whatever they may be, they can transition to a project manager role quite easily. Especially if they are individuals who do a good not just understanding their work, but seeing the big picture and understanding how everything comes together. That is key. Further, there are several key qualities common for all successful project managers:
Strategic Thinking
It is a common misconception that project managers are just coordinators, responsible for scheduling meetings and asking people their status. Even a lot of “project managers” seem to think this. A good project manager leverages strategic thinking to take part in designing programs by understanding the big picture, business landscape, and other components.
Executive Presence
As a project manager, you are responsible for ensuring people are completing work they need to do. This comes with an assumption of authority, but this can be difficult since often times the project members do not actually report to you in the organizational structure. Skilled project managers are able to command authority through respect. This is earned by carrying themselves confidently, being willing to listen to others and take feedback, and display strong knowledge in the project and business.
Making Connections
Remember what I said earlier about project managers being generalists. For a long time, “Generalist” has been a dirty word. But things have really shifted as it has become evident that generalists are critical for organizations. For more on this, read Range, by David Epstein. Few people possess the skill to understand how different components relate to each other. The members of the project team will usually be specialists who may not have this skill. Therefore, the project manager is in a unique position to use their global knowledge of the project and various workstreams to catch dependencies, patterns, actions, and more.
Establishing & Maintaining Order
Problems get chaotic. Project managers must maintain meticulous documentation to bring order to chaos. Just by keeping this documentation (staffing, timelines, tasks, etc.), the chaos can be well addressed. That said, chaos can come up in all sorts of ways. Leveraging a mix of the three prior skills, a project manager should be able to calmy steer the ship back into a stable place.
Cross the Finish Line
Know how to get things done. Push to get things across the finish line. When a blocker comes up, do what is required to ensure the blocker is removed. Understand the Definition of Done for the project and don’t let it close until it is met.
